Love me some BJ
No this is not a sexually charged post - just a live-blog post recording of my impressions from the latest Wolfenstein (2009).
But to justify the title, is the character you are playing seriously called BJ in the game? How did Blaskovich end up being BJ for short?… Anyway, it was funny hearing it, it was funny thinking about it and it was funny writing it so I thought I should make the title cheekier than usual because of it.
On to the actual facts…
Firstly about the level design. The upper city and in general all open world conflicts felt like playing a game of call of duty (but that also had monsters). As soon as you get to the underground base though it was a totally different sensation. The epitome came with one of the latest levels, the castle Wolfenstein itself, which certainly didn’t disappoint - stood up to its name nicely. That’s when I felt that the game really got back to its roots and followed the tradition of the Wolfenstein franchise. To explain myself: walking in narrow corridors with nazis poping out of every corner. That was the original game idea, right? So the game gradually become from something alienating to something familiar.
Gameplay-wise, It was a good decision not to include health packs in the game and follow the next-gen tradition (started by halo?) where the player’s health re-generates when covered and only dies when taken too much damage at one go. Another “enhancement” is that there doesn’t seem to be any saving option - every checkpoint is saved to memory as a saving point automatically and you can simply load that. Checkpoints are frequent and the manual saving option won’t be missed. Towards the end of the game though where you have to complete whole sections or even a big boss fight without dying can be a bit challenging and annoying.
Many people have made negative remarks about the veil, the metaphysical dimension of the world, and they are right that it makes everything look saturated and wash-up but for me it triggered something else, a retro feel layered on top of the level with blunt backgrounds and neon-glowing enemies - it almost looks to me like the developers were trying to simulate an old 8-bit game. The veil made me relate this game to the original game even more. One the other hand, I feel that they could have done more with the veil. Other games like Silent Hill have really focused on the alternate dimension and have created a unique feast For the eyes of the players - this game only offers a green shader with some holes in the walls and floating bugs like blimps that release energy (what are those things anyway?)
The sound effects are as accurate as possible - with the sound of the machine guns clearly stealing the show. Very ardady and gamer-friendly 
But the technology they “invented” for the game, with metal containers, bars and force fields looks like it has come out straight from half-life 2 
The story was OK but after the middle it was all “blah blah blah” for me - just not original enough to keep me interested. On the contrary I clearly remember that “Return to castle Wolfenstein” had an escalating plot that kept me griped on my keyboard. To be honest, it took me a while to realize that this Wolfenstein explores the greater region and eventually concludes to castle Wolfenstein, familiar from the previous games in the series. And who was that girl you were supposed to save - she played too much of a small role in the game to even care about her.
Overall, it was never too dark - never too horrific - it didn’t even reach the thriller levels of a slasher flick - everything looked nice but “safe”. I enjoyed it but only like I enjoy any other blockbuster game - it will certainly not haunt me in my dreams.
