Wolfenstein

Genre : Shooter
Publisher: Activision
Players: 1 (Campaign) 16 (Multiplayer)
Retail Price: $60
Availability: Xbox 360, PS3

B.J. Blazkowicz makes his return in an all new adventure as he once again must stop the Nazis from taking over the world, but unlike you’re traditional WWII shooter, you’ll be in for more of a supernatural adventure as we all know those crazy Nazis love messing around with the occult. You’ll need to master an assortment of interesting weapons and abilities to take on the Nazi soldiers and their supernatural creations.

The game takes place in the fictional German town of Isenstadt where the Nazis are working to develop a new weapon that uses energy from an alternate reality known as the Black Sun Dimension. You’re job is to work with resistance groups to find out exactly what the Nazis are up to, and stop them. The story isn’t incredible, but it was an enjoyable experience the entire way through. The voice acting in the game was well done, and I was always interested to see how the main storyline would progress.

You start the game with very little understanding of what the Nazis are up to, but as you begin to uncover their numerous experiments, you’ll open up the door to all new weapons and abilities. Once you arrive in the city all you’ll be given is a gun, but after you obtain the medallion, you have the capability of entering the veil, which is the barrier between our dimension and the Black Sun dimension. As you uncover different Nazi experiments, you’ll fin more pieces to the Medallion which allow you to perform actions such as slowing down time, or creating a shield around yourself. You only have a limited amount of time to use these abilities as there is a bar that gauges how much veil energy you have, but you can refill this in pools spread around the levels.

As far as weapons go, you’ll find your standard assortment of WWII type guns and grenades. What’s really interesting though is that as you progress into the later portions of the game, you’ll unlock a few different Nazi experimental weapons. My personal favorite was the Tesla gun that shoots streams of electricity through your enemies. In addition to a decent assortment of weapons, you’ll also have the ability to upgrade all of your weapons, and veil abilities, in various black market locations spread around the city. You purchase these upgrades by finding gold in each of the levels.

In addition to finding bags of gold in each level, there are also hidden intel items, which give you more of a back story to the events that are taking place in the game. There are also sometimes hidden tomes of power in some of the levels which allow you to purchase some of the more advanced veil abilities. If you’re into finding everything in a game, you’ll probably be putting in a good deal of time as I only found maybe a bit more than half of the hidden items in the game. What’s nice is that you don’t need to find the items to finish the game, but they will make it a bit easier as you upgrade your weapons and abilities

The multiplayer portion of the game was pretty solid based on the time I spent with it. You start by choosing from one of three classes: Soldier, Medic, or Engineer. Each class has its own abilities and roles to play in the game, and as you play you’ll gain experience and be able to spend that on upgrading your weapons and abilities. There aren’t a ton of different modes to play in, but with a decent number of levels to play on, and class based leveling system, you’re sure to find enough to do for a fair amount of time. I enjoyed my time I spent with it, but I don’t see it being has the long term draw of something like Call of Duty.

If you’ve been a fan of the Wolfenstein series there’s really no reason not to check this game out, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the latest adventure starring BJ. If you’ve never played a Wolfenstein game before, no need to worry as the game doesn’t hinge on having known what occurred in the previous games. You probably won’t be blown away by Wolfenstein, but what you will find is a solid story and an exceptional multiplayer component that together make up a pretty decent package.