Wolfenstein Young Blood

[DANGERMAN]

Bit of a strange one, it seems a little like Wolfenstein's gameplay in a service game. It's not quite as punchy, the guns, particularly the shotgun, feel weaker. Enemies have levels, so far they've been low enough that the fodder have been easy to kill, but there's also some that have armour, and the boss took ages 

 

I really like the two girls, they're funny, we'll see where it goes but I'd be up for giving them another game. 

[mfnick]

Hearing this is like a open world game with very little story??? 

Huge disappoint  

[Bob]

I've put a couple of hours into this and I think it's really good. I like the RPG elements in the game and find it a much more satisfying way of levelling up than hunting through levels for upgrade kits or grinding kills with a weapon like the first game. 

 

Playing it solo and it's not been especially difficult. Playing on normal which is listed as a 'normal difficulty for experienced gamers' or something like that. The only thing that has made it feel co-opy is that enemies have two types of armour. Soft and hard, certain weapons are better for soft, some for hard so it would make more sense to have different people focus on different weapons. Even after only a couple of hours the game has given me enough resources to acquire all upgrades for the shotty and assault rifle. Shotty cuts through soft armour, assault fifle through hard. Could do with slightly faster weapon switching but other than that, it's all good. 

 

To answer your question @mfnick so far there has been plenty of story delivered through FMV. The characters are really likeable and then there is a tonne of bants between the two girls as they murder their way through croissant town. This is co-developed by Arkane so it does have open world sections but it also has linear levels. I've just got to the mission hub so that may change but I've certainly not felt like my actions haven't had context through the story. 

 

I was looking up some reviews before I bought this earlier and it did seem to have a certain... misogyny about it. Some seemed like genuine gripes but for a lot of people it just seemed like they couldn't wait to hate the game. Which is so fucking stupid because the girls are about as feminine as Quentin Tarantino characters. Complete tomboys who most gamers would get along with if they weren't too busy crying into their loli body pillows. 

[DANGERMAN]

me and Spatular have put a few hours in to co-op last night and today, it's a better game co-op, it doesn't take as long to kill an enemy, you can naturally take advantage of them targeting the other person and flank them. You can also open crates to high level murder bots, but at least it's less of a trudge than in single player.

 

I'm liking it more in co-op but it's got problems, some that were in the other recent Wolfenstein games, some due to the nature of Young Blood. It's not always clear how much damage you're taking, nor where the damage is coming from. With the former you have a health and shield counter, but the red trim to the screen should probably darken or increase, you only realise you're in trouble too late quite often. The latter I'm not sure, maybe better audio cues or something.

 

As you play more of the game and bounce between the different zones either exploring or actually leaving and coming back doing missions, the enemies respawn. It gives you something to do but it starts to feel very service game. It's the same encounters over and over, sometimes all you've done is gone through a gate or entered an open window, there's no warning that it's a spot that triggers the respawn. The enemies also level with you, meaning that you're not even breezing through them, you can be facing toughish fights over and over. Also, because of the more rpg mechanics, money and the like, it slows you down, not a problem so much in single player but multi should probably be punchier

 

We did enjoy it though, but so far it's not all it could have been

[spatular]

Yeah, I’ve never played one of these before and well i guess I still haven’t as this is a bit different, not really what I expected but it’s fun in coop.

[mfnick]

17 hours ago, Bob said:

To answer your question @mfnick so far there has been plenty of story delivered through FMV. The characters are really likeable and then there is a tonne of bants between the two girls as they murder their way through croissant town. This is co-developed by Arkane so it does have open world sections but it also has linear levels. I've just got to the mission hub so that may change but I've certainly not felt like my actions haven't had context through the story. 

This is good to read. 

Still concerned over how co-op sounds like the best way to play due to bullet spongy enemies though especially since 1& 2 were just brilliant, focused SP campaigns with none of that crap. This seems pretty far away from those experiences, hope 3 doesn’t follow suit. 

Ill get this when it’s cheap. 

[Bob]

Few more hours on this today and after the initial FMVs there has been bugger all story really. Some fun bits of dialogue and the relationship between the two girls is fun enough for it to not make a huge difference for me personally. It's definitely missing those longer monologues that were so engaging from previous games though along with BJ's internal mumbling. The random teenage girl chatter can't really compare to the thoughts of a man who only knows death and pain and won't let you forget it for a second. 

 

I actually couldn't imagine having fun with this in co-op. I spend so much time exploring that it would drive me crazy having someone else dictating the pace. Maybe it's just because I'm an absolute gaming warlord but after a few upgrades I'm feeling super tanky and playing this looks kind of like the action trailers for the games. Just storming forward, dropping big elbows and ripping up butts. 

 

I have found the resources plentiful as well. I just finished Brother 1 (of 3 I think) which is a more traditional Wolfenstein level and before going in I bought the pep upgrade for 4k coins and afterwards I bought a couple of the advanced upgrades for the AR which were around 500 each. 

 

All the best skins are premium currency only though. Cunts. 

[Bob]

There is a pretty severe bug in this at the moment, on PS4 at least. Whenever you turn your flashlight on the sound... breaks. Almost completely. In fact completely would be better since what we get is this awful on and off again sound. Seems to happen around enemies more once they hit level 25 since before I could get it working again by ground stomping. Now it requires either a reset or entering a new area. Not ideal when the game doesn't save level progress as far as I know.

