Not only are there areas where you’re given free rein to try different strategies, but the way the action flows forces you to keep moving. I doubt The Old Blood will get the credit it deserves, but the level design throughout is brilliant. blasts Nazis by the boatload with a range of assault rifles, shotguns and heavy machine-guns, then this is it. There’s just enough stealth and strategy to keep things interesting, but if you want a game where a man called B.J. It’s even happy to take more time to joke, with knowing reference to past Wolfensteins and a hero who wilfully mishears instructions to ‘play things quietly’ as ‘kill everything that moves.’Īnd – perhaps because of this – the combat just flows better this time around. It’s faster-paced and more tightly-structured than The New Order, and while there are attempts to shove in sympathetic characters, it’s mostly the tale of one brute’s love affair with ultra-violence. It’s a big B-Movie action flick with a smattering of horror and a whole lot of gore. There’s no such conflict in The Old Blood. It was as if MachineGames couldn’t work out whether they were trying to make Inglourious Bastards, a B-Movie sci-fi flick or a sensitive wartime drama, and so tried to make all three at once. Others, however, found the shifts in tone awkward one minute you’re cackling away at B.J’s brainless, mildly-sadistic Nazi bashing, the next you’re supposed to be empathizing with his war-ravaged comrades. Now some people loved the storyline of The New Order, and found B.J’s interactions with the resistance cinematic and emotionally engaging. That’s about as close to new gameplay as The Old Blood gets, and it even jettisons some aspects of The New Order, replacing the old upgrades system with a more lightweight series of unlockable perks. Split in two and dual-wielded, it’s great for stealth-kills on inobservant Nazis, but can also be used to pry things open, smash through crumbling stonework or clamber up specific walls. There are some fantastic 1948-era weapons to play with, including high-powered, fast-reload shotguns, a carbine and a flare gun, and a particularly useful multi-purpose tool: the pipe. There’s still a surprising emphasis on stealth, where sneaking around and killing enemy commanders before they can call in reinforcements will give you an easier ride. This is still a rather old-school, action-heavy FPS with tons of Nazis to kill and a fine selection of weapons with which to kill them. In terms of mechanics, it’s not vastly different from The New Order. Anyone old enough to remember Episode 2 of the original Wolfenstein 3D? Well, the second half of The Old Blood is a 2015 remake. Von Schabbs is up to that old Wolfenstein favourite, occult research, and it’s her activities that define the second act of the game and return The Old Blood to the supernatural high-jinx of Wolfensteins past. Needless to say, things don’t go to plan, as Blaskowicz comes up against resistance from a sadistic Nazi keen on feeding human meat to his dogs, then into conflict with Nazi archaeologist Helga Von Schabbs. Blaskowicz’s mission into the titular castle on a mission to find the location of The New Order’s antagonist, General Wilhelm ‘Deathshead’ Strasse. In many respects, it’s yet another reworking of the original Wolfenstein another dive into the same territory as 2001’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Raven’s 2009 reboot. In fact, for all that some things have been lost or just abandoned, it’s arguably the tighter, more entertaining episode. Well, The Old Blood is – strictly speaking – a prequel to last year’s Wolfenstein: The New Order, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great Wolfenstein in its own right. Here’s a turn up for the books: in a world where too many sequels feel like glorified expansion packs, we have a stand-alone expansion that could pass as a sequel. Available on Xbox One, PS4, PC (version reviewed)
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