Your thoughts on the Wolfenstein series

[Starkiller]

So Doomworld, what is your personal thoughts on each of the Wolfenstein games? 

 

Haven't played the Muse Software Wolfenstein games, so I can't say my experiences on that. 

 

For me, Wolf 3D and Spear of Destiny are pretty fun classics. While not having much of Doom's own charm, it's still pretty fun to rampage in a castle shooting Nazi's, while collecting gold for no purpose other than extra lives. 

 

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is the first FPS I've played, and brought me to enjoy and respect old school games. A favorite of mine, but not as much fondness as it suffers from unbalanced difficulty, where it either can be ridiculously easy or bullshit cheap. Oh, and fuck that stealth forest mission. Absolutely infuriating, where every time I would complete that final objective, the alarm would sound. Thank god for quicksaves.

 

Wolfenstein 2009 is an interesting experiment that combines modern FPS mechanics with an RPG hybrid system and a town hub, but fails miserably. Still fun to rampage around and kill Nazi's with superpowers.  

 

Wolfenstein: The New Order honestly killed the series for me. It ruined what made Wolfenstein fun for me, with it's paranormal setting and darkly humorous parts, with the alternate universe setting doesn't feel like Wolfenstein. They ruined BJ's character too, turning him from a badass silent protagonist to a mournful bland main character who explains the gloom on why his life is hell or something, it just feels terrible. Also, some parts were just too damn depressing to play through much of the game.  I honestly find The Old Blood the only game worth playing in the new Wolfenstein series. 

 

Looking at it in retrospect now, I honestly find Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny the only good games in the series, just like Quake 1 being the only decent Quake game. It just went downhill fast. 

 

What are your thoughts? 

[KVELLER]

I think that Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny are not very fun to play nowadays, mainly because of their limited technology. I don't blame id Software of course, they did what they could with the hardware that was available at the time, and I have a huge respect for the first game since it was the foundation for Doom and future FPS games.

 

The only other game I've played is Return to Castle Wolfenstein and I didn't find it particularly good. Besides, the balancing was pretty infuriating a lot of the time.

Edited May 30, 2018 by KVELLER : Typo

[geo]

I skipped through a lot of it. I've only played Wolfenstien 3D, Wolfenstien: New Order and Wolfenstien: Old Guard. While I like them enough to get through them its not enough to get me to play the other games. Wolfenstien 3D is now too dated and archaic for me to get into and it probably always was, because I played Doom long before Wolfenstien and the flat textures coupled with lack of architecture holds the game back from being more enjoyable.

[DoomUK]

Never played the OG Wolfenstein games, and all I remember about Wolf 3D is getting lost in a bunch of identical rooms and corridors. I remember really liking RTCW, Wolf 2009 not so much. TNO and TOB were pretty good, definitely improvements on the previous game. Haven't played the very latest one; should I?

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

I haven't technically played Wolf 3D, given I played the Doom mod of it and Spear of Destiny. SoD was very poorly done, I thought, but the original was fun.

RtCW could've been a lot better than it was, because last time I played, I had to take ten minutes to clear a single room and hope like hell there was health in the next for each level, so I thought it incredibly boring, and the stealth segments were the worst because even if you knew what you were doing, you'd attempt it five times and succeed once.

Wolfenstein (2009) was pretty fun, but really only because of the Thule Medallion. Once I got the Empower crystal and upgraded it, I never used Mire or Shield.

New Order I didn't like because it's melee combat seemed incredibly broken and tedious to me. Having to stand and wait because the other guy decides to charge me and kill me because I can't do enough damage over and over again in the prison was what caused me to stop playing the game.

So, in summary, Wolfenstein is a bit of a roller coaster of quality as far as I'm concerned, so I'm not sure what I think of the series as a whole.

[Doominator2]

24 minutes ago, DoomUK said:

 Haven't played the very latest one; should I?

Alot of people are very divisive about the last one, people complain about it being an anti white pro communist game (which i find ridiculous) some people feel that there are too many cut scenes. But I honestly really enjoyed it. If your looking for a fun and smooth game with a Tarantino style of ridiculousness that left off right after the previous game, you will enjoy it alot. That and the gameplay is really good.

