Recent reviews by Tink

An absolutely gorgeous game, and being a fan of the early CoD games I was looking forward to another excellent CoD campaign. That is until I came to the bunker and discovered the button mashing scripted sequence, followed by a tedious mouse centering exercise, followed by another......

Such a shame that these games are console games adapted to PC these days, and not the other way around.

I'd like my keyboard to last beyond this week.

No thanks.....

Nothing beats shooting Nazis!

I'm old enough to remember the original Wolfenstein. Those were the days. My trusty intel 486 based PC with a whopping 8Mb of ram and 420Mb hard disk handled the game very well. From memory 4 x 3 1/2 inch floppy discs were all that need to be installedbefore you were on your way to Nazi killing nirvana.

As we all know, this game led to the blockbusters that followed; Doom, Doom II, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3.

After the success of Quake 3, id Software decided to revisit the original Wolfenstein. In late 2001 Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released using the Quake 3 engine. This is still one of my all-time favourite games.

Forward about 13 years and (bypassing the forgettable release of Quake 4 and Rage, ugh!) and Wolfenstein is revisited once again. This time Wolfenstein The New Order is released 2014 using the id Tech 5 game engine (used in Rage). This game blows away the (now) outdated Return to Castel Wolfenstein in every way. Gorgeous graphics, fantastic gameplay and some cool new features and ideas. This is followed one year later with the release of Wolfenstein The Old Blood, a prequel to the New Order. This game was another great release building on the success of the previous year's release.

Forward two and half years and we're seeing the release of Wolfenstein II.

This game is built on id Tech 6, another step forward in quality!

First impressions of the visuals are as per the previous two releases, very pretty. I didn't particularly notice an improvement in graphics over the New Order/Old Blood releases, but I'm sure they're there. The game looks fantastic, as you'd expect for any game built on id Software technology.

Gameplay is very much 'more-of-the-same' as per the previous two games, although the setting is the 1960s and predominantly plays out in the USA. The USA is occupied by the Nazis and, offcourse, it will be your job as BJ to run and gun your way to the destroy every Nazi possible and overthrow the regime.

When I say run and gun, there's actually quite a large stealth element in this game (as we've seen in the Old Blood as well). If one of the officers notice you they will hit the alarm and swarms of troopers will appear from everywhere to give you a hard time. This is where I come to my first issue with Wofl II; I feel the stealth thing is way over-done. There are misions where it makes sense and adds to the feel of the game, but it seemed to be a 'thing' on nearly every mission, which gets tedious for me after a while.

Overall the maps feel the same as the previous releases. Having maps set in the USA is a nice touch, but these maps are very restrictive, there's no extended exploring of towns or cities, which brings me to my next issue with this game; a lot of the maps are very restrictive and small, particularly the maps set in the USA. You can't stray off the linear path to explore and see more of the town/city. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of linear gameplay. Nothing frustrates me more than being in an open-world game and spending an hour just to figure out what to do next, but these maps feel claustrophobic, to say the least.

Weapons in Wolf II seem pretty good, nothing too innovative, but a nice selection of weapons. I did find myself using the Sturmgewehr mostly (unless facing bosses or uber-nazis). The real disappointment was the Maschinenpistole, which felt almost useless once you get past the first couple missions. I literally did not use this gun at all throughout the game. Weapon upgrades found throughout the game work well to add options and effectiveness to the weapons. As per previous games you can also pickup sentry weapons for short-term use agains uber-nazis.

The story line is very good and you can see that quite some effort has been put into the story and cinematic scenes. This is where we get to my next issue with Wolf II; The cinematic scenes are too much. They run too long and are way too frequent for my taste.

As used previously, again you have a 'home' base to work from. This home base is where you will interact with the rest of your crew. Another issue for me; This game has you running around your home base looking for people, things and generally spending your time completing unecessary tasks. Go see this person, take this document to that person, etc.. I appreciate that this might be used to build the story, but I find it a waste of time. I want to play the game, not spend my time running around in a safe environment to run from room to another so that the game can launch cinematic sequences. I found it frustrating in the New Order, and still find it frustrating in this game.

Game length is probably the biggest problem I have with Wolf II. I completed this game in about 11 hours. This time included around 1+ hour of being afk at various times, exploring as much as possible to find items, wasting a little time trying to find my way through a couple of areas where exits weren't obvious (yeah, probably my stupidity, but still) and offcourse sitting through cinematic sequences.

If you take into account the afk time, the pointless tasks at home base and cinematic sequences, I would be surprised if there's 8 hours of game play in this. This is extremely disappointing for such a title (and price). From memory the Old Blood took me about 15 hours, with, what felt like, considerably less time wasted on cinematic sequences and other frustrations.

The enigma codes do give you side missions and there are a number of them. Great, this will add more playtime to the game, right? WRONG, these missions are a joke in my opinion. These are mostly based on small sections of existing maps in the game. The aim in these is to run and gun past a group of nazis to get to the officer at the end of the section, and take him out. I didn't enjoy these at all.

Did I enjoy the game? Yes. Did I feel I got value for the price? NO!

For me this would have been worthwhile if it was release as a DLC for one of the previous games a year ago at a price point of around $20 or $30 USD.

Speaking of DLC, I notice that there are multiple DLC packages coming. From the timer on the main menu screen one seems to be only a few days away!?

It will be interesting to see how the DLC is priced. I really feel like they've made a game, then decided to strip away about 50% of the content so that DLC can be released quickly after the main release to generate further revenue.

All up, I think this is the first time I really feel I haven't got my money's worth with a Wolfenstein game.

PROS:
Wolfenstein gameplay!
Top visuals
An enjoyable gaming experience

CONS:
Very short game
Too many cinematic sequences
Seemingly pointless extra missions - which I really didn't enjoy playing
No real innnovation
Too much borrowed from previous releases
Too much time spent on pointless tasks in home base (AGAIN!)

I really feel that this isn't a $60 USD game, but should have been a major DLC for New Order, priced around half the current game price.

Gotta love a cash grab.... Well done, because you know, making a 100 million on a product that's not even release quality just isn't enough.

Seriously recommend anyone thinking of buying this to re-condsider.

Bought the game a little while ago. Found the gameplay absolutely boring.....

Refunded it within an hour.