I first came across William "B.J." Blazkowicz as a kid on my Dad's 386 sx PC (good old DOS!) and it was pretty much my first introduction to first person shooter games (FPS) - I was a kid, of course I used cheat codes. I walked through walls, was impervious, had all the ammo and all the keys. Hey, had to win... All means necessary. My favourite weapon was the chain gun (which we dubbed the 'make me smile gun' for the face B.J makes when he picked it up - you know the one..)
When I heard about The New Order, I was super psyched. Bought it right away and had a good 18 hours of play time on the campaign. I really enjoyed the beautiful graphics, storyline, tech game mechanics and the variety of weapons. It was so nice to see how far B.J had come.
Of course, when Old Blood was announced, I had to get it. I was pleased to see that the graphics quality had been maintained and so had the richness of the story telling. I found I had to turn the difficulty level down pretty early on in the game for my skill level (I may call myself a gamer, but I am a bit of a casual these days - that annoying thing in life known as 'adulting' aka work and studying). I unashamedly set it to 'don't hurt me' and basically made it through the main storyline within about 9 hours.
I have to say, the game had some fantastic one-liners (B.J almost being reminiscent of his fellow gunslinger Duke Nukem without the rampant sexism) and the story really was compelling. As with all past Wolfenstein games, there is elements of 'Evil Nazi' Germany mixed with the supernatural to give it that familiar Wolf flavour (and little Easter egg letters and communications make for a very nice touch.)
Played on my Windows PC, running on a Core i7 processor (details in the blog post about my upgrade), all settings were ramped up and it was just a beautiful game to play and ran like a dream. I didn't experience any noticeable bugs, I just died. A lot. I mean, a lot.
The final boss, I had to resort to Google for help because I just didn't know if I was actually doing any damage (or the right thing - I got caught in New Order with that) but it turned out to be a matter of weapon selection and perseverance.
All in all, I loved the game but would have liked it to be a little longer in the campaign. That being said, as an expansion pack, it was perfect. I think it being a standalone expansion made it seem like it should be a standalone game/new game so that is just my humble opinion.
I don't think I would say it has a huge amount of replayability but it was a fun ride. Bring it on.
- Gameplay: 8/10
- Graphics: 8/10
- Replayability: 6/10
- Storyline: 10/10
- Overall: 9/10
