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Early Look At the New Wolfenstein Game
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."
Pluck an epic game from the past, slap on a 'feature' = cheap marketing and product development = low-risk/decent return game product.
http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/wolf.htm
Graphics in these games are already getting into the uncanny valley, getting further into it doesn't make for a better game. I'd rather have higher framerates during busy action sequences (like in Left4Dead) than have a slightly more realistic pimple on BJ's nose or whatever. If the gameplay is fun (TF2, Quakewars) the graphics don't have to be super awesome.
Hell, probably one of my favorite mindless action games of all time is Gain Ground for the Sega Genesis, and the graphics on that are... not so good (by today's standards of course). In fact, while looking for that link I found out that you can play this game on Wii's virtual console. Neat.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
I, and many others, still play RTCW Enemy Territory. Sure, the graphics are completely dated, as the game itself is about 4-5 years old, and even when it came out it was behind the times. But it's still one of the most fun and sometimes frustrating multiplayer fps games out there. Why?
Not a single map can be won by a single person. Only if the engineers, covert ops, medics and field ops work together you can accomplish the objectives. Even soldiers are useful, as not much can defeat an mg's suppression fire, or clear a room as quickly as a panzer.
I don't care that the textures look a bit cheesy, that the walls and fields are plain or that there are no fog, shadows and other gimmicks. In the end it's the gameplay that makes or breaks a truly good fps. I can only hope that the new Wolfenstein's multiplayer will follow similar rules as RTCW:ET.
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.
This is my sig.
I dunno... possibly because it's a fantasy based on the well-documented connection between Nazis and the occult? I'm not sure where you jumped in on the series, but the game has always been about the Nazi connection to the occult.
The first game in the "series", before Wolfenstein 3D, was Spear of Destiny. That's what the entire game was about.
Personally, I'm happy to see them return more to the roots of the series. We have enough bland, boring war games as it is.
I don't care how "dated" the graphics look... if its anything like Return to Castle Wolfenstein (or Enemy Territory, which is still my primary game), then I'll snatch it up as soon as it's available.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.
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.
Is this going to be the latest in the recent spate of games that really should have been designed primarily for PC, but instead have been detrimentally console-based? What's the deal with that anyway? Are console games harder to pirate or something?