Customer Reviews

Wolfenstein

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

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!

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).

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 $50 for this three months ago. Is a 8-10 hour single player campaign and 12 poorly designed multiplayer maps worth 50$?

This is a review for the single player only: First of all i have played many First shooter games for many years, like the first Wolfenstein, Doom, Half life 1 and 2 (love them) and episode 1 and 2, Return to castle wolfenstein, Crysis, Medal of honor series, battlefield series, and many more, i just love FPS, i have to say that this game for me has been the most rewarding experience in many years. I have had no issues whatsoever in the single player, no crashes at all.

The game has so many things to do and so much variety you don't get bored at all. You have special powers and you can search for gold to improve your powers or your normal weapons, but choose wisely because there is not enough for all. The enemies are intelligent (a little slow sometimes, thats true), but they hide from you and attack from corners or hideouts. I have no problems finding ammo so thats good because you need a lot of it because they are many many enemies to attack. But whats makes this game so good is that you play a long part of the game in one city, but everytime you cross from one part of town to the other, new enemies appear, and if you have new powers, they also have new ways to stop you, for example so kind of armors, so you cannot never get bored, you always have something to do. If you are in a mission in the city, expect to find stronger resistence.

The guide is very simple and lets you know where you have to go everytime, and sometimes you can choose what mission to do first, so the compass tells you where to go. Thats very good because in other games i have played you can spend a lot of time just finding your way with no one to kill. If you don't go where the compass and go to other part of town, you will also find enemies doing patrols.

Other thing i like a lot is that you have to find not only gold hiding in all the missions, but also some special books that give you more powers (i am not going to talk about the powers, because is nice to see it for yourself) and some documents that tells you about the story that is going on, and also sometimes opens you new posibilities of improving your normal weapons.

As i tell you, new enemies appear and they become stronger and harder as you advance in the game. I have played this game twice (now im playing it again) in different leves and what its seems to be different is the amount of enemies. I hate when the harder part means you have less ammo, here thats not the case, i have plenty of ammo but lots and lots of resistence.

Yes, the game sometimes in the missions is linear but i didn't find it boring as i have said, in fact is better to know where to go but i repeat, that doesn't make the game boring at all, you have to go to different scenarios that are very entertaining.

Other good thing, the load times are fast as hell, you died and in seconds you start again. Some people will find annoying that you can't save whenever you want, but the saving system is extremely good, and it saves a lot, and always before a hard part. If you died and have to repeat a part, it won't be a very long sequence so don't worry. I fact, sometimes is better not to have to worry to save because the games takes good care of it.

I think thats all, but expect to see many good things i have not say because i don't want to spoil the game, they are many nices suprises, especially with the special powers you have, something a little similar to Crysis but different powers.

I haven't played the multiplayer version but i have no need, the single player is so complete and takes so long you just want to play it again when you finish. The first time i finish it i felt sad that it had ended, its a great game.

This is not a great game. It is a good game, and it is certainly fun, and has a few moments of awesomeness. It stays true to its Wolfenstein roots, so if you're a fan of the rest of the games, you'll enjoy this game. If you've never played a Wolfenstein game, you should definitely pick this up! Halo isn't out, and are you really going to play Madden (I didn't think so, sports games suck), so this is a perfect filler game.

If this game didn't come from such a legendary franchise, I would be less critical of it. It was engaging enough to keep me interested enough to get through it a an hour or two at a time over the course of a week. It was also short enough to get through it that quickly--not a good thing.

I didn't buy it for the multiplayer version, nor have I tried it...my comments refer to the single player version.

PROS
- The game incorporates (rips off, perhaps) a few cool tricks from a few well-known games. Think bullet time in Max Payne, the damage system in Gears of War, the suit abilities in Crysis. I found this to be a plus.

- Two or three cool weapons that allow the player to successfully take on a room full of enemies.

- Medallion modes, again, made me think of features like slowing time, shielding, speed buffs, and damage buffs in better games...

- Final boss...a decent, creative, multi-part fight.

- Completely stable on my system, zero crashes of any sort during the game.


NEUTRAL
- AI...nothing special, nothing horribly dumb (in my observation)

- Navigation system...it was nice to not get lost in a map, but it also took some of the fun out of it. There is never a moment of aloneness or real horror in this game--there's always a compass to guide you and an NPC shouting "thatta boy BJ!" I miss the days of games without big cutscenes and lots of assistance to the player.

- I've seen people saying this game is really short; I would say it's of short to medium length. All a matter of opinion, I guess.

CONS
- This is the best you could do on graphics? Not only did I have to turn down settings to get a smooth framerate at high resolution, but high and low quality screens made the game look like it was 3-4 years old. Some maps were mediocre, some where downright dull. Character models were mostly poor. HL2 and Crysis are both much older and looked much better with lesser hardware requirements.

- Bosses...one word: repetition. Shoot something, [...]. Curse profusely when you die on the last of many, many iterations and have to start over.

- Lack of a quicksave...make the game twice as hard but give me a quicksave so I don't have to repeat dull moments over and over in a tough spot.

- Along those lines, more tough spots...repetition doesn't equal hard, sometimes it just equals annoying.

- Story...for one thing, Castle Wolfenstein was conspicuously absent as a major plot point. I'm not sure it was even named in the game (perhaps the castle in one of the later missions?)

