Rating

D+

Specific Ratings

GameplayC-
GraphicsC+
Learning CurveD
Replay ValueF
SoundC+

Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Boss fights can be fun to play
Cons
  • Bad accents, characters don't speak ANY German
  • Checkpoints are too far apart, causing headaches
  • The story is pretty much non-existant
  • Unbalanced enemy AI
  • Lack of cover system for your character only
  • Poor hit detection causes enemies to live longer

Wolfenstein (Xbox 360)

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Summary

Travel to Germany to uncover an evil plot and destroy it before Nazi Germany can use their powers to anihilate the earth. However, once you travel to this world, you will never want to return!

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Description

Wolfenstein is a game that has a few good things going for it but many more bad things holding it down. From the moment you step foot in the area and into your first gun fight it feels like the game has a lot of potential. Once you get a little further into the gameplay, however, that's when you realize the game falls flat on its face.

You play the game as Allied agent B.J. Blazkowicz, you are sent to Germany to find an artifact known as the Black Sun energy and keep Nazi Germany from making it into a weapon of mass destruction. Once in Germany you will meet up with a resistance group who will tell you where to go and what your objective is. From there they will send you to different locations as you try to find captives, destroy enemy strongholds or defeat certain generals in the German Army. You can also get side missions from another faction in the game but because the game doesn't offer much fun gameplay you may not even want to bother doing the side quests.

Throughout the game you will notice that the main area that you travel to in between contacts is a very small location. Although these locations take you to more remote areas they seem to get boring after a while. Once you clear out a location full of enemies and move on to the next area you will find that the previous location has been respawned with enemies again, causing you to continuously fight off waves of Nazis over and over again. And because the contacts have you run back and forth you will pass by the same areas many times during the story mode.The new types of enemies you encounter in the streets only appear after you reach a certain level. For example in the beginning you will fight regular soldiers. Later on you will get to fight armored soldiers, then armored soldiers with heavy weapons, then super fast creatures that have three hit kills, then fast women who have the same ability, soldiers who can fast travel and have shields and then lastly some flying bomb throwing soldiers. Because of the way the game throws these enemies at you it makes the enemy AI feel unstructured and unbalanced. You can pass by a street in the beginning of the game and fight light soldiers but then pass by the same street two levels later and you've got to fight all the powerful enemies at once shortly after you cleared the neighborhood. It becomes lame and frustrating very quickly.

Unfortunately the levels are the same. Each mission pretty much has the same agenda, clear out the building, move on to the next and shoot your way through. Find the elevator, fight more enemies, and blow up the building. The levels don't offer much strategy and they all feel the same. Some levels are rather annoying just because of the enemies. You might fight one enemy and kill him rather quickly but the exact same type of enemy later in the stage might waste all your ammo. Some of the enemies are just too hard to kill and some weapons don't offer enough ammo to pick up, so you're left with the standard machine gun most of the time.

The only thing that this game does right are the boss battles. Some of them are very creative and fun to play. They can be pretty hard actually but most of them are so fun that you won't mind dying a few times. The action packed boss battles offer great explosions and force you to figure out strategies to out maneuver your enemy. Some however, can be hard to figure out and some are just plain hard, forcing you to look for a strategy online or through a guide just to pass it.

Some of the weapons are great to use but because the upgrade system doesn't do too much to upgrade the guns you may not care which weapons you use as long as you get the job done. Some of the weapons are just useless, like the flamethrower. The distance is short and it runs out of fuel fast so don't even waste your time with it. You can collect upgrades by collecting gold. There are a lot of gold pieces in the game and unless you are trying to get the achievement for collecting them all don't even bother because there are way too many pieces to collect. You also collect money by completing missions and since you don't really need to upgrade your weapons there's no point in needing money. Also there is intel to collect in every area but because the game doesn't offer you anything in return for the intel there isn't much use in collecting them either.

Another thing that the game does wrong is the cover system. You really don't have a cover system except for kneeling down and standing back up if you want to shoot. The enemies, however, can duck into cover but if you find them not in cover but near a wall or box and try to shoot them you won't be able to hit them. The wall or box acts as a shield and deflects your bullets. There have been many times where I was clearly shooting an enemy in the head as he stood behind a box but it wasn't until he stood away from it that I was able to kill him. The hit detection is horrible, even on enemies where you have to use the veil powers to find a weak spot they're usually hard to hit at a moving target because the red spot is too small.

The veil powers also don't add enough power to the character, despite many of the villains having great power on the battlefield. They are nice to use once in a while but they feel more like a hassle to use and keep full.

The game also has an online multiplayer mode but because it only has three modes, and the game lacks powerful and great weapons and lacks many things other FPS games have it may be worth skipping this shooter in favor of more realistic and fun shooters like Halo or Call of Duty.

Overall this game should be skipped. The graphics are decent, the voice actors are horrible, the guns are decent but don't bring anything new to the table, the environments seem bland and generic and the enemies are so unbalanced that you will either stop playing this game or you will rush through it just to sell it or trade it off. This game seems outdated and every aspect of the game is screaming to be turned off and thrown away. I wouldn't recommend this game to anybody, no matter how desperate you are for a new FPS game you will likely find a better one on the Playstation 2 or original Xbox rather than playing this current gen game.

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