Xbox 360
The narrative in Wolfenstein RPG is more a nod to the original than anything you could call a story. Such as it is, you start how all Wolfenstein games should start: Breaking your way out of prison by surprising the Nazi guard bringing you food. The story is really nothing more than a reasonable and blessedly succinct explanation for the nice mix of Nazis and zombies you get to kill. Guess that makes “nod to” mean “carbon copy of” here...
In every level of Wolfenstein RPG, there are medals for each of the following: killing all enemies, reading all books, finding all the loot, destroying everything you can and finding all the secret areas. Levels with graves also have the Tomb Raider medal, given for desecrating all the graves on the level. It’s these medals that will probably drive you mad whilst playing the game, because they’ll have you spending far more time that is necessary in each of the nine levels.
The look of these levels is like someone took Wolfenstein 3D and redid the art to look more like a comic book. This visual style lends itself well to how it all plays, which is that you turn in 90-degree increments and move on a turn-based grid. You can turn and move with the on-screen d-pad, strafe with a swipe in the direction you want to move or tap the screen to perform the default action. Which might mean use the switch, open the door, kick the table, eat the chicken or shoot the bad guy in front of you. Sound fun? It is, especially the chicken kicking mini-game or the neat use of the accelerometer for tilt-based sniping.
However, there are a few instances later in the game where it confuses a ridiculously huge difficulty spike for a good challenge. How about a fight where all your weapons and health packs are taken away from you leaving you with only punching and kicking? How about doing that against an adversary whose flying kicks allow him to kick you into spikes or flames from two squares away? Up until this and the boss fight preceding it, you’ll probably have been thinking this is a easy game. At this point though, you’ll feel like fun has been thrown out the window. There is one piece of advice that can make the last three boss fights of the game a lot less annoying: Use the syringes as much as possible.
What syringes? Empty syringes are used at chemical stations to produce various injections that will improve your stats in some way. While the books have to be read on the spot and their effects are only alluded to by their titles, the syringes are carried in your inventory and you’re told what they do. For most of the game you won’t even need them though, since even a little exploring will leave you with enough health packs and candy bars to keep your health safely in the bloody lip stage. Which is to say that Wolfenstein RPG has the same health indicator as Wolfenstein 3D: A little portrait of our man BJ Blazkowicz that gets more and more beat up looking as your health gets lower.
As annoying as the boss fights can be, they do their job of keeping the game fresh by sort of changing the rules. As well as these, there are a couple of turret shooting sections around the middle of the game. Between the main gameplay, the turret shooting, the boss fights and the mini-games, you’re certainly getting good value for £3. Especially since all the parts are fun for exactly as long as you have to do them. In other words, nothing overstays its welcome in the game. The developers have done a great job with that which seems to fail so many these days; balance.
So to answer the question a review is supposed to answer, yes you should buy this game. Just be aware of the potential frustrations you’ll face near the end. Though once you’ve finished it, as with all seemingly unfair challenges, you’ll be glad you did.
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Under the previous scoring system (before 09/09/09) this game received an eight.