[CARRiON]

*shrug* s'aight.

[ShoDemo]

Not that close with Wolfenstein games.

 

Wolfenstein 3D I had trouble configuring the controls (it had that awkward player movement when you would push your mouse forwards or back), so I just played 2 or 3 levels (I would love to finish it as a game, if I can find the solution to the controls problem).

 

Return to Castle Wolfenstein I haven't played yet, but it is in my list.

 

Wolfenstein 2009 I played halfway. It was nice that they had that hub system and I enjoyed the caves and the underground German facility mission, where everything blows up near the end of it, iirc. But I felt that the game was getting kinda boring as time passed. Especially when they introduced the zombies in the church, that are total bullet sponges, I couldn't handle the game for much longer.

 

Wolfenstein: The New Order seems interesting, but my PC would barely run it (I guess 30 fps, low settings, like the Thief reboot).

 

The Old Blood I would like to try for the stealth. Might be good, might be bad, I don't really know if I don't try.

 

Wolfenstein 2 seemed way too stupid and disgusting at some places (at least from what I saw on some videos on youtube) for me to even try out:

Spoiler

They find a suit for Blazkowicz, that allows him to walk, when his muscles got torn apart from the grenade in the last game. They also decapitated him (oh God how I hate neck cuts - decapitations not as much, but still I find it a bit ew) ... and his head was put on a replacement body, like it is Ghost in the Shell or something... Should I continue??? This is already too ridiculous, even by comedy game standards and it is not even a comedy game, like MDK or Giants Citizen Kabuto (in those games "ridiculous" fits perfectly).

 

Then, Blazkowicz's father is a total bastard, because they totally had to have a Nazi father for a fighter of the revolution (I feel like they were tryharding to show that "war bad and brutal - peace happy and good", but that could just be me).

And what disgusted me the most was that scene where Blazkowicz's wife pulls out two, I REPEAT, TWO FREAKING MACHINE GUNS, that probably weigh 30 kilos each, she gets topless (FOR NO APPARENT REASON), while being pregnant and she starts a massacre. I don't care what others may say, but this is wrong in too many levels. Yes, I didn't say "I find this wrong". I said "it is wrong" and I am absolutely certain of that.

 

[Vermil]

Let's see:

Wolf3D: Completed many times

RTCW: Barely touched/got bored (not to mention that forest stealth mission...)

Wolf 2009: Reached the final boss

New Order: Played about half way through

 

I haven't played The new colossus.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Vermil

[mrthejoshmon]

They're alright, I'm a bigger fan of Return To Castle Wolfenstein and 2009 over TNO/TNC, I really like the melding of sci-fi and occult with classic WW2 presentation that the previous 2 are really good for.

[KVELLER]

29 minutes ago, ShoDemo said:

Wolfenstein 3D I had trouble configuring the controls (it had that awkward player movement when you would push your mouse forwards or back), so I just played 2 or 3 levels (I would love to finish it as a game, if I can find the solution to the controls problem).

 

You could try the Wolfenstein 3D TC. It's pretty damn accurate as far as I can tell, and you get an automap! (although you can avoid using it if you are a masochist want the vanilla experience).

[ShoDemo]

Just now, KVELLER said:

 

You could try the Wolfenstein 3D TC. It's pretty damn accurate as far as I can tell, and you get an automap! (although you can avoid using it if you are a masochist want the vanilla experience).

 

I am a masochist.   :D

[Lila Feuer]

Wolf3D and SoD are indeed the most enjoyable of the series for me, effectively akin to the classic Doom of the Doom series. There's a wealth of addons for it too and I always thought less = more with the limited technology proving to be more interesting to design well for, as Wolf3D still manages to have some frantic shooting action in addition to a nice and unique atmosphere with the adlib music and colorful graphics.

