I loved Wolfienstein where he did the entire review in Limrick, In the tumultuous time before D-Day,
There once was a man named BJ,
With chocolate box hair
And a face like a bear
And a jacket he picked up on eBay.
He was out one day murdering Germans,
As they tried to enact London?s Burning,
He beat up some dudes,
And broke missile tubes,
So their boat got blown up, that?ll learn ?em!
But while there he made the discovery
That the Nazis had powers like no other-y,
He bought back a bangle
With some mystical angle,
To which the Allies responded, ?Oh, buggery!?
At the secret service of Queen Lizzie
BJ?s bosses find themselves in a tizzy.
So they stand up and shout,
?BJ, sort this all out!
?We?d do it ourselves, but we?re busy.?
So he?s sent to a big German town
Where some serious shit?s going down.
There?s an active resistance
In need of assistance
And everything?s gone grayish-brown.
It soon becomes clear that the city
Has been invaded by occult committees:
Mystical preachers
And slavering creatures
And gymnasts with stonking great titties.
You may wonder if this is a sequel
To some past Wolfenstein, or a prequel
Depicting our hero
In a previous era
When he wasn?t looked upon as an equal.
It?s actually meant to succeed
Return to Castle Wolfenstein?s lead
Which is pretty damn slow
?Cause that was eight years ago
And the memories have gone stale indeed.
The new Wolfenstein seeks to enthrall
With an ongoing high-octane brawl,
But it?s a game about war
That we?ve all seen before
And just like the title adds fuck all.
Any pretense of freshness is gone
At the very outset of Stage One.
You escape your pursuers
Via underground sewers,
So we start as we mean to go on.
Your gun is of course your best friend,
On which you must always depend.
When you get into fights,
You can look down the sights
And bullets come out of the end.
Weapon choice doesn?t start too exciting:
Two machine guns, a rifle for sniping.
But later on, BFGs
Coming with guarantees
To shoot various flavours of lightning.
There are soldiers all over the place
Who can?t take two shots to the face,
But before you pour scorn,
They always respawn
At a pretty disquieting pace.
You don?t need to worry about health;
If you?re retarded and lousy at stealth,
Just get behind cover
If you?re in a bother
And it will all come back by itself.
It won?t help you avoid the bum-rape
Later on when you get into scrapes
With powerful blasters
And big armoured bastards
With weak points the size of a grape.
To help out, you have on your side
Magic spells that some crystals provide.
On the appropriate cue
The world turns greenish-blue
So it looks like your monitor?s died.
You can take down the big lads in minutes,
Start a fight with ten men and still win it,
Make your weapons divine,
Or just use bullet time
(Which wasn?t that great when Max Payne did it).
But the powers are hard to sustain;
Your magic is too swiftly drained.
In the middle of a fight
You?ll end up in the shite
And will suffer a whole world of pain.
And in between all of the shooting
You also must think about looting,
Because if you want to upgrade
Someone has to be paid,
And the shopkeepers don?t like freebooting.
Why do all games need upgrading elements?
Even in ones where it isn?t quite relevant?
It means all your big-hitters
Start off in the shitter
And your aim is unfirm and inelegant.
So when you?ve extinguished the danger,
You backtrack through all the chambers
Searching every last nook
For cash and chequebooks
(Which you won?t find much fun, I would wager).
It transpires that the in-game reality
Has pretensions to non-linearity.
The game says, ?On your bike!
Go wherever you like,
As long as it?s in this principality."
But the freedom?s a mere gilded cage
That adds nothing to inspire or engage.
It just means beating feet
Through the same boring streets
Just to get to the next fucking stage.
There?s very little to do except hunt
For secrets and money upfront,
But the reward?s pretty lame,
All the streets look the same,
And the bads keep respawning, the cunts.
But it?s not totally asinine, sure,
There are optional missions to score,
But I went out of my way
And found to my dismay
That in total there?s only like four!
I guess the ultimate question is ?Why
Should I even bother to try??
Every last NPC
Fills me with apathy.
Am I expected to care when they die?
I know what you?re gonna say, ?Yahtzee,
?You slick Internet paparazzi,
?Surely it?s always fun
?To stick the butt of a gun
?Up the arse of a goosestepping Nazi!?
Well, if you like starting punch-ups in bars,
Or your head has been lodged up your arse,
Wolfenstein may give
At least some joie de vivre,
But otherwise don?t bother. Two stars.
Seriously how long did it take for him to do this?
