Wolfenstein: Youngblood Review
If you’ve been following the FPS genre, then you have most likely heard of Wolfenstein. Because of this, l am not going to waste your time talking about the brand itself and jump straight into the game. Wolfenstein’s developer Machine Games had stated that these games would be a trilogy.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is the middle child in the trilogy. Instead of the legendary soldier BJ Blazkowics, we control his daughters in this game instead. Just like the first two games, they’ve managed to conduct a very fun story, although a bit lacking in some areas.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood Review
Youngblood‘s events take place after about 20 years after The New Colossus. The story brings the two sisters Soph and Jess’ stories of struggle to light. Our mission this time is not saving North America but instead Europe under the attack of the Nazi. At the start of the game, we witness the two sisters’ past. Blazkowicz and his wife Anya train the girls under hard circumstances. Blazkowicz immediately disappears after the daughters’ training is complete and we start out the game looking for him.
As they hurried to Paris to find their father, what really struck me as odd was how playful they were as opposed to their father’s seriousness. Although Wolfenstein’s story is a fantastic take on an alternate history of our world, the first two games’ tone were quite darker. The two sisters’ banter will make you laugh quite a lot but may sometimes feel unnecessary to an extent. Machine Games did a large skip in storytelling, not getting into detail about how close the sisters’ ties actually go. One might expect two sisters who didn’t get to live their childhood in a normal manner would be deeply connected but Wolfenstein doesn’t touch on it. Instead, Wolfenstein: Youngblood prefers to tell the story from the surface. Even still, you are bound to love the two sisters.
If you are playing the game alone, you have to make a choice between one of the sisters. You are able to see what sort of fighting styles they will have before choosing. Due to having a dual interface, customization is not extremely deep, however. You can have them more focused on stealth or just upfront fighting. After customizing a sister, you jump into the game.
The character customization screen looks similar to the older Wolfenstein games. We can change our character’s main abilities from the appropriate interface. Due to the level-up system, Soph and Jess can have access to permanent health increase. You should also note that both characters are developed as parallels. This means if you develop one sister, the other will also be developed. As for weapon diversity, the game follows the first two. Guns, shotguns, SMGs and heavy machine guns. As opposed to BJ Blazkowicz however, the sisters can’t use two heavy machine guns at the same time. They are only allowed to dual wield small firearms.
We’ve also noticed that the game has a big lack of villains. How merciless the Nazis were used to be portrayed through the villains but due to the story’s goal being to rescue BJ, the game is lacking any major villains and this affects the storytelling negatively in our opinion.
Wolfenstein: Youngbloods Gameplay is fun as ever and level design is looking even better than before. During development, Machine Games received assistance from Arkane Studios, the developers of Prey and Dishonored. The stages were designed to be fluent and progressive. The action was definitely a big part of the first two games but as enemy numbers grew higher, it felt more like a rampart defense. Wolfenstein: Youngblood has solved this by lowering the number of enemy forces but instead backing them up with strong mini-bosses. Players had complained about the AI in the first two games and sadly, that still is a problem.
The co-op in the Wolfenstein had always been hyped up before the game’s release but you might be disappointed by how it actually functions. First of, playing the game alone is incredibly fun and we are sad to say it doesn’t become much better with a friend. It goes no further than opening locked doors together or assisting each other with staying alive and keeping yourselves well equipped. If your friend is injured in combat, you merely help them up and continue going forward.
The game doesn’t contain the co-op only bosses or puzzles that could only be completed with co-op. I can confidently say that another game we’ve played recently, A Way Out has a much better developed multiplayer system. The two games are barely comparable in terms of co-op play. Due to there being two characters, I’d also like to highlight the fact that dying is extremely difficult. If one of you falls, the other simply picks them up and you continue. Because of this, the game’s difficulty drops drastically with co-op. On top of all this, if you play with someone who’s level is much higher than you, you can pretty much complete the story by not doing anything as they’ll just blaze through it.
I played the game on PC and would like to warn you about some technical problems specific to this version. Frame rate drops and delayed loading of the world can be a minor or major problem depending on your situation. If l had played the game on console, l could have overlooked these problems but due to high-end PCs being stronger than consoles, l find it hard to forgive. Even still, l believe these problems will be addressed in later patches.
Graphics-wise, the game is very nice to look at just like the previous title. You can tell that the areas we traverse by train in Paris even in the first few minutes of the game have taken a lot of effort to make. The music is quite different than the first two games. In the first title, we had seen popular English songs’ German interpretations. Wolfenstein Youngblood’s music reflects the 80s in a Synthwave style.
In conclusion, although Wolfenstein: Youngblood’s gameplay is extremely fun, it has some negatives such as the lack of good storytelling, a disappointing co-op and how little it brought to the table different from the two games. Of course, l can still guarantee that you’ll have fun if you play Wolfenstein: Youngblood with a close friend, it just isn’t all too impressive. Thanks to the Buddy Pass feature, you can even invite people who don’t own the game to play with you.
