Wolfenstein (2009)

When I wanted to play all the games in the Wolfenstein series, I eventually came across this one, simply called “Wolfenstein”. It serves as a loose sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein but can be, as far as I am concerned, treated like a standalone game.

In Wolfenstein, you play as the hero we know and love, William B.J. Blazkowicz. It takes place in some town called Isenstadt in the setting of World War II. If you thought that the original Wolfenstein and Return to Castle Wolfenstein had some wacky and crazy stories, you haven’t seen this one. Here, the Germans are excavating some ancient site in order to harvest rare “Nachtsonne” crystals, which they need to access the so called “Black Sun” dimension in order to harvest great power, used for turning the tide in the war. As the game progresses, the town of Isenstadt changes for the worst and normal German patrols are replaced by supernatural, ghost-like monster things.

In the previous game, Blazkowicz acquired a strange artifact called the Thule Medallion. William meets up with a resistance group called the Kreisau Circle and enters the town of Isenstadt. Here he learns of the strange voodoo that the Germans are pulling of with the excavations and the purpose of the Medallion. He learns that he can use the power of the Thule artifact to enter “The Veil”, a barrier between Earth and the Black Sun dimension, introducing the unique mechanic of the game in which you can run faster, spot enemies in the dark and go through doors with the Black Sun symbol on it. Blazkowicz eventually faces General Zetta, who is actually some kind of abomination when viewed through the Veil dimension. William whoops his ass and returns to town, in a new location that the resistance has set up, to avoid retaliation from the Germans. His buddy Caroline Becker is captured by the Germans, now lead by Blazkowicz’s arch enemy, general Deathshead. Like usual, Deathshead is building some kind of superweapon with the crystals. William travels to the castle that Caroline and Deathshead are in, confronts many enemies and some bosses who all guard the superweapon and eventually reaches Deathshead himself. In true Wolfenstein fashion, Deathshead escapes and William blows up the castle and rescues his chick. He goes after the Zeppelin that Deathshead escaped in and manages to bring it down. In the end credits, a wounded Deathshead crawls out of the crashed Zeppelin and the game is ready for the next follow up.

Wolfenstein plays in the same style as its predecessor. It is a First Person Shooter in which you hold a variety of weapons and gather more guns as you progress. The game follows a linear path but allows for backtracking during areas. It has some new and unique features however, like the black market, in which you can upgrade your held weapons and the new Thule Medallion, which let you enter the Veil and can be upgraded to use more special abilities like slow time, shielding, and dodging projectiles. For this reason, you need to be on the lookout for crystals and cash, making this some sort of FPS RPG. There are some scripted events of course in which you are forced to use a certain power of the Medallion, not allowing for different approaches to the situation, but this is fine.

The graphics in Wolfenstein are really nice for the time period. They look polished and the lighting and blue smoke effects are stunning. This game felt really next gen for the time. Explosion effects and the detail is all great.

In terms of sound design and music, this game is all right. The voice acting is good and the sound effects, like gunfire, are fine. The music is a little generic but it works.

I have to say that the so called “Motion Comics” where a nice addition, but at the same time, a desperate attempt of tying this game to the main series. In these comics, different pieces of story and past events from multiple Wolfenstein games are shown from The Spear of Destiny, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the final battle with the Fuhrer himself in the first game.

The biggest problem I had with this game is that it just did not feel like a true sequel, it was just there and did not offer that satisfying feeling of continuing the story like the previous and following games.

The Multiplayer was terrible and broken at release but has been fixed later on with a massive patch. The only problem is that no one played this game anymore in a matter of months, so this can be considered a failure.

Nowadays, Wolfenstein (2009) is some sort of obscure relic, with almost no platform that offers it. It is not on Steam, the PlayStation store or the XBOX Live Store. The only way to experience this game as far as I know, is by buying it physically second hand somewhere, or really search the deepest pits of the internet.

In the end, I think the game was not that bad, but it is certainly not memorable. One does not miss out on anything with this game and for this reason, I would not recommend playing it, unless you wanted to experience every game in the series, like I did back then.