Wolfenstein: Youngblood Review

Multiplayer:

Thankfully, the multiplayer integration is pretty seamless and painless. The default option is to host a game which is open to anyone, and I certainly had plenty of people join my games. Joining the games of others is also pretty easy too. When online, you are obviously at the mercy of the skill and co-operative ability of the other player, but at least I never had any issues concerning lag or other technical issues. Most people will not be using microphones, so I would say that the game is best played with friends as the game will let you get pretty far away from each other.

When playing solo, the AI is certainly competent, but not outstanding. They will sometimes be too aggressive and you will spend a fair bit of time reviving them. The computer also has a habit of trying to pull off flanking manoeuvres, so sometimes when they go down it can be frustratingly far away.

Presentation:

Machine Games have always made impressive looking and sounding games, and the same goes for Arkane. Thankfully the combination of the two here doesn’t go awry. The art style is quite reminiscent of some of some of the City 17 elements of Half-Life 2, with reinforced Eiffel Towers and other nazified Paris monuments. The enemy and gun design still feels fresh and interesting, and despite a relatively bland primary colour palette, Youngblood keeps things fresh with excellent coloured dynamic lighting and bombastic explosions on top of the odd splash of colour (normally nazi red!). The game also runs well and at a very crisp resolution on Xbox One X.

The voicework is excellent, and so is the script – it’s just a shame there isn’t more of it, as the pre-rendered cut-scenes are also pretty fabulous. Weapons and explosions all sound really atmospheric, and this new series has the best sounding lasers in videogames, full stop.

Conclusion:

I’m not sure how this all went a little bit wrong. Not terribly, horribly, disastrously wrong, just sadly underwhelmingly wrong. Wolfenstein “The Old Blood” proved that a bite-size version of the game could work just as well, but “Youngblood” tries too much to change the formula, adding in many of the trappings of an MMO or loot shooter, but without the MM or loot elements. And it’s these numerous, questionable design decisions that drag down an otherwise competent and technically impressive shooter.

If you have a friend to play with and share the cost of the Deluxe Edition, then I’d still say Youngblood is worth paying for. For most others, I’d wait to see if any kind of significant patch is released which rebalances the gameplay.