Wolfenstein: The Old Blood Reviews

Great game, it is a one and done for me but I really enjoyed this game a lot. Great Wolfenstein game.

Fun Game but a bit short, if you liked The New Order than you will enjoy this one, bit smaller and simpler though. At its $20 price tag I wouldn't say its a good value, but its not terrible either. Story is pretty simple, a prequel to New Order. Has a few characters that are easy to like and [spoiler] it does suck when they die. [/spoiler] If you can get it on sale or apart of a bundle for a good price definitely worth a pick up, just probably not at $20 for most.

A great Wolfenstein game, well worth playing even in 2025. With a variety of interesting and atmospheric environments and situations (the best ones being the catacombs, Castle Wolfenstein, the cable car escape, and the zombies fight) and a good variety of different weapons, there is not a single dull moment during gameplay. Hell, this is great fun. I'd wish modern game developers take inspiration from games like this. Heartily recommended.

Technical issues aside, it's an emotionally evocative story, presented in a concise and immersive manner.

Wolfenstein Old Blood is a sucessor of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and introduces new characters along with the originals and the game is easy just kill all the nazis (your enemy) the army goes from foot soldiers that are one shot on the head but come in squads, to snipers that can kill you easily and super soldiers that are the most weak if you break their armor and rip their heart off with the same old dusty pipe from the prison you go to, the dogs being easiest of the all just with them with the pipe and panzerhounds that are hard to defeat so luckily you have an mg46 to deal with them in only one ocasion. The game shows you all the landscapes from the beautiful german alps to the graveyard. The game like it's antecessors shows the sci-fi futuristic alternative reality of a world where Nazi germany is winning WW2. 9 out of 10 for me because the game's story was very short.

Didn't enjoy it as thoroughly as I did like The New Order because of a couple reasons but it's still enjoyable. Firstly, stealth segments were a bit frustrating. In TNO, levels where you can use stealth to get through were almost always introduced after at least a couple action/set piece oriented levels and thanks to that, you were able to take a breather and take on a different kinda challenge at the same time, both helping with the pacing and gameplay variety even with the braindead AI. Here however, stealth oriented/favoured levels outnumber the sole action focused ones especially if you exclude boss battles and that's a balance I didn't enjoy. The thing is enemy AI is much better compared to TNO with the added aid of slightly better level design favoring enemies rather than you then the newly added enemy type is fun and of course I'm aware that stealth is only optional but I just wished those segments were few and far between. Personal taste perhaps. And well, final boss was just simply annoying. Even after I understood its gimmick I couldn't beat it so looked up a strat to find out that the only consistent way to beat it on any difficulty was to identify blind spots and to simply stay put rather than getting the boss' movements down to dodge or at least interact with it, which I would enjoy more. I struggled with TNO's final boss as well but I was able to beat it without any exploits, and twice because I skipped the final cutscene by accident and had to beat it again to see it, which took me many tries. I definitely would prefer trying that fight over and over again on the other hand, rather than trying this one without any of the strats. It wasn't fun. All and all though, I still recommend it. The campaign doesn't take too long to get through so maybe wait for a sale if you are only interested in that but if you are looking to do all the challenges that get unlocked while you get through the campaign and maybe even 100% it, it's well worth the asking price in my opinion.

