MAX HASS!!!

Such an amazing game. Playing this after the previous two Wolfenstein games I really wasn't expecting to feel...feelings.

The broad strokes of the story are basically the same as the previous games. You're a buff, American, Nazi-killing machine; shooting, stabbing and strangling Nazis from the deep sea to the frickin Moon, but the characters and the dialogue is such a massive step up.

Feels like a game stuck between two eras of videogames. The retro, fast-paced run and gun shooters and the more modern flavor of fps with wide open hub worlds, upgrades and a stronger focus on exploration. Wolfenstein would have been a much better game if it had simply committed to the former.

The core gameplay is really fun. I like the arsenal of weaponry and the gore system in this game is super satisfying. You can burn, electrocute, vaporize and straight up blow Nazis up and all of that just FEELS good. It's the spaces in between all of the burning and blowing up that brings this game down. The open world city of Isenstadt is just plain dull and barely incentives or appropriately rewards players for exploration. I missed the stealth element from the previous game, an omission that feels weird given how much more the environment design lends itself to sneaking around than it's prequel.

Ultimately, it's a very monotonous experience. Games like Bioshock already had a very similar gameplay system while also providing an incredibly rich environment and profound writing, neither of which is available here. It's occasionally fun but, on the whole, very forgettable.

Dropping Paul Dini was a mistake because the in-house writers were woefully unprepared and the story is laughably stupid at times but the gameplay is still some of the best in this specific genre of third-person action games. They've made certain tweaks to the overall system that resulted in some jankiness compared to the previous games but nothing too bad.

The game still looks incredible, genuinely better than the lot of AAA games released in the years since. The batmobile is fun albeit a bit overused, especially towards the end. It's a solid game, just not the satisfying conclusion I was hoping for, for this otherwise incredible series. Oh well.

It's a little too heavy handed, it's message doesn't always land and, as someone who already hates US-military shooters, I don't think I was even the kind of player this game targets.

Despite that, I still think this is a profoundly important game and towards the end I found myself just as exhausted and emotionally drained with the experience as Captain Walker. That, in itself, unified me with the protagonist in a way very, very few videogames have achieved. And it still remains a scathing critique of the modern military shooter in a time where Modern Warfare (2019) devs can confidently call their game apolticial, a game that rewrites actual history and passes off war crimes as heroic gameplay.

played through this twice, first the vanilla version and then the RealRTCW upgrade that's available on Steam and I definitely had way more fun with the latter. no more bullet-sponge enemies, more enemy variety and more weapon variety as well. I'd honestly just recommend that for new players.

the game itself was kinda average. the first third is really good. escaping the castle, going through the village and then the crypts. excellent pacing and atmosphere but it just dips and plateaus in quality after that. the stealth is incredibly awkward, the bosses are ass and the ending is underwhelming. still had more fun than I was expecting though.

In an era where video game sequels seem to adopt the philosophy of bigger and louder, Arkham City takes this approach far more intelligently. It takes all of the mechanics that made Asylum so great and fine-tunes them to near perfection. The world is bigger but not so bloated as to lose the thick atmosphere this series is known for. The world is dense, it's detailed and it feels alive in a way very few open worlds do.

I have my criticisms though. A lot of the side missions feel half-baked. The main story is excellent but not always excellently told. By switching from one super-villain to the next throughout the game, the narrative spreads itself a little thin and most of the villains, apart from the joker, just don't have that much of an emotional impact for me, especially Hugo Strange who was hyped up to be a powerful antagonist by virtue of knowing Batman's true identity, a plot point that never pays off in a satisfying way. The game is also weirdly horny with its female characters. Very juvenile really.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting to say so much about this game. (I just have so many thought about it). None of these shortcomings detract from how incredible it is and the positives outweigh the negatives by a wide, WIDE margin. It's a masterpiece.