RTCW is a decent game, with great detail and feedback, certainly Xatrix/Grey Matter's most polished shooter, a nice blend of realism but still game-y keeps the action flowing, but it falls apart halfway through with the Lopers, Paratroopers, Ubersoldat, and those annoying Elite Guard bitches. Shame too on having mandatory stealth missions, further off-putting repeated playthroughs even though the game is quite short.

Wolf TNO was pretty fun, when it was being a shooting game, as the stealth while done well enough is too easy and boring to do. It's easily the most visceral and violent Wolf out of the series, but lord have mercy I hate the characters, and the critics who think this writing 'saved the series' from just being a game about killing Nazis, which to me is like saying Doom shouldn't just be about killing demons. I like the alternative 1960's setting though, just shame what happened with the sequel.

I have yet to play TNC or even Wolf '09, albeit the latter is impossible now at least legally thanks to Bethesda.

E: @KVELLER ECWolf makes that obsolete, as it has an automap, and the original behavior is preserved.
 

[Apaul27]

Never played them, but I'll get to them soon...

[riderr3]

I did not played Wolf3D/SoD in 90's, but later I used Wolf4SDL port and finally discovered ECWolf - have to say it's added few things which I really needs: automap, HD resolution, proper strafing and novert.

[Fulgrim]

Played everyone of them and I gotta say the OG Wolf and Spear of Destiny where a bit rough. Mostly due to how much of a labyrinth a lot of the levels where. RTCW is my favorite out of the series. The first reboot I can take or leave. I liked  The New Order and have played through it a couple of times. Same with the Old Blood. Got about a 4th into The New Colossus, stopped playing it and never picked it up again. Yes, the games heavy handed story telling and clear political agenda, turned me off.  The Wolf games have always been their best when its about killing Nazi's and the series does not need some massive political back story. I actively avoid everything related to politics or what passes as politics these days, I don't need or want to play a game full of it. 

[amackert]

I haven't put much time into the games after Wolf 3D and Spear of Destiny. Those two on the other hand, I still revisit many times a year and have a lot of fun with them.

[SaladBadger]

the core gameplay of wolf3d and SoD's definitely a bit on the dull for me these days, but they're still somewhat fun when playing the better maps. RTCW ranks among one of my favorite games of all time, but it is a flawed gem, definitely. When you're shooting dudes its pretty fun, the environments are nice, but some gameplay segments are awful. The forest is an absolutely beautiful level with some really nice graphical tricks like shifting the terrain's lightmap to make it look like clouds are passing overhead, and it also is one of the most frustrating forced stealth experiences I've had.

 

I have no experience with Wolf 09 but it never looked appealing to me. I liked Wolf TNO, but I was absolutely awful at it. I probably was missing something blatantly obvious, but I had a hard time with it. Not used to these shooters where everyone has bullet shooting guns... It was a very great game regardless though and worth a playthrough. They definitely did some great shit with the game world. I can't really comment on the quality of the gameplay, if I'm honest, due to my aforementioned "being terrible at it," but the story was nice and the early who to save choice was really well done, even if the two characters were kind of really unbalanced and I'm reasonably certain everyone just picked Fergus.

 

I've had more divided thoughts on the newest game, but its not super awful. I did feel the plot dragged and dragged to some degree. I'm not opposed to cutscenes and stories in my game, but there was definitely way too much of that and not quite enough game for my tastes.

 

edit: was vaguely curious on the fergus vs wyatt thing so I looked at steam achievement stats. 59.1% of players have the fergus saved achievement while 42.3% have the wyatt saved achievement. heh. Kind of amusing to me that they add up to just around 100%, given that this is counting people who have played the game twice.

