Wolfenstein Demo

Wolfenstein was one of the pioneers of the first-person shooter genre, especially since it made the step toward 3D environments, albeit in a very crude and improvised manner. Since it keeps happening to all the franchises lately, the series has been recently resurrected, in order to bring it into the 21st century and maybe make a lot of contemporary gamers happy as well.

Named simply Wolfenstein, the game tries to bring back the feeling of the old game, by reusing some of the old ideas and basically the same mechanics as then. Thus, the Nazis are still the bad guys, the action takes place in an alternate reality during World War II and everything revolves around some powerful artifacts that have the powerful to end the world, or bring the Nazis a very gruesome victory in the war.

This time around, you get to play as a soldier by the name of B.J. Blazkowicz, who also happens to be a special agent and a very skilled artifact retriever. His most prized possession turns out to be a powerful medallion, which gets more and more important as you advance through the game, because a big chunk of the gameplay is centered around the abilities that can be added to it in order to make the fights easier.

A lot of effort went into portraying the supernatural events that happen over the course of the story, a fact that's clearly visible in the level design and the cutscenes that are used to advance the story. The enemies become more and more surreal as the action evolves, which means that the Nazis are soon replaced by various inhuman creatures from another realm. However, you also get to acquire better weapons along the way, as well as upgrade and repair your old ones.

Visually, the game definitely looks good, since it uses a heavily modified version of the id Tech 4 graphics engine in order to render the world. Thus, the textures, effects and the particles can definitely catch your eyes at times, as do the smooth animations and the exquisite level design. The Havok physics engine makes sure that the objects scattered around the environment respond appropriately to your actions.

While Wolfenstein can be considered a good game, overall, it fails to impress at any level and it certainly does not take the franchise to new heights. Thus, everything about it is satisfactory, but nothing sticks with you for more than a few hours afterward and the game can be quickly forgotten entirely by the industry.