An ugly yet enjoyably violent shooter.
As I say the game is not a looker. The opening level looks on par with Half Life 2 minus AA. A 5 year old game & that's with the resolutions & settings on as high as they will go. Occasionally the visuals do look quite stunning but it's usually during the night missions.
On the flip-side though this game does run very smoothly indeed just like all ID games seem to. No stuttering or frame rate issues at all no matter how hectic a battle you're involved in. A very stable & well optimized game indeed.
My favorite aspect of Wolfenstein is most definitely combat. Though the AI is naff, your enemies are very aggressive & come in numbers. The weapons are some of the best to grace a shooter (loved the MP43). They sound fantastic & do plenty of damage & in this installment they're upgradable. Sure a lot of games are doing the old upgradable weapons trick but in my view that's always a plus. Resident Evil 4 & Dead Space are proof of how great a game can be with this feature. You can also upgrade your special veil powers. The veil is new to Wolfenstein. Again feels a little unoriginal but helps the combat from becoming stale. I won't mention any of the powers here but they're pretty funky.
Wolfenstein is also a bloody & violent game. Toss an upgraded grenade into a pack of Nazi's & watch limbs & heads get blown off. My personal fave is the throat kill. Watch the dirty Nazi hold his throat as blood gushes out & he makes a horrible death gurgle before finally dying. Nice touch. Did I mention that grenade explosions are the best sounding ever in a game in my opinion.
I guess some people are moaning that this game doesn't do justice to previous versions but the single player is a lot better than that of RTCW & you have an enhanced multiplayer to boot. It's still pretty mindless like previous versions but I feel this is the best version to date.
I've had a brief look at the mp & I can see myself losing many an hour to it in the end. Right now I'm honing my skills in the sp so I can compete better online but the mp is definitely the games best feature. Each class gets it's own veil power & they differ from those in the sp. Overall feels very similar to that of RTCW but with veil powers. Can't wait to play more.
Wolfenstein comes with it's fair share of downers however. One in particular is simply unforgivable in 2009. Auto closing doors. May not sound that horrific but believe me you will die many times in doorways especially on the hard & uber difficulty settings. What were they thinking. After 5 seconds doors close on you. Is it really that hard for talented developers to make destructible doors or simply ones that stay open when opened. When is a door a jar? Never in this game. Other minus points are hammy English speaking Germans giving it plenty of zee Nazi's. Subtitles are fine with me.
The game also feels fleshed out with boring needle in a hay stack item searches. You'll need plenty of gold if you want fully upgraded weapons but it's pretty dull searching around for it. Upgrades are not that necessary, they just turn your weapons into super death dealers but you could complete the campaign with the default weapons. Upgrades to the veil via tomes is much more helpful especially for those bosses, but it gets tedious searching for them. If you don't hunt around you'll be done with the sp in around 8 hours, but I've done 2 play-throughs so it's worth a revisit.
So in summary of all that babble, I would just about recommend this game. It gets the combat & weapons part right & that's the most important aspect of any shooter. It's sp is replayable & the mp is quality, so overall a worthwhile package.