[printz]

I've only played these games, and not completely:

1. Wolfenstein 3-D: I got to play this game at a very early age, being one of the first video games of my life. My opinions are going to be highly favourable of it, and full of nostalgia. I'm totally against source ports such as ECWolf, even though I acknowledge that without them, people tend to redistribute copyrighted material in mods. The legality of AFADoomer's mod is also something I'm questioning: isn't it basically emulating Wolf3D and using all its copyrighted content for free?
2. Spear of Destiny: got this much later than Wolf3D. Some of the early levels were a bit too long, but I liked the later ones: they play like a modern expansion pack of Wolf3D, really challenging. The last few levels make very good use of music, I was shivering. And the ending is one of the most awesome of id games.
3. Spear of Destiny lost episodes: only got ahold of one of them but didn't get to play it myself. Instead, I let AutoWolf play it. I liked how so many resources seen in mods (both Wolf3D and Wolf-Doom) were actually taken from these episodes. The levels seemed to be quite hard too.
4. Return to Castle Wolfenstein: didn't get to finish it. I did not like the Heretic-like monsters and levels (zombies and crap), I think they were going too far with the fantasy aspect.
5. Wolfenstein 2009: didn't get to finish it. The hub system and the Doom 3-like optional lore (letters you can read and are even voiced by their fictional writers) seem like an awesome way to make the game immersive. But I didn't like the regenerating health and the obligatory use of non-weapon special abilities (which was also heavily featured in Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil, or Prey). I deliberately avoided using the Veil, but that still resulted in tedious shoot-and-cover gameplay where I was waiting to regain health.

The problem with realistic WWII Wolfenstein games and mods is that they keep repeating the few historical patterns. You always get to use the same NAZI-made weapons, and fight the same SS soldiers in black uniforms. Old Wolf3D avoided being like this. And I think The New Order and sequels also avoid it, by presenting an alternate timeline, after WWII.

 

Alot of people are very divisive about the last one, people complain about it being an anti white pro communist game (which i find ridiculous)

That seems brilliant, because guess what was the biggest social plague after WWII (at least in half of the world, or so)?

[Lila Feuer]

@printz

Why are you against ECWolf? Also you're not missing much from those 'lost' episodes, the mapping is very poor.

 

[GarrettChan]

17 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

Why are you against ECWolf?

Even though you're not asking me, I want to say something here.

 

I would say ECWolf feels like GZDoom to be min Wolf3D (of course, it's not a good analogy, but you get what I mean). Yeah, it definitely has a lot of good and interesting features with it. In ECWolf, you can strafe left/right by only using A/D, but not in the original. I use RMB to strafe, and yeah, it definitely feels very strange and awkward to strafe left/right by holding RMB + A/D, but this is some Wolf3D "taste" here to me for some reason ;P  Another thing is that it seems ECWolf also saves the RNG sequence, and I take same amount of the damage every time after loading a certain game. Maybe I'm using the wrong version? Personally I would prefer SDL because it mostly behaves like DOS. However SDL eliminates the challenge from special things like E4M10 since those Officers don't vanish in SDL, but due to the engine limit, they do in DOS.

 

Yeah, those "lost" episodes are just... terrible.

[Lila Feuer]

I also don't care for the modern control scheme, but it can be changed. A and D TURN left/right and mouse 2 is strafe, as I prefer using the horizontal-only strafing, as I think circle strafing in Wolf3D is very odd not to mention technically cheating. But I think from an organized standpoint having the PK3 structure is superior to having dozens of folders of modified wolf3d.exe's for each and every addon that makes source code changes. Also decorate for easy access coding. Also an automap, even though I got around before just fine without it, but it's convenient for those pure maze sections (e.g. the secret level path in E3F7), in addition to knowing level stats (keeping track of secrets in real-time is more reliable than gauging a percentage during a tally screen).

I wouldn't call disappearing actors as a result of an [x] sprites in view limitation a 'challenge' but more-so an annoyance.

[Remilia Scarlet]

I've never played the original Castle Wolfenstein games, but they look fun.  I should make a point to play them this summer...

 

Wolf3D and Spear of Destiny have always been insanely fun for me, despite their simplicity and crazy maze-like design.  For a while I also started to learn to map for it, but that was back when I was still on a 486 and used DOS mainly.  These days I still play through a few episodes once in a while using ECWolf (being glad it has an automap these days) and never feel disappointed.  What I especially like about the old games is the smaller arsenal, the feel of the controls, the fast yet simple action, and the music.  Too bad the boss fights are so simple, though :-/

 

I loved Return to Castle Wolfenstein quite a bit, and thought it was a good reimagining of Wolf3D's premise.  It's another one I should play through this summer.

