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.
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.