BJ himself is among the weaker characters in the previous two games (aside from those flashbacks to his childhood), and in that respect his apples haven’t fallen far from the tree. Soph and Jess’ defining character trait is being snort-laughing dorks together, who would be at least a little adorable except for their constant use of fist-bumping and horrible ‘80s slang (read: “tubular!”) like gender-swapped frat bros. They’re not unlikeable when they’re chatting about memories of hunting with their dad or novelist aspirations in heavy Texan accents, but they’re not exactly breakout stars I want to see more of, either. They’re… fine.
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This leveling system clashes with Wolfenstein’s design: unlike in Fallout or Borderlands, there’s no loot to make the potential reward worth the risk of taking on a bad guy several levels out of your league. Seeing one just means you should turn around and come back later, and defeats the purpose of the non-linear structure of Youngblood’s missions. Sure, I can travel to zones in any order I want, but if they have a big burly bouncer at the door they can’t exactly be done in whatever order I choose anyway.
Those zones are adequate but similarly pale shadows of what’s come before. The best example is seeing vestiges of a parade that immediately reminded me of Wolfenstein 2’s Nazi parade scene in New Mexico – which has to be a deliberate callback – but without any of the liveliness. Beyond that it’s largely a collection of high-tech Nazi facilities and war-torn city blocks, distinguished mostly by good use of multi-story structures to double-jump around on and the lightest of Metroidvania design touches, asking you to use one of the three heavy weapons – a laser, an electric zapper, and a sticky grenade launcher – to blast open new areas.No Quiet on the Western Front
Of course, shooting Nazis until their faces fall off is only two thirds of the magic of Wolfenstein’s previous success. The other is stabbing them repeatedly, occasionally while cupping a hand over their mouth and whispering “Ssssh, it’ll be over soon, you goose-stepping douche” into their ear – then doing the same to about a dozen of their friends before you get around to the shooting part. Naturally, Youngblood messes this up, too. Its level and enemy layouts simply aren’t designed with stealth in mind, and attempting to play it in the way I’d had success with previously almost always went poorly. Either you’re spotted by a flying drone or there’s no way to separate and pick off a group of enemies, forcing you into noisy combat.Instead, you’re supposed to use the blatant design Band-Aid of the cloaking device, an ability so essential it’s one of two you choose from when initially creating a character (and quickly unlockable if you choose the Crash ramming ability instead). Even before you upgrade it to last longer and let you move faster, it lets you walk right up to an economically anxious German, step around him, and stealthily ventilate his spleen. It feels like a cheat, probably because it absolutely is a cheat. The designers cheated not only the game, but themselves. They didn’t grow. They didn’t improve. They took a shortcut and gained nothing. They experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.
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The co-op-first nature of Youngblood’s design does take its toll on the single-player experience, as you’d expect. The first problem I noticed was that you can’t pause, even while playing by yourself. You can go to the menu screen, yes, but then you just get to listen as the Nazis and their suicide-bomber dogs (yes, those are a thing) murder you. Also, every level has annoyingly common doors that require both players to heave them open, no doubt intended to keep you from wandering too far from your partner.
Once that generous system runs out, however, the consequences of death can be, as they say in Germany, uber stupid. For example, the final battle in the Brother 2 Tower mission (there are three of these that make up the bulk of the 15-ish hours of story) killed me several times – thanks for nothing, AI-controlled Jess. Each time, it booted me so far back that it took me about 15 minutes just to get back to the boss fight, including battling through or sprinting past several miniboss mechs and running through the longest jumping puzzle section in the entire campaign. 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. And if you didn’t go down without a fight, that usually means your good stuff is depleted. That makes you spend a bunch of extra time scrounging for ammo, and it’s actually worse when the checkpoint starts you right in the thick of the action effectively unarmed – as it does in the tedious final boss battle.
There’s plenty to do in Youngblood beyond the 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 objective, and tons of side missions you can take on by talking to a handful of completely forgettable characters idoly standing around 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.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/07/25/wolfenstein-youngblood-review
2019-07-25 12:01:08Z
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