 

RtCW:ET is something I never got into.  Multiplayer games aren't something I usually enjoy, especially the team-based ones like this and Team Fortress.  Single player games let me move at my own pace (to a degree) and give me time to stop and look around at the architecture.

 

I played partway through The Old Blood and generally found it quite enjoyable, but god that Rage-style megatexturing... regardless of what I did, I could never fix it enough to get past it, and so I never finished the game.  It never grabbed me enough to replay it now that I have a better video card, though.

 

The other games I've also never played.  I would like to check out The New Colossus one, however.

[seed]

The Wolfenstein series never managed to attract me, mostly due to the central theme (I'm probably among the few people who actually don't find killing nazis exciting or that fun).

 

I've played through Wolf 3D back when I was a kid but never managed to finish the game myself. I think it's a great game but due its central theme (and very old tech) it never managed to get me hooked enough to play it (or the sequels) from start to finish, or simply raise my interest in it unlike games like Doom did.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Agent6

[Poncho]

Wolf 3D and Spear are pretty cool (even if some levels are awful), and ARE enjoyable, but, like what many other people have said on this thread, the limited technology makes playing through the entire thing a bit of a chore (even more so when you know each level is, quite literally a single floor, no steps, nothing).

[Avoozl]

Honestly I enjoyed Return to Castle Wolfenstein the most, I didn't enjoy the big departure of the later games particularly starting at TNO as I don't care for the alternate timeline stuff and heavy sci-fi influence. I preferred it when the games were based around WWII and included some elements of sci-fi and the occult.

 

However I could never really appreciate the simple and maze like nature of Wolf 3D and SoD, ROTT seemed to improve on those games but it's just too bad it never turned out to be Wolf 3D 2 like its original intention.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Avoozl

[Kristian Nebula]

Wolf3D is a classic. Never played Spear of Destiny. Used to play Wolf3D a LOT back in the early to mid 90's.

Return to the Castle Wolfenstein was great, the one with Quake 3 engine if I remember right. Much fun. I never tried the 2009 version.

 

My favourites, however is the new series. Old Blood (which I played first), then TNO which was really great on many levels and TNC also very good despite the end fight with the Zerstörers. And I was a bit surprised that it ended so quickly, I would have expected something more about the actual revolution. I really enjoyed the alternative timeline setting, it was a fun setup. Gameplay-wise also it was something different for me to sneak and snipe around quietly.

[MFG38]

I can't really give any detailed thoughts on the Wolfenstein series as a whole, especially since I have yet to play the 2009 entry and The New Colossus, but I can say that The New Order is easily my favorite out of the games I have played. Then again, The New Order was actually the first Wolfenstein game I played - I only played the classic Wolfensteins after that.

[DMPhobos]

Wolfenstein 3d, i played after i got into Doom and for i time i liked a bit better, in retrospective i can see it's flaws and i find it a bit boring at times, but i like it and i have a soft spot for wolf 3d. One of the first mods i tried to make when i was learning how to make maps was a Wolfenstein 3d mod combined with the Doom demons. Never played spear of destiny

RTCW,  it was an awesome game, it was a semi remake of the original wolf 3d and i remember wasting many hours replaying the game demo over and over again until i finally had a chance to play the actual game. I haven't played it in years but i had a blast. I think i need to replay it sometime since i have some really good memories of it

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, i know it's not one the main games and count's more like a spinoff but when im i gonna talk about this gem? i don't play multiplayer games anymore, but this one i sunk many hours for a couple of years. My favorite class was the medic, it was also fun to find a server with custom weapons such as a shotgun and custom maps. Really incredible stuff, i can't praise it enough. Ironically the enemy territory main game mode (1 team defends, other attacks) was latter replicated in COD (in WW2 i think) and got praised like if it was something fresh... but wolfenstein did it first

