Customer Reviews
Short, Lacks Polish, Multiplayer is Bad
I have loved the Wolfenstein
series since I first played the original back in 1992. The new game,
Wolfenstein, is a standout amongst other great titles in that it lacks
polish, has below-average graphics, and a multiplayer mode that feels
more like Goldeneye than Enemy Territory.
Graphics:
The
graphics seems like an enchancement to the 2001 Return to Castle
Wolfenstein release as opposed to a generational improvement one might
expect from the seven plus years since the last episode was released.
Uniforms and clothing move awkwardly on the models and faces appear to
have 2-3 expressions per model. Anti-aliasing seems to be unavailable
from the options menu and the graphical presentation suffers for it.
Finally, the cutscenes are presented in a surprisingly low quality mode.
In RTCW cutscenes were rendered in the resolution setting of the game
mode. Mysteriously, Wolfenstein seems to step down your quality settings
by a large degree to present the cutscenes.
Having recently
played through Doom 3 again, I would give that title the edge on
graphical presentation. One positive note is the quality of the effect
as you slip in and out of "the veil."
Overall: 4/10 - Below
Average for bad cutscenes, lack of AA, lack of improvement
Audio:
The
5.1 and 7.1 modes are great. Sound effect quality is lacking. Guns have
a "far away" and a "next to your head" sound, with not much in between.
There are not many sound effects for ricochets, stuff hitting different
surfaces, etc. While not wholly terrible, it lacks the polish of titles
with great sound like Far Cry 2 or Fallout 3.
Overall: 7/10 -
Slightly above average for quality of 5.1/7.1
Gameplay:
This
is a major sticking point with me. In RTCW and Enemy Territory, the
character seemed to move fluidly around the environment. Wolfenstein has
the same FPS feel as the previous titles, but the character transitions
between weapons, jumps, crouches, etc in a more awkward manner. If you
wish to test this, try running and then shooting. It feels as if your
character runs into a wall and a bullet suddently flies out.
Overall:
6/10 - Serviceable gameplay, but nothing exceptional
Multiplayer:
Wow,
this was the worst disappointment. If you played Enemy Territory from
RTCW you know what good multiplayer is. Multiplayer mode in Wolfenstein
is BAD. If you played Goldeneye in 1995 then you have played Wolfenstein
multiplayer. You pick a gun, pick a class (that barely seems to
matter), then you go to a tiny map where people with life bars over
their head are shooting you while permastrafing. There is very little
strategy, the graphical presentation is laggy (even with 100fps and 40ms
ping), and the maps are basically big squares with objectives in the
middle. A big step backwards with absolutely no improvements since
WolfET came out 7 years ago.
Overall: 1/10 - I gave it one point
because it worked. Other than that I wont even load the multplayer mode
again
Fun:
The single player mode is somewhat entertaining
because they continue along the lines of Return to Castle Wolfenstein
(RTCW). Story elements are presented much in the same manner to RTCW,
cutscenes interspersed during and in between core missions. The voice
acting is good, but the story is nearly identical to RTCW. After 4 hours
of gameplay you are likely to have completed nearly half the game.
(there is a convenient slider bar to notify you of this every time you
check your inventory). The multiplayer mode is so awful that there is
limited replayability. The entire thing feels like a bad console port.
Overall:
5/10 for good story, good voice acting, but the rest is humdrum.
FINAL
SCORE: 4.6/10
I do not recommend this game and actually feel
somewhat cheated given that I pre-paid $50 for this three months ago. Is
a 8-10 hour single player campaign and 12 poorly designed multiplayer
maps worth 50$?
Great Single Player
Experience!
My review is for the single
player aspect of the game and in this regard this is the most fun I've
had with a PC FPS in a while. I'm not a big fan of the military shooters
i.e., Call of Duty, etc., just to give you an idea of my taste in
games. So don't buy this game expecting a realistic military style
shooter. However if the mixture of tackling evil Nazi's, the occult and
using special powers combined with standard weapons sounds good to you
then you will probably like this game.
Many fans of Return to
Castle Wolfenstein have slammed this game and it's usually in regard to
the multiplayer which I'm not writing about here. But if I were to
compare the single player aspect of the two games this new installment
wins hands down in my opinion. The hub style of design (which developer
Raven excels in) makes the game feel less linear than just going from
level 1 to level 2 and so on. Finding treasure and gold are still there
(as it has been since the beginning of the franchise) but now it has a
purpose in that it's used for buying weapon upgrades. The missions are
varied and fun and the shooting mechanics of the game are spot on. The
weapon sounds are very satisfying as well. The Veil (occult) Powers add a
whole new aspect of gameplay to the franchise and I enjoyed playing
with them in combination with the standard weapons, makes a nice one,
two punch so to speak. I also enjoyed the occult style enemies that are
mixed in with the standard Nazi fare. It kept things interesting. And
the locales of the missions were nice and varied as well.
As for
the graphics I'm using a 9800GT with everything turned up all the way
and I think it looks fantastic contrary to what some have said. Who
cares if this is an older engine, it's what you do with it and Raven has
done a bang up job. I love the artwork and the textures are beautiful.
This game has a very clean, vivid look to it as opposed to a lot of
games that use tons of bloom effects and have a very saturated, blurry
look to them. I've had zero technical issues with the game and I'm on my
second play through.
Nothing is perfect and if I had to say
anything derogatory about the game it would be that this game was
clearly developed for consoles first and PC's second. Not being able to
save whenever you want is standard issue for PC games and this game
retains the checkpoint system of it's console counterpart. Also there
aren't near enough ways to tweak the video settings as there should be. I
really would have liked a contrast and gamma setting. In the gameplay
department I always found it funny that NPC's would have conversations
about you like you weren't there even though you're standing right next
to them. But don't get me wrong, none of these issues spoil the game.
They just bear mentioning.
Amazon is currently selling this game
so cheap I think it's a no-brainer. For fans of single player FPS's I
say buy it!
More fun the more you play
I have to add this review as
my original review was not as flattering and i have changed my mind (or
lost it?)
But seriously the more i play Wolfy, the more i like it.
The initial 10% of the game
is awkward until you are able to purchase
some weapon upgrades which relieves
their clumsiness. The plot is
fun and the gameplay is fun. there is no platforming or
puzzle
solving but searching for gold and intel is pretty much as good.
Not
having played any of the previous Wolfs I had no expecatations and
found
the game a fun single player first person shooter, if you are
looking for more than that
well YMMV!
I dinged one star off
because 1) the save files can not be backed up or moved and
2) the
game has crashed on me several times (but i never lost any progress or
goodies).
No comments:
Post a Comment