Early Look At the New Wolfenstein Game 88
Attendees of this year's GDC were given an early look at Wolfenstein, the new shooter in development by id and Raven. We've previously discussed the "Veil" ability that protagonist BJ Blazkowicz uses to hide himself, and much of the coverage relates to how it affects gameplay. "Early on, Blazkowicz stumbles upon an experiment and manages to blow it up, releasing waves of ethereal blue material. The Veil seems to turn gravity on and off as Blazkowicz tries to escape the area, making for some very original gunplay. ... The folks on hand told me that the Veil would be incorporated into game's multiplayer, but wouldn't go into details." A trailer for the game is available at Joystiq, and they had this to say: "Wolfenstein's look and gameplay is dated — and not in a retro chic way. Without the Veil, the game could be mistaken for a last-gen title, so the game's success rests on how compelling this feature will be throughout an entire playthrough."
Re:marketing gimmick (Score:2, Interesting)
auf wiedersehen! ET [wikipedia.org]
Not every game is a tactical shooter! (Score:5, Interesting)
Game reviewers are the worst bunch of people on the planet. I'm sick of reviewers panning a game because the enemies do not have a great A/I, or there is a paucity of options. Just like every movie does not have to be Star Wars, or every song does not have to be a symphony, not every video game needs to be an ultra realistic tactical shooter with advanced A/I enemies and 900 combat moves.
I, for one, am actually rather excited by the new Wolfenstein.
1) The screen shots look pretty cool to me, or at least cool enough. I mean, did we bail on Dr. Who because it was not Star Wars?
2) Killing Nazis is NOT dated and overused, as the game reviewers say. Killing Nazis never goes out of style. I would even argue that, if a video game does not have a Nazi to kill in it at some point, it almost automatically sucks.
3) Sometimes I do not want to fight people that are as smart as I am, or smarter. The great genius of the first Doom wasn't the 3d graphics. It was that the 3d graphics were used to provide a great venue to just exterminate thousands of on-screen enemies. The quantity of killing in a video game is often better than the act of hunting down one person.
4) The so-called realism of a tactical shooter is just as much a fantasy as the other game plays it replaces. Statistically, squad on squad infantry engagements are not the way most people in wars get killed. If you have infantry engaging other infantry, that means the sides did something wrong, as you want to kill the other guy's infantry with the likes of artillery, cluster munitions, mines, chemical weapons, and other assorted goodies before they even engaged. That's not to say that it doesn't happen, but it is to say that in the case of war, the largest causes of death are not from enemy gunmen and so the whole concept of balanced teams and play is absurd.
Re:Uh, graphics are surfing the uncanny valley any (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it's the Doom 3 engine + poor modeling, not the uncanny valley. Some of those models have the same freaking ghostly Doom 3 skin [latestscreens.com].
Sorry if this isn't based on the Doom 3 engine, it just looks like it to me and makes sense if it's in development by id software.
Insta-Port (Score:3, Interesting)
RTCW: a very entertaining single player FPS. (Score:3, Interesting)
The game "Return To Castle Wolfenstein" was a very entertaining single player FPS. The graphics were very good, the plot was suburb, and the whole game atmosphere made you want to finish it.
There is a group of video game players (that I belong to) that do not enjoy multiplayer FPSs. There is no thrill, for me, in killing other players. The thrill is to explore the environment, adapt to the situation and overcome the obstacles. Perhaps this group has become too small, because there are no FPSs for us any more.
My hope is that the new Wolfenstein game will be one such game (the other is Duke Nukem Forever, but I don't see that be released in this century).