The New Order, a cool reimagining and for a series whose main enemies were defeated in 1945, going the alternate history route was the right thing to do. I liked the game, but i did found it a bit frustrating, specially with some bullet sponge enemies that just keep taking shots and don't react. I specially liked that the final boss was a dual machinegun mecha straight from wolf 3d. I kinda miss the paranormal element gone from the series, i like the sci-fi setting just fine, but wolf and the paranormal go well like bread and butter

The Old Blood, I loved the setting, specially visiting castle Wolfenstein once again, but i found the combat a bit frustrating too. The WW2 setting and the RTCW homages were great, and i absolutely loved the paranormal stuff. Despite it being a short campaign, it's my favorite of the new series

The New Colossus, Oh boy.... were do i begin? I hate this game. I really wanted to like it, but i didn't. Level design is horrendous, it had some parts were i just got stuck not knowing what to do because the game wasn't clear. Being stuck at 50 health for half of the game was a really bad design choice IMHO, it made half the game really frustrating and not fun for no good reason (had it been only for the first couple of missions it would had been fine, but you are stuck with it for a considerable chunk of the game!). Then there's the plot, i didn't enjoyed the plot at all, BJ confronting his father was interesting to see, but everything else was too over the top and not well executed despite some good ideas, i found most characters annoying, every time BJ said something like "Caroline, will you lend me your wings?" made me cringe, couldn't stand Grace when she was introduced, and even the main villain was annoying too (and not in a good way). Also, like some people have said, the game is politically charged, i didn't minded it since in a nutshell it's just a strong anti nazi stance but sometimes it felt like it tried to shove those issues in your face. The game did got better by the end, but by then it was "too little, too late" for me.

[dsm]

Lengthy post ahoy, I suggest y'all grab a beer and some popcorn or, alternatively, skip this post entirely.

 

Castle Wolfenstein I didn't know existed until around 2000 when I perused a Return to Castle Wolfenstein forum (where the then in-development RtCW was being discussed) and several people talked about it. I found a link to a rom port of it and gave it a shot.

Pretty cool little game. I would definitely have loved it as a kid, but unfortunately, the post Wolf3d/Doom me has evolved a video game taste that dislikes games that rely heavily on chance and luck and Castle Wolfenstein is full of that.

You often have little influence over whether or not you will find enough ammunition (and no, you will not always be able to sneak past guards without having to kill them), whether you'll be lucky enough to find an SS uniform. I prefer games that are more skill-based, so the whole random chance of being anally raped I don't like, but I do like everything else about it: Searching chests with random goodies in them? Yay! Seaching corpses containing random goodies? Yay! Finding disguises that lets you walk past Guards? Yay! Lots of suspense? Yay! A tiny bit of humour that doesn't diminish the seriousness of the game? Yay!

 

Never played its sequel Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, despite liking the concept of it. It has been described as harder than the first game and by "harder", I figure it means: "more likely to screw you over with some dumb, random chance encounter that forces you to start over".

 

Wolfenstein 3-D will always be a game that's very close to my heart. I remember it as the first game I owned that not only didn't suck, but also was all kinds of awesome; back then, I could not imagine anything more badass than playing as a square-jawed one-man-army tough guy killing armies of Nazis with a minigun. And it had mutant zombies in it too (too bad they were under-utilized).

This was the game that  introduced me to the franchise and to the First-Person-Shooter.

The only reasons I'm not as big of a fan of this franchise as I am of Doom, is because: 1. You're killing Humans (even the worst scumbag Humans are Human deep down). 2. limitations in tech and design that have not at all aged well.

 

Spear of Destiny I was pretty indifferent towards, because I knew it was basically the exact same as Wolf3d in terms of gameplay and if they weren't improving the formula or introducing new guns and enemies (the Bosses don't count), I didn't feel like bothering. I did eventually try the Wolfendoom version and, even later, the actual game itself. Pretty much what I expected, though I did like some of the new music and the ending was awesome.

 

Return to Castle Wolfenstein effectively reinvigorated the series. Blending the fantastical with the historical element was the right thing to do for the series at that point in time (but that was before the market was over-saturated with WW2 shooters). When it was best, it allowed you to play a map either in a stealthy manner or with guns blazing and it worked fairly well, at least for someone like me who normally doesn't care for stealth games. Hated the forced stealth sections but was grateful that there were only two of them.

