It’s recently been a trend, where developers put out a $60 game and then put out a sequel, essentially using the same engine and assets, for $20. Often they deploy a gimmick, and in Wolfenstein: The New Order‘s case, that gimmick is going back to the past of the franchise. But does it work?
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (PC, PS4, Xbox One)
Artistic Achievement
On one level, this is pretty much more of the same; while the level designs are all new, the engine, assets, art style, and so on are pretty much straightforwardly Wolfenstein: The New Order. In other words, it’s not an upgrade, but it looks, and sounds, incredibly good. An especially nice touch is the subtle incorporation of level layouts and design from Wolfenstein 3D, which this of course is an extended tribute to; it takes touches from the games without being slavish to their design.
Innovation
The game adds a few new guns to the mix; you’ll be particularly enamored of the Bombenschuss, essentially the game’s versatile sniper-rifle replacement. You also get a new melee weapon/tool in the form of a pipe you scrounge early in the game. But, yeah, it’s a game where you kill Nazis, zombies, and later Nazi zombies. It plays well, but you’ve played this before.
Execution
This game is an odd duck in that its toughest, most affecting moments happen early and it gets wackier as you progress. Early on, there’s an absolutely brutal scene where you discover Castle Wolfenstein is also an insane asylum, and you can even talk to an inmate who weepily mistakes you for his dead son. And then you have to escape to the next floor by following a dried trail of blood into a cell with the days scratched off into the tile. The first half of the game is a real kick in the teeth, from an emotional standpoint, completely unlike its gleefully campy trailer.
From a gameplay standpoint, there are a few tough-as-nails stealth encounters in the first half, and the opening chapter in particular is a brutally tense affair as you sneak past heavily armed jailers with just a pipe and your wits. It helps the game has been tweaked a bit; the pistol can no longer put an enemy in the ground at a thousand feet, and the guards are more observant. Arguably it’s where the game sings the most, and it can’t quite recapture that sense of tension and urgency as you earn perks and essentially turn into a human lawnmower.
It also slowly gets wackier. The first game wasn’t shy about having a dry and fatalistic sense of humor, but there’s a scene later on in the game where B.J. has store his weapons in a trunk, and the game more or less underlines how ridiculous it is he’s going around with like a hundred pounds of guns and ammo while not even wearing a shirt. This is right before the Nazis uncover zombie juice under Wulfburg and burning Nazi zombies start, literally, falling out of the sky; maybe two hours earlier in the game, you were watching a dear friend and fellow agent get fed to animals. From a gameplay perspective, it’s a little weird that the stealth options and level exploration gives way to running around in a robot suit and killing never-ending waves of zombies.
Oddly, it also recycles plot beats from the first game; Helga Von Schabbs has a bit with wine rather similar to the confrontation on the train, for example. It all starts feeling a bit repetitive, so it’s a good thing the game wraps it up before it wears out its welcome.
Staying Power
In addition to a nice, meaty main campaign of about ten to twenty hours depending on difficulty, the game’s got a lot of motivation to keep playing; not only are gold collectibles all over the place and often hard to find, each level has a remake of an original level from Wolfenstein 3D hidden somewhere in it for you to play. Essentially you get two games for your twenty bucks. If that’s not enough, as you progress you unlock challenge rooms you can medal in, and those have a “just one more time” feel to them that can eat up hours.
Bullsh*t Factor
Just like its progenitor, there’s no DLC or other attempts to drain your wallet. You pay your money, download your game, and start playing.
Final Thoughts
Unlike the original, this sequel of sorts runs low on ideas the further you play it. But that happens late enough in the game, and it has enough ideas worth playing, that you’ll want to play through to the end. And at $20, to be honest, it feels churlish to complain; I’ve paid $60 for games that were half as fun.