Wolfenstein: The Old Blood review for PS4, Xbox One, PC

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a digital only title developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda. As a big fan of the 2014 release The New Order (our review here), I was pretty excited when the game was announced this past March. Originally meant to be two pieces of story DLC for last year’s release, the developers decided to build the two add ons into one stand alone title. I think this was a good decision because this gives fans the chance to play a smaller entry in the series without having to have played TNO. Wolfenstein had a lot of cool old school first person shooter aspects in my opinion and it is great to see they kept just about everything intact for this release.

The Old Blood takes place before the events of The New Order. War veteran B.J. Blazkowicz is sent on a mission to infiltrate Castle Wolfenstein. The game has a pretty straight forward concept, kill Nazis, dogs, robots, and even zombies. You start with a pair of metal pipes that can be used to climb walls, open hatches, wedge doors open, and even as a melee weapon. Very intuitive mechanics for the game.

One of the features that made the game memorable for me was the weapons. You had a variety to choose from as you progress, but the coolest was to be able to duel wield guns again. Not much beats having two huge machine guns to plow through your enemies simultaneously.

Another great thing that was brought over from the previous release was retro inspired mini levels found throughout the campaign. Found in the form of dream sequences, the levels resemble the 1992 pc game Wolfenstein 3D with your character model’s hand in the updated graphics. It’s a fun blend of retro and modern graphics and a blast to play.

I really only had one gripe with the game, which is something that was a concern in the TNB. When you play a FPS, traditionally you walk over or toward any items, health, or inventory. Not here, instead you need to press a button (square on PS4) each time you want to pick up something no matter what it is. This gets frustrating after a while considering there is a lot of items, mainly ammo and health, you need to pickup during the game. After a while it feels like button mashing each time you are collecting the spoils of your gunfights.

While having to press a button to pick up items in a FPS can be annoying, it doesn’t truly hurt the overall experience. Running at about six hours, this game is a lot of fun with a decent story and some great action packed fights. If you haven’t played either, I would recommend playing this first, then picking up last years release.