Admittedly, I was initially extremely disappointed in how anemic a lot of the guns felt; the Luger is basically a worse weapon than your knife, because you can shoot and hit an enemy and he will just shrug it off as if you threw a tiny pebble of water at him, whereas the knife is silent and is a one-hit KO if you sneak up on enemies and nail them in the back.

Generally, I feel the game had far too many guns to the detriment of fewer, potentially better designed, better balanced guns. As cool of a weapon as it was, the STEN gun could have been omitted in favor of adding a silencer to the MP40 and making the MP40 better at stun-locking enemies to mention just an example.

The FG42 was pretty awesome though and the Venom gun held the distinction of being my personal favorite video game minigun for years.

 

I was mildy annoyed that the treasures were basically pointless. I like treasures and consider it an oversight if a post-Wolf3d Wolfenstein game doesn't have them, but these treasures had even less effect on gameplay than the Wolf3d ones (which at least gave you a score value that made you feel really damned satisfyingly rich).

 

It had some really memorable locations and I for one liked the concept of the Loper (hated that they were unstoppable bullet-sponges though whose attacks were nearly impossible to avoid - cheap). I also liked that the plot actually revolved around the eponymous Castle Wolfenstein instead of just using the name as brand recognition.

 

Wolfenstein '09 I never played. Gameplay footage rubbed me the wrong way (despite it having lots of elements I liked). I didn't like how the sci-fi elements introduced in Wolf3d were starting to dominate the series making the Nazi tech come across as increasingly futuristic. I had this problem already with RtCW (really did not like the Super Soldiers or the Tesla Gun - made it kinda feel a dimensional rift had opened up into the Quake and Quake 2 universe and that the whole 1940s setting didn't matter so much anymore).

I didn't care for the veil powers either. Aside from granting rather generic abilities, they, alongside the flashier "retro-future" tech also helped to make the game feel overly flashy in a way I felt was detrimental to the WW2 setting.

At this point I was also getting sick of fake German accents (the MoH and CoD series had had natural German speaking Axis soldiers for years at this point and started feeling like an insult that a Wolfenstein game didn't bother getting German-speaking actors aboard) and I found the NPC voices in this game particularly grating.

I'm not a fan of regenerating health and its presence made the game look extra dull and unappealing to me. I also was very upset that the player character spoke (when he had been silent till then) and his character wasn't even remotely interesting either.

Finally, I was extremely upset at the lack of a minigun. To me, a handheld minigun is about as crucial to a Wolfenstein title as either shotguns is crucial to a Doom title; You may as well drop the name "Wolfenstein" if you're not including that weapon in some form. Yes, I know the Particle Weapon functions similarly, but it's one of those stupid "retro-futuristic" Doomy-Quaky-type energy guns that feel out of place.

 

Wolfenstein: The New Order I've never played and my opinion for this game is all over the place, but I'm leaning towards not being a fan.... Yeap, definitely not a fan.

Ok, so I like how they handled health items and the four classic Wolf3d weapons (or their reinterpretations anyway). The classic weapons appear to all be very useful and have a place and situation where each is uniquely suited, which I consider an impressive feat. I like that.

 

I also have to give Machinegames credit for reinventing a franchise that by all appearances needed to be reinvented and for portraying Nazis in a way that better showcases that Nazis aren't inherently psychopathic or criminally stupid, just brainwashed by the psychopathic and the criminally stupid. I like that the game features attack dogs and that the lore states that they're shot up with chemicals that basically makes them insane to the point that killing them is essentially a mercy. I also kinda like that Nazi Officers are walking alarm posts that spawn reinforcements when alerted, but I don't like how often they're used and that the reinforcements are seemingly unlimited (or next to unlimited).

