Wolfenstein

Wolfenstein is a fantastic FPS and in my opinion the best game in the Wolfenstein series, although that might say more about the rest of the series than it does this solidly above-average production. That said, it wears itself thin over time and has some issues that keep it from being as good as it should be. The first thing you'll probably notice if you're playing the PC version is that the port, like many console-to-PC ports in 2009, is sub-par. The FOV is incredibly narrow and the only way to fix it is to download a fan-made mod. The controls were definitely made with the Xbox 360 gamepad in mind and selecting between all the powers and weapons at your disposal is always going to be a little bit clumsy no matter how you try to bind your keys. Menus in particular are not mouse-friendly at all, and the Accept and Cancel functions are hard-bound to the notoriously out of the way Enter and Esc keys respectively. There is a very noticeable mouse filter effect going on that makes aiming feel incredibly swimmy, and the only way to turn it off for good is to edit a config file inside of an obscure AppData folder and then set that file as Read Only so that the game doesn't automatically revert your changes. When you sprint is narrows the FOV even further and institutes an exaggerated head-bobbing effect that is nauseating for anyone sitting closer than a living room's span away from the screen, although this can be altered inside the aforementioned FOV mod. Once you make use of all these fixes the problems are solved permanently and this kind of crap was commonplace in 2009, but it's still very disappointing to see in a Raven Software game using an Id Software IP.

Those issues aside, the shooting is quite fun. The AI is as smart as it needs to be to stay behind cover, flush you out with grenades, and flank when necessary. Your basic Nazi grunt goes down without much trouble, but also tend to come in sizeable groups. Encounters never feel tedious thanks to the lack of bullet sponge enemies-- even the guys in power armor can be taken down quickly if their weak points are targeted. The magical abilities you get are not particularly groundbreaking, but are all useful. Pools of magic power fuel are common enough that you are entitled to use the powers extensively. If I had one complaint about the powers, it's that while one is active your character moves slightly faster. Very slightly faster. Why not just let me go that speed all the time?

The game has an open-ended hub area that branches off into more traditional missions. There are four hub maps: Midtown East/West and Downtown East/West. Exploring the Midtown maps is great fun, there are lots of secrets to find and tricky ways to get into buildings and onto rooftops in search of the gold needed to purchase upgrades. Unfortunately, this sort of breaks down in the Downtown areas where secrets are few, buildings are rarely enterable, gold is usually just hidden around corners, and Nazi patrols become so large and powerful that it's best to just beeline to your objective and not stick around.

The missions themselves make up the meat of the game, and are very enjoyable and varied with different takes on the same gameplay loop throughout. For example, one mission has you fighting over a large, open farmland only to find out that the barn is the hidden entrance to a gigantic underground lab. Another takes place in an active battlezone between the Nazis and resistance fightersreminiscient of more 'traditional' WWII games. Among the others are missions that emphasize classic corridor shooting, slow-paced creeper shooting at cloaked enemies, and so on. It all falls under the banner of running and/or gunning but aside from the city hub it manages to keep that fresh throughout.

The weapons are a mixed bag. You have three mainstay weapons: a bolt-action for sniping, an MP40 that can be outfitted with a useless silencer, and a more powerful MP43. In addition to that are more fantastical weapons powerful enough to massacre rooms full of Nazis in a single sweep... but therein lies the issue. These weapons are so powerful that ammo for them is rare, and there's little distinction between, say, a laser gun that shoots a short-range beam that kills Nazis in one hit, a tesla coil that shoots short-range electricity that kills Nazis in one hit, and a flamethrower that shoots a short-range burst of flame that kills Nazis in one hit. There's an attempt to balance this by making the big weapons slow you down when they are equipped, but that's more of an annoyance than anything. I'm not trying to say that dissolving a room full of Nazis with a laser beam isn't fun, it's just difficult to find individual use-cases for these admittedly very fun to use weapons. It just very much feels like you're "supposed" to use the bullet weapons most of the time, and then switch to everything else for special occasions. And that kind of sucks.

There's an upgrade system for the weapons (and magical powers) in place, but it's got its own issues. You pay for these upgrades with stashes of gold that is strewn about this realm. Finding this hidden gold used to pay for it is a blast at the beginning, but as the game progressed I found that being as thorough as possible was not enough to find half of the gold in each map. It would have been welcome if the Detective Vision power highlighted such items. Another issue is the storefront for these upgrades itself. You can only purchase upgrades at black market dealers in the city hub, but there tends to only be one black market per district and if that's on the other side of the world, TS. All in all, most of the upgrades feel like stuff that should have just come out of the box and it feels more like good weapons that were crippled slightly to make room for upgrades rather than good weapons that only get better. The rocket launcher in particularl starts out so cumbersome that it's nearly useless, but becomes a respectable Id Software rocket launcher with some cash thrown at it.

The only thing I'd say is truly awful about this game, aside from the PC port issues, are the boss fights. The range from difficult, to tedious, to difficult and tedious. You've got the one with the giant monster you have to corral into smashing up the environment (who loves to path-find around the things he's supposed to hit), the one that recharges its health bar over and over, the one you use a turret to take down... Just bad boss fight cliches implemented in the worst possible way. The final boss is so awful I'd recommend just stopping right before it. The last level is great fun: on board a gigantic zeppelin, cutting loose with all of your superguns... but then you get to the boss fight. Just stop. You've had all the fun you're going to have. I'll even spoil the ending cutscene for you: BJ Blaskowitz triumphs and the Nazis are like, "Damn you, American!"

Wolfenstein is an unheralded classic FPS that plays very well, mixes things up often, and has an open-ended hub world that is initially really fun to explore, and has weapons that are very fun to use. Just keep in mind, not every idea maintains throughout the game's running time, and those fun-to-use weapons are balanced more towards catharticism than they are practical use. And the boss fights are terrible.