Wolfenstein: Young Blood

Might pick this up on Switch. I hear it's digital only, as the physical copy is a farce.

(Also I'm hoping that the sister AI is up to snuff and is very much controllable. I'm a Control Freak when it comes to stealth)

I don't think stealth is an option here. These two are very unsubtle.

God I hope the level design is improved from Colossus.

Colossus had some truly garbage levels.

At least less cryptic blockades and maybe more intuitive combat. It's a serious Difficulty Spike for all the wrong reasons.

Reviews are in!

https://twitter.com/nibellion/status/1154368955152293888?s=21

They appear mixed.

I still feel rage when I think of that Venus control room with the globe.

Main issue with Colossus really were not knowing where to go half the time & the fact it felt like I was made out of glass so I had to see the difficulty on easy just to have actual fun with the shooting.

Same cause the story non-actiony parts like B.J. confronting his father & the Venus audition were all really amazing.

How mixed?

I'm not fond of the giant mood swing midway through the game After BJ's resurrection. The first part of the game is super grim and dark, and then the game veers into bordeline "Those wacky nazi" for the 2nd half where all the tension and drama is just gone.

Edited by Ghilz on Jul 25th 2019 at 1:45:47 PM

Considering that the second half begins after BJ got into that Ubersoldat body, the tone had to match that He's Back! and ready to resume killing Nazis.

As for Nazis being funny, I can imagine it was to humanize them a little.

Watching Patolog TV do TNC on second highest difficulty... he trivialized it completely. Some trial and error but I can get behind it.

Anyway, mixed. But of course.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jul 25th 2019 at 8:11:28 PM

spoiler: Or the more grim interpretation: BJ's actually dead, and the reason why everything's going so well is because it's a dying dream. Heck, even the developers seem to quietly ship this possibility in a couple of interviews!

@slimcoder: Difficulty spikes? The only major area of contention I know of (and the community generally agrees) is that courthouse shootout, since they literally pit you in the middle of a room full of enemies and then require you to hold out as long as possible... without directly telling you that.

And yeah, the hit detection/health system definitely could've used more feedback as to when BJ's getting hit. Way too easy to be running around, thinking you're fine, only to find out you actually got shot a bunch of times and suddenly drop dead from a mere scratch.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jul 26th 2019 at 10:25:15 PM

The screen doesn't flash red (and no we don't need ketchup splatter on screen) enough like it does in older games.

Finally started playing Young Blood for a bit, got some thoughts:

• The game plays like a really weird combination between The New Colossus and Destiny. Many enemies are now bullet sponges, especially the Ubersoldaten. They also have ranks, levels, resistances, etc. Means that you now have to watch out for areas that have enemies that are higher-leveled than you. Granted, I haven't run into any areas that are absurdly over-leveled to the point its clear you aren't meant to progress towards yet, so maybe it's not blatantly level-gating.
• Haven't had the chance to try the game out with another human player, just the AI. It's decent, but not very useful when sneaking around; it just cloaks and stays completely neutral until a firefight.
• The game now respawns enemies in areas you've just left. Which SUCKS, because if you combine the fact that high-rank enemies are going to take a lot of ammo to kill, plus how the player can easily run out of ammunition in a tense firefight, then you begin to wonder if its just better off sprinting through certain areas straight towards the goal instead of engaging every Nazi in your path... which kinda sucks.
• The damn game tends to crash every now and then. Not sure why, but it's happened three times already so I'm guessing the game has memory leak issues, GPU compatibility problems, or maybe something on my end, I dunno. Still hate that it's happening.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jul 27th 2019 at 4:24:39 AM

Machine Games aren't all that good at optimizing the game for PC. Every entry so far... has problems on PC. What.

Also are we talking actual bullet sponges where it takes near 100 bullets to kill or are we just talking taking 10-20 bullets? I'm getting annoyed when people throw that around whenever something doesn't die in 3 hits.

And how's the plot.

Looks like they dropped the ball again.

The Ubersoldaten easily take around 100+ bullets to kill now, though shooting them in weakspots does help speed up the process. The more heavily armed German mooks behave like traditional FPS enemies: just a couple of direct hits to the head with a rifle or the shockhammer (read: shotgun) and they'll go down quickly enough, but if you don't go for those critical hits then get ready to spend possibly a magazine's worth of munitions to frag the more well-armored guys.

Haven't faced off against the giant mechs yet; way too well-equipped and hard hitting.

It's more of the writing style from New Colossus from what I can tell. The generally grim nature of this world, unpleasant parallels and all are there; the biggest one implication yet is that the Nazis have really been mucking up the environment to the point of causing a greatly sped up global warming, yet are in complete denial of the effects around them. They're in a decline, too: the reich is no longer the utter juggernaut they were in the last two games. Their militaries are mostly present within Europe and North Africa, with smaller little conflict zones around the world, but they're no longer the world's bona-fide superpower thanks to the American Revolution.

Yet... much of those neat details only come out when reading the lore collectibles, not the game itself (except for the weather part, that gets stressed more than a few times). And while a couple of somber moments exist, it's clear the primary tone of the game will involve the BJ twins acting like frat-girls on a rampage; funny in it's own way, but probably a turn-off for others.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jul 27th 2019 at 4:22:24 AM

Respawning enemies? Wouldn't that make players get lost?

The first point seems exactly what I don't like in a video game. I've never liked "collectible narrative." It can enhance a storyline or it can bog it down.

To the second point, well, that's a longer discussion on female character portrayal in video games that I don't want to have. But I guess no one was playing this franchise for its subtle characterizations and deep character writing to begin with.

The lore collectible is always ok because I can have all the gameplay and keep the world to the sides and read up whenever I want instead have exposition and cutscenes galore that go on and on. I don't need Doom 3 PDA audio logs with codes to the lockers at the end (but that doesn't matter when you memorize them or write them down). I can't stand that stuff in video games.

I think I'd enjoy this entry. And as usual, will watch how Patolog TV does it. I love his walkthroughs.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jul 26th 2019 at 1:49:24 PM

Some updated thoughts:

• The crashing issue seems to be resolved. Just needed to update the drivers for my GPU, that's it.
• Apparently, some areas DO exist where you'll get your ass handed to you if you're underleveled in that annoying, unfair manner so common in MM Os. Learned this the hard way after a single Nazi Kommandant managed to KO both me and my AI buddy using only a handgun.
• The game becomes a bit easier once your arsenal grows in size a bit, particularly when you gain the ability to start carrying around the heavier weapons that the Ubersoldats carry around. They'll help you melt through the weaker mooks, and take a nasty chunk of HP off of the more beefy elite enemies.
• The stealth mechanics are a pain to figure out naturally. Apparently you can insta-kill unaware enemies by using the throwing knife/hatchet (even if it's only a leg hit!) or with headshots against weaker enemies with the silenced pistol. The moment you're spotted however they'll become as hard to kill as everyone else, and the throwing items lose a ton of their lethality.
  • Don't even bother with stealth the moment when playing with humans. One of you WILL screw it up and cause a giant firefight to break out, happens everytime.
• The Uber-Zerstorer's (the giant mechs equipped with the lasers and BFG cannons) are the epitome of bullet sponges. Prepare to waste most of your trying to kill the damned thing, and that's if the constant barrage of hell-energy mixed with lasers doesn't blind you.

Have you found Fergus/Wyatt yet? Or have they been dummied out due to timeline laziness?

Not a single word about them; they probably didn't want to deal with the obvious continuity issues. Lots of references to other characters though like Set, Super-Spesh, Max Haus, Deathshead, and even Hitler himself.

I really don't understand why there have to be levels in a linear story game.