I also gotta say that I love this game's depiction of Super Soldiers. By contrast, the RtCW ones felt too much like retro-futuristic Cyborgs, whereas the TNO ones feel like Frankenstein's Monster with such super-Human strength that they can be decked out with massive Tank armor and equipped with Heavy Machineguns. That's the proper way to do Nazi Super Soldiers.

 

The things I don't like is the whole "Nazis Won the War" setting for one. It's a great setting and an excellent vehicle for teaching todays video-gaming generation about the true horrors of WW2 (which this game does exceedingly well). However, it is not, in my opinion, a great Wolfenstein setting, because it makes the setting super-depressing by default and Wolfenstein to me, never was depressing (like Doom isn't depressing despite it depicting The End of the World).

On the contrary, Wolf3d made you feel like an avenging angel sent back in time to punish the Nazi scum for all the horrible things they did. TNO just makes it feel like it doesn't matter that you're basically a Superman able to kill armies of Nazis, because the Allied Powers are gone, nearly all Resistance (save for a tiny handful) is gone and there are millions of Nazis all around the Globe. Your actions feel like a drop in the Ocean, when you should be feeling like you're the right single-man-army in the right place to ensure that the Allies do win in the end. I've been trying to convince myself to like this setting and that it's just me being "stuck in the past", but the truth is that the game is chock-full of the kinds of things I used to escape from when I sat down to play Wolf3d (I was spoon-fed horror stories about the Holocaust, Life under German Occupation, intricate detail about Nazi cruelty and how they were steam-rolling basically everyone until midway through the war; I got fed up with it and wanted to make the Nazi scum quake in their boots for a change), so seeing that in a Wolfenstein game kinda makes me unhappy even if the World, sadly, needs it.

 

Ugh. And then there's the whole "cinematic experience". I do not like action games that have a heavy emphasis on lots of lengthy cutscenes (I can appreciate that a cutscene is sometimes a well-crafted animated loading screen) and I have developed something of a particular disdain for "interactive cutscenes" in a game that's supposed to be an action shooter.

That stuff's great for slower-paced thinking man's RPGs and the like, but for action games, I find them extremely jarring and they kill any replay value the rest of the game would otherwise encourage. I like well-written stories as much as the next guy, but there has to be a better, less obtrusive way of telling them that doesn't kill any incentive for me to play the game more than once.

 

You've probably seen this coming by now, but I'm not a fan of how this game basically takes the retro-futurism of RtCW and Wolfenstein '09 and cranks it up to 11. I like this game's version of the Super Soldiers because they don't seem robotic, yet in the same game you have giant (electrical powered as opposed to some steampunk'ish gaspowered mech that'd feel more like alternate WW2 tech) mechs and flying robot drones. Before long, the game ends up looking more like "Doom with Nazis", something I don't really want in a Wolfenstein game, because I like Wolfenstein to look distinctive from either Quake and Doom and it used to do just that. Just not anymore it seems....

 

I could write a lengthy essay on this game about how I like a lot of it quite a bit, but then immediately lose all interest in it because of a laundry list of things that don't appeal to me about it and why they don't appeal to me, but I'll be here all night and my post is already too damned long.

 

The Olde Bloode I also haven't played despite it appealing to me a lot more than TNO (1940s I'm more into than 1960s for one), but it has the same über-depressing feel to it that I don't like as well of being heavy-cutscene laden, though less obnoxiously so than TNO. Still debating with myself if I shouldn't one day give it a chance.

 

The New Collossus doesn't, as of this moment, appeal to me. I gave the trial version a shot (sort of a last ditch attempt on my part to give both it and the two previous Machinegames Wolfenstein games a chance), and I very quickly got fed up with the interactive cutscene segment right at the start. I had intended to play the shooting section exhaustively to better determine if I liked the combat in the game enough to be able to overlook my grievances with other aspects, but I lost patience with the interactive cutscene (which you can't skip, unlike the other cutscenes).

From what I gather, the story has become far sillier (in a bad way) than it was in the two previous outings (I had maybe a small problem with it in those games already) and it has a lot of obnoxious characters, somewhat broken gameplay (in a way I know from experiences with other games that I'll find infuriating and gamebreaking).