Even after all the fixes and balance improvements it is clear that what they were aiming for with this game was to do a low-budget spin-off. To keep the game length up they simply incorporated lot of grind, there are experience levels, skill trees and lots of fetch quests. Unfortunately you can't completely ignore them because you need to level up to be able to face high level enemies during the story missions.

This game is... well, not good:/
That is a shame because I loved New Order and New Colossus.

I really dig Machinegames' emphasis on humor in even grave narrative circumstances (in this case, Nazis have taken over Paris), and the glee with which their characters dispatch fascists. The gameplay here is buttery smooth, the weapons feel good, and the cast of characters is fun.

The problem is, they've opted for a weird half-open world structure, full of backtracking and environments that all bleed together, as opposed to offering a linear experience showcasing a variety of set-pieces (as the previous, superior Wolfenstein games did).

I didn't try co-op, which may be more fun? But after 5-10 hours of this, I felt I wouldn't see anything new, and had my fill.

B.J. Blazkowicz is the best Nazi killer video games have ever seen, striking fear in every digital Hitler-loving asshole in the world. But the resilient SS-slaying meat tank can’t make Nazis shake in their jackboots if he’s gone missing. Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a new cooperative-focused, half-sequel that keeps the series in the family name but passes it down to his twin daughters, Sophia and Jessica. And while two Blazkowiczs can make the Nazi body count double, it doesn’t mean it’s twice as good.

Read the full review here: https://www.gamerevolution.com/review/573121-wolfenstein-youngblood-review-ps4-xbox-one-pc

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a game that i immensely enjoyed, while simultaneously understanding, and agreeing with most of the reasons that the game has a generally negative perception.

For starters, i didn't play the second Wolfenstein reboot game, only The New Order and The New Blood, so i'm unaware of how that game was. The former two titles i found to be quite dreadful, with little to enjoy about them. Right off the bat this game improves upon the core factors of why i felt that those games were underwhelmimg. The guns feel amazing, despite the low variety for the first half of the game, every gun in the game feels exactly as it should, satisying. The game has this issue of sticking you with just 5 guns for the first half of the game, and considering two of them are rather weak handguns, you'll mostly only be using the other 3. Once you start acquiring weapons at a decent pace the whole game becomes a lot more fun. The latter half of the weapons are both creative and useful, and they never really stop feeling like impressive gadgets, even after you've had them for a few hours, the Kraftwerk weapons make you feel powerful. At the start of the game you can choose between two abilities, a stealth mode, or a the ability to deal damage to enemies by running into them. I played the entire game with exclusively the violent sprint, and being able to constantly run over the weaker enemies added a lot to the experience, when the enemies are already weak they simply liquify into a mist of Nazi jelly, giving the player the typical brand of bigot bodying glee that the Wolfenstein series is built upon.

The variety in enemy types is also a stark improvement from the previous titles, as well as the compete absence of the terribly obnoxious gimmick enemies, that could only be killed through unconventional means. If i had to give one design compaint, it'd be that the game has some iffy controls, there's a little too many commands to map to all the buttons, soni frequently ended up throwing grenades when i meant to change weapons.

Youngblood is basically non-stop action, with only cutscenes breaking it up, the stealth segments have been de-emphasized even further, and "cutscene gameplay" scenes, in which the player has control but is merely watching the story play out, have also been removed. As a result, Youngblood moves at the pace of the powerful Mach 5.

The new systems are entirely hit or miss. The open world exploration is droll and uninspired, requring the player to navigate through a series of fetch quests before they can reasonably take on the actual meat of the game. The light-RPG elements are naught but a distraction, unecessarily weighing down on the game, this makes the around 40% of the game feel so much more lifeless than it should, it's a lame attempt to pad out a game that's already below average length, because apparently we all decided in 2014 or so that paying $40 for a 5 hour campaign is a rip-off, a decision i still reject to this very day.

The story of Youngblood is definitely a strong point, and the thing that made me interested in the game in the first place. It's so often that we get stories that involve brothers in video games, i don't think i've ever seen a game that focuses on a relationship between sisters. The relationship in game is handled fairly well, with the twins being charismatic characters that have a great dynamic with each other, and with BJ, our disappeared former lead. The tone of Youngblood is a far cry from that of The New Order, being somewhat lighthearted, hut still anchored in the Wolfenstein dystopia of a nazi-conquered world, with the Axis of Evil being beaten back to controlling only Europe by the time of this installment. The entire game is limited to Paris, which i feel is a location that could have been utilized better.

The flaws, the objective flaws with Youngblood, are the fact that game simply does not fully work. The partner AI is horrendous, im addition to rogue, the game lacks any kind of command system other than "target this enemy", so they'll mostly just follow you around and occasionally kill enemies, they'll almost always revive you whem you get downed, but sometimes they'll just straight up ignore you. Obviously this game is multiplayer focused, so co-op should be superior, except it only sometimes works, and is significantly harder since it is much harder to find and revive your sister than it is for the AI to do it, especially when you're split up. This game also has an incredibly punishing (by modern standards), life system, so you really don't want to die too much. Most of the games glitches and balance issues have been fixed since launch, but it's not enough.

