Wolfenstein: Youngblood review

There is plenty of action in the latest chapter of this popular alternate universe series but there is one staggering oversight.

Some of the levels in the game are impressively designed, even though you’ll spend most of your time in them firing automatic weapons at Nazis.

War hero William “BJ” Blazkowicz has been killing Nazis in computer games since 1992, so it’s totally understandable he feels it’s time for a break.

Of course, the alternate universe of the Wolfenstein games is full of Nazis who need to be dispatched, so fortunately the latest instalment stars his twin daughters Jess and Sophie instead — and they’re just as capable of applying unfeasible quantities of bullets, knives and hatchets to anyone in a Nazi stormtrooper uniform as their dad.

Entitled Wolfenstein: Youngblood and set in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1980, the game has been developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

Sophia (L) and Jess (R) Blazkowicz, aka the Terror Twins, are the stars of the latest Wolfenstein game.

Broadly speaking it’s a co-operative first-person shooter, but Youngblood is in that odd gaming space where it’s more significant than an add-on, but not quite a full-length game either; it’s basically the gaming equivalent of a novella.

The game is very confusing, tone wise. The twins are essentially goofballs who swing between wiping out entire divisions of Nazi soldiers and robots without breaking a sweat, and dancing or playing silly pranks on each other in the lift while traversing between levels.

For some reason, despite being twins they have different accents, and their in-game banter can be quite cringey; especially when they shout each other positive affirmations as part of their power-up boost, but for the most part they’re likeable enough.

Shooting Nazis with a range of futuristic automatic weapons is a guaranteed good time, and Youngblood delivers said Nazi shooting by the armoured personnel carrier-load.

The story is nothing special — BJ has vanished and his twin daughters have decided, with the aid of a hacker friend, to nick a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, fly from Texas to Paris, link up with the Resistance movement there, and kill a bunch of Nazis. As you do.

The firefights in Youngblood can get pretty intense, especially when armoured robotic enemies show up as well.

The problem is this is the fourth game in the rebooted series and there’s only so many Nazi Super Soldiers you can shoot with a Gatling Shotgun before the experience starts to lose some of its lustre — especially when it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere.

One of the big changes this time is the game is intended to be a co-op shooter, where a friend takes on the role of whichever sister you aren’t playing as. It’s a good idea and works well in action but it’s just unnecessary.

The good news is if you’ve got the deluxe version of the game, you can invite a friend who doesn’t have a copy to play with you for free, which is thoughtful.

However, Wolfenstein has always been a single-player experience and adding a friend to the mix doesn’t really improve it, unfortunately — even though my brother and I did have a jolly good time machine-gunning stormtroopers together.

The environments in Youngblood look great, but you can’t really interact with them in any meaningful way, and you essentially have the same guns as the previous three games. While the ads in German for TVs and floppy disks and microwaves and the like are a nice touch, as are the collectable cassette tapes and VHS movie covers, it doesn’t change the fundamental “Shoot a bunch of baddies in secret Nazi facilities” aspect of the game.

The change from a linear single-player adventure (as the previous games were) to a hub-focused set up (last seen in the 2009 Wolfenstein) is a step backwards from my perspective, although Youngblood’s levels are really well done, especially the one set inside Gestapo HQ.

Some of the levels in the game are impressively designed, even though you’ll spend most of your time in them firing automatic weapons at Nazis.

The game is unpleasantly grindy and repetitive in a number of ways with respawning enemies that make returning to each level an irritating firefight when you just want to get from the Metro station to whatever objective the game is making you revisit the area for.

Worse, you have character levels and enemies have health bars and armour and level ratings now, like some kind of Loot Shooter-Lite, and again, it’s not an improvement.

The point of Wolfenstein is to blitz your way through goosestepping stormtroopers with a bunch of cool guns, not stand there unloading a Future Luger into someone in a coal-scuttle helmet who is basically saying “Stop it, that’s annoying” in German as you do so.

To upgrade your guns, you need to find or earn silver coins that can be spent in the inventory screen to buy different barrels or magazines or actions. The ability to instantly upgrade your guns wherever you like is immersion breaking to say the least, and not as believable as finding upgrades and parts as was done in previous games.

Staggeringly, you can’t pause the game in single-player mode. If the kids need your attention or your spouse is asking what you want to do about dinner or your phone rings, too bad — you’ll just end up getting killed while the menu displays and will have to restart the checkpoint, which could be quite some distance from where you needed to be.

What’s worse is the final bossfight seems nigh-unwinnable in single-player mode, as you need to flank the enemy to hit their weak spots to cause damage, but your AI-controlled sister will generally always be near your side, meaning said enemy (who is, of course, a bullet-sponge) is always shooting at you, leading to many, many frustrating deaths.

There are some nice nods to 1980s culture in the collectibles, such as this VHS movie tape.

I would dearly love to see Bethesda make a Fallout or Elder Scrolls-style RPG set in the Wolfenstein universe — especially given it seems clear to me that someone on the development team has been watching The Man In The High Castle, so there’s a lot of potential for some really good stories and adventure there.

However, that’s not what Youngblood is, and as far as co-op shooters go, it’s fun enough but it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre or shooting experience.

There’s potential here, but overall this just isn’t as good as the previous games — which is a shame.

Royce Wilson writes about games and technology for news.com.au; continue the conversation on Twitter @RoyceWilsonAU

Originally published as Wolfenstein: Youngblood review