Wolfenstein: Youngblood – Review

Name: Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Developer: Arkane Studios, MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Released: 26.07.2019
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Reviewed on: PC
Acquired: A copy of this game was provided by a publisher for review purpose

I have high hopes for Youngblood, its predecessors managed to give me adrenaline-filled gore first-person action moments to remember as well “dark humor” and “regular humor” to laugh out loud at. I loved The New Order and The New Colossus, did Youngblood bring me the same satisfaction?

Story

Youngblood’s story is set 19 years after the events of The New Colossus. But this time, we follow BJ Blazkowicz’s daughters, Jess & Soph. BJ is missing, and it’s up to his daughters to find him in the Nazi-occupied Paris. And that is pretty much it, Youngblood’s isn’t that immersive or in-depth dialogue/storytelling as its previous titles. As much of the main focus was at the main purpose of these games, killing Nazi’s. (But more on that in the gameplay section)

From the very first cutscene, I immediately started to dislike the main protagonist. The writing, the execution of telling the story, how they present the sister’s personality and the worst part, the sister’s voice acting feels pushed on. Luckily, not every videogame has to depend on a great story and storytelling to be an awesome game.
3/10

Graphics

If you played previous titles, you might not see any big differences graphics wise. There are some minor upgraded visuals, but the overall graphics and animations look the same.

MachineGames manages to visualize a dark Nazi-occupied world with great illustrations of soldiers, banners, buildings, environments and so on. The weapons are the same, and they look even more badass now than ever before, so you can watch the glory of your Nazi killing in brutal gore action.

The soundtrack/music score of this title, in my opinion, falls a bit short and feels uninspiring. There were multiple missed opportunities to bring even more adrenaline/feel too different scenarios with the use of great music.
8/10

Gameplay

“Oh boy oh boy OH BOY!
It’s a new Wolfenstein game that I can play with friends ONLINE! It’s time to bring out the ‘Sturmgewehr’ and create Mona Lisa with some Nazi blood from all of the action!”

The Wolfenstein games have always been one of the titles I played just for the pure action-packed fun and humor and seeing the announcement of Youngblood that I could do all the Wolfenstein action in co-op I almost fell out of my bean bag. My friend and I booted up the game, watched a cutscene that felt like forever, and then the gameplay began.

At first, I thought the game just felt different because of new characters and not so interesting story. But then I noticed, the whole Wolfenstein action-packed premise is gone!
MachineGames have added RPG elements to the game, which removes all the fun out this title. The reason I wanted to play the Wolfenstein games was because of the “easy, right into the action” type of game. Previous titles you could, for instance, dual-wield weapons, but now this feature and all of the great treats they offered before are now locked behind a skill-tree. Okay, why is that so bad? Not only does this slow down the pace a lot, but the progression is so slow… that it takes forever to get to that point we used to love.

Another huge difference is that the enemies now have a health bar, so the satisfaction to bring out the big guns DUAL-WIELDED to take down regular soldiers, semi-bosses and bosses are completely gone. You simply enough, do not deliver enough damage to take down a single enemy anymore…

Don’t get me wrong, not everything is a complete failure in my opinion with Youngblood. Take aside the Wolfenstein name, you will get a high-quality first-person shooter. The gunplay feels great, there are a lot of action-packed sequences that might bring you some sort of adrenaline rush. Experiencing this game in co-op is great and pretty much delivered the things I was expecting this title would manage to deliver, nothing new amazed me of bringing this to the co-op family. However, there are a few things that annoyed, such as all the “Fuck yeah sister”, “Awesome dude” yelling will get annoying and cringeworthy.

Overall the gameplay has a lot of potential to be an awesome RPG first-person shooter title, but changing the gameplay mechanics from “right into the action” to RPG elements was not a good idea in my opinion. It’s just not what I expected nor wanted in a Wolfenstein game.
5/10

Controls

The control schematics and systems are easy to learn and works perfectly just at its predecessors with both ‘Keyboard & Mouse’ and with a ‘Controller’.
10/10

Replay Value

Replaying missions with higher difficulty might be one of the reasons to replay the game’s missions. And as of the RPG elements, leveling and upgrading your character. For myself, I might jump back to The New Colossus to satisfy my action-packed needs.
6/10

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