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Review: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Stevivor awarded best shooter of 2014 to MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The New Order. Well-deserved, Wolfenstein’s mini-reboot was a love letter to shooters of yesteryear, all the while remaining fresh and gorgeous for modern audiences. There was a lot to love.

MachineGames’ follow-up, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, feels like a Lost Levels add-on to the game, giving you around eight hours of gameplay broken up into eight chapters or two parts. In the first half of the game, you’ll play as series’ protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz, desperate to rescue his ally Wesley, take down ruthless Nazi Rudi Jäger and, ultimately, escape from Castle Wolfenstein.

Much like the sci-fi, moon-heavy second half of The New Order, The Old Blood’s second half departs from the norm, pitting you against occultist Helga von Schabbs and – as you probably guessed – Nazi zombies.

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Oops. Spoiler? Probably not. Let’s face it: what shooter doesn’t feature Nazi zombies these days?

The Old Blood is meant to act as a prequel, explaining events leading up to The New Order, but it pretty much just strings events and set pieces together to get you in a position to be near General Deathshead’s compound at its end. The lean nature of the game also cuts out a lot of the characterisation found in The New Order, throwing new characters at you without the time required to have you actually care for them. That’s not a huge deal though, as you’re probably playing The Old Blood to shoot at (or sneak around) things.

Combat and stealth mechanics are identical to that of The New Order; the only difference is that B.J. gets a new, scoped weapon and a set of pipes.

No, not for singing.

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B.J.’s pipes act as his new melee weapon and can be used in either hand, or combined as one to extend his reach or jimmy open doors and vent entrances. The pipes are also used for climbing rocky surfaces, a mechanic that is initially cool, but then becomes stale and repetitive. It’s not that fun to alternate LT and RT to climb EVERYTHING. Moreover, B.J.’s scoped weapon is essential as one of the new enemies you’ll face is a silenced, ranged sniper. You need to take the baddies out before they pick you off.

Despite new locations, the game plays out largely the same as compared to The New Order, with layouts designed for a stealthy approach or, in equal parts, a balls-to-the-wall run ‘n gun mindset. Almost.

My greatest pleasure in The New Order was to play as a stealthy assassin wherever possible. The game’s level design let you sneak around corners, lean past boxes and deliver silenced pistol kills and close-combat takedowns like a madman. It’s clear from how effective that was that MachineGames really put a ton of effort and detail into the way set pieces were designed. In The Old Blood, that same attention to detail isn’t quite up to scratch, with areas wide open with too many sightlines and enemies with eagle-eyed vision that’ll pick you off miles away. In short: it’s harder to be stealthy and you’ll need to shoot a lot of things. The whole nature of the game seems to confirm this as well; maybe it’s simply because this is shorter than The New Order, but it feels like you’re thrown in a room and asked to defeat waves of enemies a lot more in this iteration.

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Perks also reappear, meaning you’ll be tasked with killing enemies in certain ways in order to boost B.J.’s stats. Playing for Perks is fun as hell, and also unlocks Achievements and Trophies, and best yet, the checkpoint reset ‘feature’ inside The New Order also works with The Old Blood. For those who didn’t take advantage, that means you retain your Perk stats even if you reset a checkpoint; if you’re stuck on a certain Perk but can find a good place to milk it, take advantage.

B.J.’s Nightmares also appear in this prequel, meaning you can take a break from the normal action and play in retro-styled Wolfenstein 3D-styled affairs. They remain as fun as ever.

Challenge mode is new, and essentially takes the monster closet set pieces from the game proper and offers them to you as bite-sized, score-attack gameplay. They’re fun enough, but that all depends on where you delight in Wolfenstein‘s gameplay; this really isn’t designed for us stealthy types. I also wonder if The Old Blood hasn’t come about because MachineGames wanted to build challenge maps, and instead constructed a framework to go around them. If not, it just means the mode is there to pad out the release. Either way, not so stellar.

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I’m in two minds about The Old Blood. Like Leo described its predecessor, this “isn’t an innovative, genre defining game, but that’s not a negative,” adding that “it benefits greatly from simply being what it is: a rock solid, perfectly-paced story-driven FPS. Nothing more, nothing less.”

On the whole, that statement remains accurate for The Old Blood, though every piece of this new package is just a little less polished than the former, full-fledged offering. Combat’s fun, but sometimes repetitive – especially during Rudi Jäger’s half, though the ‘hold a serving tray and meet your nemesis’ bit makes a reappearance in the second half. Stealth is great, but not compared to what you’ve already experienced (or should have experienced; if you haven’t clicked yet, make sure you’ve played The New Order). Characterisation and story are less like The New Order and more like a stock-standard shooter of the past two years.

All up, and despite MachineGames’ efforts, The Old Blood is like most other expansions or pieces of DLC of late: a decent experience — probably essential to hardcore fans — but not to others. It’s a fun little game to play, but it’s not really essential, especially in relation to the powerhouse that was The New Order. It’s real saving grace is its price, available now digitally for $39.95 AUD and NZD. Mind the download size, though; on Xbox One, it’s a whopping 38GB.

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox One, as provided by the publisher.

 

Review: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood
7 out of 10

The good

  • More of The New Order to shoot and sneak through, essentially.
  • Old-school shooting combined with innovations of the current age.

The bad

  • Like most expansions or DLC; did we actually need this?
  • Level design means less emphasis on stealth.
  • Lots of repetition, especially in the game’s first half.

Want to know more about our scoring scale?


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.