Overall, if Wolfenstein Youngblood had a little bit less, it could easily be one of my favorite FPS of all time, it's a diamond in the rough, it's a great game, with many terrible aspects surrounding it, but it is perfectly worth your time if you're willing to put a little too much time into it.

I enjoyed playing Wolfenstein: Youngblood more than the previous entries in the series, The New Order and The New Colossus. The main reason for this was the change in the gameplay mechanics, making it feel more like an RPG than a traditional shooter. The only thing is that I wished that the game was longer. Although I think the length and the replayability of the side missions fit well with the $40 price tag. I hope Wolfenstein 3 has the upgrade and ability system as it was a great way to customize my character.

The multiplayer aspect of the game was fantastic. I had a lot of fun and the buddy pass was a great way to share this experience with a friend of mine. The microtransactions were mostly aesthetic and were not pushed as much, so that is a big plus, especially in today's day and age of gaming.

The story in this game is brief and does not add much to the lore, save for a small thing that I can't go much into detail without giving spoilers. But I feel like the Wolfenstein universe will get much more interesting for the future third entry, I can't wait to see what happens to the Blazkowicz family next.

Final Score: 85/100

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A budget priced co-op sequel to the previous Wolfenstein games taking place 20 years after the last one. The shooting is still fun, and the guns feel a bit more balanced than the previous game due to only being able to duel wield one handed weapons. Well put together but frequently similar, almost repeated, areas.

Main characters are almost always unlikable (which is made pretty obvious from the trailers) and fall into the trope that frequently effect women in games with their obsession with daddy, and being like daddy, and finding daddy, and remembering daddy, and making daddy proud, etc. Basically reboot Lara Croft without destroying the remains of other cultures and stealing stuff. The only positive I can think of for them is that they are at least nice to their tech expert friend who would usually be used for frequent jokes or constant dismissal by similar main characters. Loses good commentary of previous games regarding things like the main characters Jewish identity combined with him looking like the model Nazi ideal, minorities and socialists being the ones to stand up to the Nazis, and America's culture that influenced the Nazis and the country's complacency and support of white supremacy, all of that replaced with characters talking about Nazis as if they have no interactions with them or the wider world apart from stories told (mostly by daddy) when they were growing up.

Constantly gets in the way of enjoyment with heavily armored time wasting enemies, that hurt the previous game, but are now worse as they can be called as reinforcements. The game makes use of a Borderlands style leveling system where enemies that are too strong can kill you in a second or two while being bullet sponges (never quite as bad as Borderlands though). The game likes to place these over-leveled enemies right next to low level ones which prevent you from following a normal path of progression where you will go to a large map area after leaving the hub and be able to complete almost everything or everything in that area, instead due to levels and the awful basically nonexistent map, you will have to jump back and force between areas doing one or two activities at a time, possibly forgetting to do missions you were right next to due to the poor objective organization.

The weapon upgrade system is fine for the most part but every weapon gives you a bonus to headshots, general damage, or capacity if you use at least three of the same upgrades, this is fine until you get to weapons like the flamethrower or guns that do giant multiple AoE explosive blasts where you would never want bonus headshot damage.

If you have a friend you want to play this with and you both go in for the buddy pass version for around $20 each you can have some fun with it but it spends a lot of time trying to ruin that fun. It would have been a big improvement if it was linear and an even bigger improvement if they would just remove the heavily armored and robot enemies, or if they had attempted any kind of interesting narrative or character development.

actual garbage

firstly the two protags are annoying as hell and honestly remind me of the popular girls from high school who talk behind everyones back. i dont know whats up with game devs nowadays and making super unlikeable young protagonists, same kind of shit in far cry 3 where you just know these are the kind of mfs who will call you ugly to your face for not being an 8/10 and will proceed to tell you to go chug a gallon of bleach. also as someone who lived in texas for 90% of their life their texan accents sound way too fake in this one compared to bj blazkowicz's

secondly the game is super grindy. i dont know why the fuck they decided to make grinding for upgrades before you do the main missions a thing but it is one of the main reasons i abandoned it. fuck this formula and the next time i buy a game that isnt an RPG with that same formula im instant refunding it

thirdly its really easy to die without said upgrades. and this shit is very true to its word in 1980s fashion, as when you die you have to restart the level ALL OVER AGAIN like a game on the NES with the enemies in the same positions and everything too

fourthly even if youre destroying every crate in the game the enemies are absolute ammo hogs and it is easy to run out of ammo. its nice when ur up against two supersoldiers about to gangbang the shit out of you and you run out of ammo but they took literally every single bit of lead you had loaded in your guns anyways

fifthly as a native texan this bothers me a lot, why the fuck did they portray mesquite, texas as a semiarid grassland with large hills??? not to mention they portray it as being way out in the country when its a populated suburb that is literally 5 miles from downtown dallas?????????????? in real life its a flat grassland and there's barely any trees. thats how i know that absolutely none of the people from the original id software, a TEXAS based company, actually worked on this piece of crap

ive been trying to play every wolfenstein game out there, and i even played through the absolutely awful spear of destiny mission packs, but i dont think im gonna ever play this one again. i also tried not to listen to the people who said this game sucks but they're 100% correct. i dont know what the hell they did with this one, they really had everything pinned down well with the first three reboot games (new order, old blood, colossus 2) but holy shit youngblood is actually unplayable