Video Game Backlog: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

 Well, here I am after 2 years. I guess I have commitment issues.

And speaking of commitment issues, let's talk backlog. Most of us have a backlog of games we want to get to someday but we just keep pushing to the back for whatever reason, be it real life or something else catching our eye. The other week I finally sat down and beat one particular game that had been sitting in my backlog that I'm surprised I hadn't beaten way sooner. You've read the title, you know which game it is.

 

 

This one is particularly sad in my case because it's only about 3 hours.

 

I first bought The Old Blood several years ago on PS4. It serves as an expansion pack for 2014's Wolfenstein: The New Order, itself one of my personal favorite first-person shooters. For some reason though I would always drop the game halfway through, either because of burnout after playing through TNO and then Old Blood or because the console controls start to wear on me. Then within the last year after I built my gaming PC, I purchased both New Order and Old Blood again so that I could play them with mouse controls and never have to worry about analog sticks. And again, I played the hell out of New Order but for some reason couldn't muster the will to get through all of Old Blood, and again it's strange because Old Blood is very short.

 

The Old Blood serves as a prequel to The New Order and sees B.J. Blazkowicz, Nazi-killer extraordinaire, infiltrating the eponymous Castle Wolfenstein to retrieve documents that will reveal the location of General Deathshead's compound. If you weren't aware, these Wolfenstein games take place in an alternate universe where the Nazis somehow create super-weapons and turn World War II around in their favor, with Deathshead's compound being the epicenter of their technology. Of course, things quickly go awry when B.J. is captured and runs afoul of Helga Von Schabbs, owner of Castle Wolfenstein. The game is essentially a retelling of Return to Castle Wolfenstein albeit in New Order's bizarro timeline, but it works. It does help that B.J. is an actual character in this one as opposed to the voiceless goon he was in Return.

A few days ago I got into a rhythm and beat Old Blood in about 4 sittings. At this point though the game finally clicked with me. That was always the other problem I faced with the game; the opening areas are annoying to get through. The game starts off on the wrong foot with an incredibly tedious stealth section where you have to hide behind generators from Super Soldats, huge mechanized soldiers with gatling guns that can kill you very easily this early in the game. The catch is that they're attached to the ceiling on rails so their movements are limited to where the rails will take them. To take them out, you have to shut off the generators and then quickly perform a special melee attack. I never liked this section, I think it's a poor way to start the game with a forced stealth section, especially one this tedious. Thankfully I managed to get through painlessly this time around.

Once you get your hands on your first guns, Old Blood really starts to open up. The game's got a slicker pace compared to New Order. Where New Order will occasionally slow down to have the player soak in the characters and world, Old Blood keeps you moving at all times. Even when the game slows down, these moments are far shorter and evenly paced than New Order, which will often spend entire levels just having players interact with friendly NPCs and experience calm story beats. This does come at Old Blood's expense because the story's nowhere near as engrossing as New Order's (I can't say I cared for the characters nearly as much as I did for New Order's cast of colorful companions), but when it comes to delivering an action-packed experience, Old Blood succeeds.

And oh what action. Old Blood's action is cathartically chaotic. Guns don't so much as put holes in the Nazis you go up against as much as they do blast chunks out of them. Every weapon feels punchy and reduces most of the regular enemies into gibs. I've noticed this go-round that the gore is ramped up from New Order's, where most of the guns don't deal nearly as much destruction unless you're dual-wielding.

Speaking of dual-wielding, that was always my favorite aspect of both Wolfenstein games. At the press of a key, B.J. can dual wield most of the weapons in the game. It's so satisfying to wield two auto-shotguns at once and just go to town on a small squad of Nazis. At the same time though, B.J.'s movement speed drastically decreases so you have to be careful you don't let it go to your head and get surrounded.

 

I also believe that Old Blood does the choice between stealth and action in a much better fashion than New Order ever did. In both games, you'll occasionally come across huge open areas with patrolling Nazis, with a commander hidden somewhere. Should you get caught, the commander will constantly call in back-up until you take him out. This leads to an interesting dynamic where you can go in guns-blazing or you can take the quiet approach and kill the commander before anyone knows you're there. I never went loud in New Order because the areas were too big and I found myself scrambling to find the commander before the guards killed me. Old Blood's patrol zones meanwhile are smaller and more compact, which not only makes stealth easier, it also means that finding the commander is more viable if you mess up and have to track him down with Nazis on your tail.

 

Old Blood does weaken somewhat at the end when the zombies enter the picture. They aren't as interesting to fight as the regular Nazis and they don't do much besides swarm you. You can burst their heads open with melee kills, which is satisfying, but the game is also clearly not built for melee combat so be prepared to swing at nothing while you desperately try to smack a zombie. The final boss isn't the greatest either, but it's also marginally better than New Order's which devolves into chaos too quickly. The ending itself makes up for the somewhat lame final hour by leading directly into New Order, which emphasizes a certain tragedy of the whole situation. Despite all you've done, the Nazis will still win and you'll still wake up to a Nazi-ruled 1960.

 

I don't know if I can immediately agree with the consensus that Old Blood is better than New Order considering it took me quite some time to beat a 3 hour game while I've repeatedly played New Order's 8-12 hours over the years. Like I said, this playthrough finally clicked with me and I can understand why people enjoy Old Blood. It's a lean and mean expansion and it's a lot more immediately satisfying than New Order, which prefers to take its time between shootouts. At the same time, part of the reason I enjoy New Order is because it took its time. I love getting immersed in its world and characters, neither of which is Old Blood's concern. Both are great experiences, but I don't think I can definitively say one is better than the other.

 

Hopefully the next time I try and play the game, it will take me 3 hours to beat instead of several years.