 

Kind of shocked that the game would ship with a bug like this since it seems very common and the previous games have been so good for this sort of thing. Bethesda will always find a way, praise be to their unholy name. 

[DANGERMAN]

I've not seen that on pc, but @spatularis walking around with his shotgun torch on no matter how stealthy the situation ?

 

We've had a couple of minor bugs, nothing game breaking, but have been having issues with the mission marking. It seems like entering the underground deselects missions 

[Bob]

See I've not had that one. I guess console and PC will never get along. The flashlight bug also seems to occur if you've had your flashlight on and then turn it off. Most likely just a Sony exclusive.

[Bob]

I finished this last night. The last boss is pretty awful but I would say the same of previous games as well. This is just awful in a different way, not fun but I did it on my first try. 

 

It's an interesting game. Overall I liked it a lot. Much like Rage 2 it's mindless fun and very easy to get lost in. Much like Rage 2, I would most likely agree with the majority of criticism of the game. 

 

The story was shallow but ended well, gameplay was very shallow and the RPG mechanics were pretty pointless. A challenge system to unlock upgrades would have been more enjoyable and would have allowed for tighter level design but I can see why they went with levels and currency instead. With challenges the player needs to choose to engage with them and if the player doesn't do that, it would have reached a point of extreme difficulty and grinding those challenges out.

 

By having levels, and having enemies scale with those levels, you are never really doing more damage and taking less, but you've acquired the upgrades to offset the introduction of those harder enemies. It's an interesting approach and I think it works, but damages the integrity of the game. However I would rather have enemies scale with you and have levels treated as nothing more than an upgrade system than have level locked areas. That was something that really hurt God Of War for me, you get to all these area with enemies that are too tough so you keep coming back and coming back, only to find it's all end game stuff. Or you leave it until end game and discover you are now overlevelled for those sections the game wanted you to come back to at mid level. It gets too messy, especially when high level enemies just appear as a skull so you can't log in your brain when to come back. Young Blood's approach allows them to nearly always give you access to whatever content you want to do while still providing player advancement and also gives player skill a bit more importance, though still not much. 

 

The gunplay was always fun and I don't think the basic rank and file enemies were that much more bullet spongy than previous games. The elites were though, especially if you were using the wrong weapon. Which brings me to my main issue with the shooting. Having soft and heavy armour works quite well at the start to encourage you to swap between weapons but as you go on more and more enemies have hard armour. So you rely on hard armour guns and the weapon challenges increase the weapon damage, so it gets to the point where my assault rifle was able to effectively kill 8 out of 10 enemies but my shotgun was only effective against 4 out of 10 enemies. I just used AR and then that pulled even further ahead. On and on until it became a one gun game. I was watching the inside gaming review this morning and one of them had the opposite issue, where I guess they spent all their time with the shotty, so that became the one gun to rule them all. 

 

The main story missions which are called raids for some reason were okay, although the boss for each area was a clusterfuck. Brother 2 was the best by a fairly large margin. It felt like a traditional Wolfenstein level, suspiciously so. Like it was being designed as part of a more linear game before they shifted the design. But that's just speculation. Great level anyway. 

 

And one final bit about the story. I think if after each Brother you had to go back to the hub and you got a full FMV it would have been a huge plus for the game. Although the story was weak, the characters were not and it's a real shame that we don't get more time with them. Having a cutscene after each Brother may have been formulaic but it would have given you something to look forward to and made those missions stand out from the pack. Which they do not, at all. 

 

Thank you for your time. 

[DANGERMAN]

We finished this last night, I enjoyed it for the most part but I think that was largely because I was playing co op. If we're comparing it to other Bethesda shooters from this year then I preferred Rage 2, they both have the same problem with plain hollow missions, but Rage 2 has better gunplay. 

 

We're not sure what caused it but Spatular was having lots of connection problems. His net seemed to be fine, Skype was working fine at least. It culminated in him getting kicked every minute and passing through lifts. The boss is shit and drawn out anyway, so he wasn't missing much, just slowly whittling down the bosses armour then swearing about the gunship 

 

Glad it's done, the story picks up towards the end. I don't think that is the set up for Wolfenstein 3 though, I think that starts before this, we might see another one of these though 

[spatular]

yeah i enjoyed it, like you say probably because coop makes stuff better. but that last boss was broken big time, not sure if it was a problem my end/bethesda servers/bugs in the game, but i lost connection/got stuck in lifts maybe 10 times just on that one section, you did a great job dealing with the boss and inviting me back in constantly!

[AndyKurosaki]

Just rented this out, played through the first mission (solo). And it’s...ok. I guess. I’m finding the sisters extremely unlikeable. They started off alright, showing unease and worry about killing their first Nazi. Straight afterwards though? Tons of pissing about, joking, and generally being absolute bell-ends. Which has the effect of rendering their previous unease completely pointless.

 

 

[AndyKurosaki]

I’ve given up on this. Whoever thought making enemies resistant to certain bullets needs their head examined, just an awful idea.

It just feels a massive mis-step after the previous games. 

 

Apparently they’ve patched it so it’s better for solo players, but by that point I’d already posted it back.