- Have you ever killed Nazis before?
- Listen, ma'am.
We were born to kill Nazis.
- (Dan) If I were in the shoes
of legendary run n' gun shooter
protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz,
I wouldn't be mad about my twin daughters'
performance in Wolfenstein: Youngblood,
but I would be disappointed.
The young Blazkowicz approach to co-op
is on the whole serviceable,
but it does nothing but cramp the style
of its inherited trust fund
of combat and stealth gameplay.
Without a similarly outlandish cast of characters
to liven up the alternate history setting
where Nazis won World War II,
it's perfunctory compared to
the extremely high standards set by
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.
(driving rock music)
Nearly everything about Youngblood
feels like a step down.
Outside of a single reveal,
the story of the daughters' search
for their missing dad in Nazi-occupied Paris
in the 1980s has nothing up its sleeve.
- And if B.J. fuckin' Blazkowicz
doesn't wanna be found,
there is nothing,
and no one on God's green Earth
that's gonna find his ass.
- There's a stark lack of interesting characters
in the mix too.
The twins' defining character trait
is being snort-laughing dorks together,
and fist-bumping like gender-swapped frat boys.
They're not unlikeable,
but they're not exactly breakout stars
I want to see more of either.
Meanwhile Abby,
the daughter of Wolfenstein II's Grace Walker,
is about as bland a hacker helper character
as you'll ever find.
And the endlessly cackling villain
isn't fit to shine Irene Engel's jackboots.
The sisters start with at least
a few of the key moves B.J. has
to work with in Wolfenstein II.
Most notably the double jump.
And they earn plenty of upgrades from there.
To its credit,
there are too many upgrades to get them all
without playing exhaustively.
So specialization does matter.
You can focus on buffing up
your health and armor maximums,
intensify your melee damage,
gain the ability to pick up
and upgrade heavy weapons,
and more.
We also get pretty much
all the same arsenal of pistols,
shotguns,
SMGs,
rifles,
et cetera,
that their father wielded two decades earlier.
Though its a buzzkill that only pistols
can be dual-wielded.
Guns can be upgraded to increase
their power as you go,
and it's the most visible and satisfying
representation of progression.
(electronic music)
But the addition of a leveling system
doesn't do the combat any favors.
Because enemies beneath your level
are mere fodder,
and those above are annoying bullet sponges.
There's no loot like in Fallout or Borderlands,
so there's no potential for the reward
to be worth the risk of punching above your weight.
And while you can travel to zones
in any order you want,
these guys effectively wall off
certain zones until you've leveled up,
negating much of the openness
of the non-linear level structure.
- Stay down Jess!
(gunfire)
- Of course,
shooting Nazis until their faces fall off
is only two thirds of the magic
of Wolfenstein's previous success.
The other is quietly stabbing them.
But naturally,
Youngblood messes this up too.
Its level and enemy layouts
simply don't seem designed with stealth in mind.
And attempting to play it the way I'd approach
previous games almost always went poorly.
Instead,
you're supposed to use the blatant
designed bandaid of the cloaking device.
Which is an ability so essential,
it's one of the two you choose from
when you're initially creating a character.
It feels like a cheat probably because
it absolutely is a cheat.
Stealth just isn't nearly as interesting
in Youngblood as a result.
(fast-paced electronic music)
Co-op does get a fair amount right.
From the start,
it's conveniently and seamlessly
drop in and drop out,
because your sister is always with you,
controlled by either a friend,
an internet rando via Quick Match,
or a mostly-competent AI
when you're playing solo.
You can play with anybody you want,
regardless of your respective levels.
And your partner even gets to take
their progress back to single-player,
which is always appreciated.
That said,
I had more than one incident
where my co-op partner would experience
an annoying lag between when
they pulled the trigger
and when the enemy they shot
would actually take damage.
There's a generous "down but not out" system
where you can revive each other
when you're in trouble.
But once that generosity runs out,
the consequences of death can be,
as they say in Germany,
überstupid.
One mission sequence culminated
in a battle that killed me several times.
And each time,
it booted me so far back
that it took me about 15 minutes
just to get back to the boss fight.
Just as bad,
Youngblood restarts you at the nearest checkpoint
with the amount of ammo you died with,
not what you had when you first reached it.
So you have to spend a bunch of extra time
scrounging for ammo.
There's plenty to do in Youngblood
beyond the 12 to 15 hours of story missions,
including dynamic actions that pop up
and invite you to plant bombs,
or listening devices,
or straight-up murder some dudes
when you have a moment en route
to your larger objectives.
There are also tons of side missions
you can take on by talking
to the characters idly standing in the hub area.
That's arguably the meat of Youngblood,
and could carry you forward
for another dozen or so hours
of cathartic,
justifiable homicide.
But frankly,
I'd rather spend that time replaying
The New Order and The New Colossus.
(yells in German)
(squelching)
(speaking German)
(clattering)
(gun bangs)
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is an
aggressively okay co-op shooter
that doesn't come close to recapturing
the joy of its predecessor's action
or its surprisingly interesting
characters and story.
It doesn't completely fumble
the fun of its weapons and abilities,
or counteract the pleasing sensation
of squishing Nazis between your toes.
But it does make it harder to enjoy
at seemingly every turn.
With an out-of-place leveling system,
busted stealth gameplay,
and some aggravating boss fights
and inadequate checkpoint saves.
For more on Wolfenstein,
check out the first 27 minutes of Youngblood.
And catch up on the story so far in five minutes.
And for everything else,
stick with IGN.
- Think we're missing somethin?
- Like what?
- Like the snake in the grass.
- Can't you just enjoy life for a second, Jess?
(Jess sighs)