In Wolfenstein: The Old Blood you’re going to be shooting lots of Nazis. Lots and lots of Nazis. And Nazis are fun to shoot, Nazis make for a nice, stock bad guy to shoot. The only other stock bad guy that’s about as fun to shoot as Nazis is probably zombies. Wait, Old Blood has zombies too? Well I guess we’re in business.
MachineGames’ and Bethesda’s Old Blood DLC is truly a return to Wolfenstein. It’s the year 1946, and You’ll be making your way through tombs, crypts and castles as you try and make sense of the Nazi’s research into the supernatural and the occult. While the game is nice to look at and I could appreciate the old aesthetic of Wolfenstein realized on next gen consoles, environments felt just a little lacking and stale in their color palettes. While “Bloom and Brown” or “Gun Metal and Grey” were a funny if descriptive little joke back in the Xbox 3560/PS3 eras, it’s just reaching the point of annoyance on the new generation of consoles as now developers are muddling what could otherwise be truly stunning environments for the sake of “realism.” I’m not sure about you, but the last time I walked out into the real world everything was vibrant and colorful. I also didn’t explode a Nazi’s head into a thousand little Nazi bits last time I stepped out either.
Not helping with the somewhat well detailed but stale environments is the overall pacing of the game. While Old Blood serves up some truly awesome set pieces, the title also knows how to keep you playing around on said sets long enough to make you sick of them. The best example is perhaps the game’s opening stealth sequence, where you have to tip toe around and power down generators feeding electricity to hulking power suits, lest the soldier’s piloting them turn you into a fine red mist with their miniguns. The first time you encounter one of these power suits your hair is standing on end, the tension is real, and you get a rush once you power off the suit and take his minigun and armor for your own. The third consecutive room you run into these guys however, or the fourth, or the fifth, you start to get pretty damn sick of repeating the same action over and over.
Shootouts are definitely the high point of the game. The action is fast paced, visceral, and gives you storied arenas with tons of cover to hide behind. It’s a relatively open ended approach to shootouts that stands up with my other favorites such as Battlefield Hardline and Far Cry 4. The guns also all feel great, and while the design is very utilitarian and among the common loadouts of pistols, shottys, sniper rifles and automatics with very few “fun” guns to be found, the weapons get the job done in some awesomely gruesome ways. There’s also a bit of a rock, paper, scissors mechanic with the weapons. Certain guns are just better suited towards different enemies, and this all varies combat.
Or at least it varies combat until you’re, once more, facing down that third, fourth or fifth wave in the same exact area you’ve had to pass through a dozen times before. It’s this recycling of arenas that makes you yawn after awhile. I’d much rather not fight one more wave if it meant I got to do a bit more exploration or puzzle solving. Wolfenstein The Old Blood, it drags on.
As the game opens William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz is tasked with infiltrating Castle Wolfenstein under the guise of a German Officer. He gets a few brief introductions to the Old Blood’s villains, including William “Deathshead” Strasse, the archaeologist Helga Von Schabbs and lieutenant Rudi Jagar. The introductions are carried out in brief moments of dialogue or in the eavesdropped conversations of Nazi Officers, in Rudi’s case you meet him directly as he grabs your papers and gives them a thorough examination. His eyes grow wide as he sees your town of birth and ask if you’re really from “Frankfurt” and B.J. responds “Yes. Like… Hot Dog.” Rudi breaks out into laughter, calls you a funny guy, then reflects on the stupidity of Americans. I highlight this because it’s a great illustration as to how nicely MachineGames is capable of delivering their fun, tongue-in-cheek story. Unfortunately due to the pacing of the game you don’t get moments like the opening or B.J.’s later tavern infiltration where he interacts with another villain very often. It’s also loaded with Bethesda easter eggs, Skyrim’s iron helm as an archaeological artifact and one of Fallout’s refreshing Nuka Colas sitting out in the open.
While the story is fun it’s not exactly the most original. I brought up this gripe on the podcast, and while Wolfenstein has always delved into the occult it’s never been a supernatural game. The Old Blood goes much further into the occult than it’s predecessors, but still stays “grounded”, well, grounded for Wolfenstein. Yes there’s still mechs and power suits, but there are no magic runes or lizard people. They do go a bit into alchemy, sorta, but they didn’t exactly use it in the most creative way.
What it does have is zombies, through a very roundabout and somewhat uninspired way the zombies are a product of said alchemy. This is as far into the occult as Wolfenstein goes. I’m much more forgiving of zombies than many on this site, and I tend to love all things horror, but zombies do get on my nerves when they’re used to squander a much richer premise. Past examples include The Secret World’s “All myth and legends are real” choosing to only focus on zombies and vampires, or Guns, Gore and Canolis which could have been a great Shank style platformer and defaulted to yep, zombies. The Nazi occult gives you a wealth of places to go, a wealth of monsters or impossible foes to fight. I would have taken near-invincible Nazis over zombies, which is the other major fault of this game, the zombie enemies are actually easier to polish off than all the Nazis you fight in the first half of the game.
Now I understand the Old Blood started as two separate DLCs and was combined into one, but it feels like they could have smoothed over the transition with more than just a contrite “and then suddenly zombies.” It may seem an odd nitpick to have, but you also have to keep in mind the Old Blood’s entire marketing campaign and aesthetic is based on the idea of the old B movie horror posters. I might be asking a bit much from Wolfenstein, but DLC is what truly gives you room to explore and have fun, and really go out there with the game’s canon. Notable examples include Far Cry 3’s Blood Dragon and Infamous 2’s Festival of Blood. They even all have Blood in the title.
Wolfenstein the Old Blood is a spectacular game that was determined to turn itself into a mediocre game. A lot of its faults seem to stem from the fact MachineGames combined two different DLCs into one. The theme of one half of the story is very much “Wolfenstein Prequel” with all of its rough, prototype technology while the second one is “Hay, Zombie Shootans” which may have been more acceptable if that just stood on its own. The length of the title, only about 5 hours, also tends to wear thin just because you tend to spend too long on any one plot point or exploring any one locale. I was constantly questioning whether or not this game was fun and meaty enough to purchase for 20 dollars, and I really don’t think it is, I’m not even sure it’s worth 10. If you really miss the hell out of shooting some Nazis and find shooting some Zombies a nice bonus, this is the game for you, but don’t jump into it expecting a deep, fresh experience.