- Weapon upgrades at an arms dealer. I love RPGs and MMORPGs and all the ways you can tweak your gear in them, but in an FPS, I want to kill something hard and get a neat new weapon as a reward. Period. Also spoils the illusion of the game when an NPC says to you, "this is the last chance you'll get to buy a weapon!" (play the last level, you'll see what I mean).

- "Percent complete" indicator available at any point during the game. Yeah, all spies and assassins have those handy...

- Storyline...I won't write any spoilers here but frankly, not much to spoil. Kill stuff, follow the compass around the map, keep coming back to the same town, kill more stuff...

SUMMARY
It's not a travesty of a game...but it was not worth the anticipation.

Perfect description. Not the greatest shooter, but very,very fun. I had a blast playing through Wolfenstein. The occult/ww2 story was cliched, but helped push the action. The shooting was solid, and the semi-open world setting was pretty fun, if a little limited. I would recommend the hell out of this game to anyone looking for a fun, not extremely deep shooter to spend a couple of days on.

I held off buying this due to some bad reviews but once I saw it dropped below $20 I jumped. For what I paid this game is amazing. Incredibly fun and addictive old style Raven/iD type fps with depth that is a refreshing change from the recent slew of bland modern tactical shooters. That depth being upgradable weapons, special powers through an obtained crystal that makes for varied gameplay and side missions and secret finding. The combat is also very fun and well done, don't remember WWII weapons ever feeling this good. I am also a big fan of any kind of fiction dealing with WWII, Nazis and the occult so this one was right up my alley. Supposedly the MP in this one is pretty bad but that does not interest me much so I didn't consider it in my review. Would have given it 5 stars except the graphics engine is somewhat dated (though still looks great) and I always like to see my hardware pushed to it's limits with a new game. But at this price you cannot go wrong.

I'm an old Wolfenstein-Doom-Quake fan from way back, but this one disappoints in SP mode. I haven't played much of the game yet primarily because of the new automatic save feature. When I'm ready to get up and eat dinner, watch a TV program, or go to bed, I want to save the game right there at that point in time, not some auto-save five minutes ago. Heck, I've already forgotten where I found the gold, what clipboard had the secret notes, not to mention I've got to fight my way back to my "dinner bell" location next time I sit down at the game. And it even seems that when the game says it has auto-saved, a restart doesn't take you back to the exact location of the "announced" auto-save. I've gotten killed a couple of times (missed those incoming grenades) and wound up further back in the game than what I thought was the last auto-save. I haven't figured that one out completely yet. To me, not being able to save a game at a point of my choice is such an annoyance that I don't know why I gave this game a 3-star...just being generous I guess. Another setback (in my opinion) is the removal of health status and health replenishment packets. Now, to restore health, crouching down seems to be the way to go...no very challenging to say the least. And why do I have to insert the CD everytime I play the game? I thought that's what the key code was for...to eliminate the need for the CD during the game startup. One note...when I installed the game from the CD, it never asked me for the key code, not even to this day. Every time I start the game it tells me to insert the CD. There are other quirks in this game that definitely separate it from the true Wolfenstein-Doom-Quake genre. What baffles me is why they (Activision, ID, Raven) did it. Was it in response to consumer feedback or just a laziness on the part of the developers/code writers? Whatever the reason, it has caused this long time fan to redirect my gaming alligence elsewhere...don't think I'll be buying the Wolfenstein-Doom-Quake sequels. P.S. - The graphics so far are good and playing with a Rumblepad 2 is an excellent choice for PCs. A resolution of 1920x1080 is a perfect fit for a 24 inch monitor.

I am a long time Wolfenstein fan, having played the game in its several incarnations since it first came out in 1992. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a great game, and still is. This game, called simply "Wolfenstein", is yet another great installment in the Wolfenstein tradition.

The story line is not all that much different from the other games in this lineup; at this point, you pretty much know what to expect. The graphics are fantastic, to the point that you really feel like you are an actor in the movie. You can die if you're not careful, but there is none of the tedious scrounging for first aid kits in the previous games. The action is, as I said, predictable, and while you are not necessarily confined to a linear path -- there are plenty of side alleys and doorways to explore, and you must explore them, if you want to collect powerups -- the game is nonetheless a linear design. You know if you're on the right path, because that's where the enemies are. The enemy AI is the best yet: for the most part, they don't do stupid things, and you had better not do stupid things, either.

I had no trouble running the game, no trouble with the graphics settings, audio, or any of it. And here's the kicker: I am running this on 64-bit Ubuntu Linux with wine. How often does that happen? Answer: with id's games, always. Somehow they manage to design games that work perfectly -- at least in my setup -- and don't take more trouble to get the game running than to play the game itself.

To be fair to what others have said: I can only speak from my experience with my setup, and here, it installed an ran perfectly the first time. I have NOT tried the multiplayer and "punkbuster" aspects of the game -- I pretty much play single, off line, and have no interest in online multiplayer, so I cannot speak to whatever issues there may be with that mode of play.

That being said, I am thoroughly pleased with the quality and gameplay. Only thing I find a little disturbing is the absence of a "save" feature. The game automatically saves at certain trigger points, and there are quite a few of them, but you can't save any time you want to. Every obstacle, at least that I have found so far, has a way of getting through, but it often takes several replays to find it. So you may wind up going through several steps repeatedly to get through the tough parts.