I think it's a good if not really enjoyable singleplayer game despite being an older game and having some things that I personally don't like about it. Like I'm not particularly a fan of the drawn out boss fights in all honesty with mechanics that you have to like "brute-force" or "trial and attempt" through in order to figure out what needs to be done but they do add to the experience and charm of the games. Like, I like design wise the realistic looking levels a lot and enemies that even through technological upgrades still seem plausible but I am also not a huge fan of how the weapons look for instance but they are functional so it's okay I guess. Truth is I really always loved the Wolfenstein games since the first game which I always used to watch briefly people play, grown ups with their darn PC's and having started to really play the game from Return to Castle Wolfenstein onward I always thought that there was something about these Wolfenstein games that is really appealing in nature. Not just because they have a cool name and belong to a series of epic and often original games that go beyond just Wolfenstein franchise. For instance with the original game it was the fact that it was a shooter in the time that usually people played platformer games or 2D adventure / action games is something that made it stand out to me. Ever since RTCW and its multiplayer counterpart which I really enjoyed which was a little bit like Team Fortress with different classes and different gear kits. Things like a medic and a spy and so on was really great. An aspect that always appealed to me and one what makes these games stand out to me is the dark. Darkness of these games has a lot to do with the story where Europe is divided and the whole world has basically fallen to the enemies influence and it combines this idea with the technological aspect that really makes it a scary reality and thought but the dark of the game also has to do with the atmosphere and levels of the game which are enjoyable in this morbid sense of basically there being danger around every corner of the game where you change between different play styles alternating from at times pretty intense like suspenseful stealth to like all out action combat and that is also something I enjoy about the game that it gives you this opportunity to stealth until you take out the able-to-call-in-the-reinforcements commanders found in some areas (which is a really cool addition to the game) and then are able to apply more force as you progress through a level or have to go loud as you find more dangerous and difficult enemies so there are like aspects of the game that mix things up gameplay wise and I like that because even though it's a pretty linear shooter with I'd say some hidden areas where you have to explore the levels thoroughly if you want to find everything they hide the way that you play it really is immersive in essence. Game has elements of world exposition through various lore found in the game not just through cutscenes but also usually in levels through found documents which you have to take the time to read if you want to get up to date but I really found some other games like NecroVisioN to do this aspect a little bit better because if you would open a document in game, a voice actor would read it out loud and you could even close the document and move on in the game continuing to play it and then it would still be read out loud in often heavily accented language which also I think adds to the immersion, conviction and convenience because personally and on a side note when I'm playing an action oriented game be that a shooter or even to some extent an (A)RPG, what have you, having to pause my gameplay to actually read is something I found that I won't do often even though I admit sounding pretty stupid because of that, but regardless. It's like a flow breaking like interrupting endeavor that I don't mind being there but it could have been done a little better I think. Wolfenstein games have to me always been enjoyable because of the dark and the grim atmosphere they provide with elements from storytelling and the setting and the gameplay and the game's themes and I have always liked to take my time and to enjoy these games because of that and because they are pretty much singleplayer action/story driven games that I appreciate playing because I can choose to take a brake from them, go do or play something else and then over time return to the world. One more aspect I also like (a lot) is Blaskowicz banter when the player is traversing levels where he reminisces at times about the past or thoughts that he has where he'd like sort of whisper some lines about his life, thinking of the better times. It's some details like this that these games come really close to being immersive sims of sorts which are really my favorite types of games because of many reasons. I'm playing this one at 144 fps and I'm really glad that the game has the ability even though having to be modded for this externally, and sometimes I'd have to revert back to its 60 fps standard as to be able to advance through some areas of the game but this is something I have to do but a few times and so in that sense I'm really enjoying my time playing it and you should too I think if you like the idea of such a game as I've attempted to describe here. Truth is we have come relatively a long way from RTCW and NecroVisioN and sometimes I harken back to those moments lost in time where games had some sort of notion of having a soul to them and here is hoping that in the future still games will be made that contain traces of one and I think Wolfenstein games certainly have the character to categorize them as such, enjoyable singleplayer games with some good degree of substance through various ways. Games with a soul.

The Old Blood is the back-to-basics prequel to TNO: traditional, straightforward weapons, enemies, and gameplay mechanics that any FPS player will be very familiar with. It's an exhibition of the strong fundamental bones underneath the new Wolfenstein series. TOB is a very fun game, and an easy recommend, and though I'll make note of some software issues, virtually none of its flaws have to do with game design. The story is a bit cliched, but so snappy that it doesn't really matter, and the flavor of Rudi Jaeger's chapters shine brightly enough to carry the whole game. The guns are GREAT. The guns are maybe the best in all of new Wolfenstein. It's your standard FPS armory: pistol, rifle, shotgun, sniper, rocket launcher, and it's all basically polished to perfection. Even the DOOM reboot series had to add bells and whistles to its armory, but The Old Blood presents them in a basically unadorned form, aside from crafting excellent sound design and balancing (the extremely powerful MG might be an exception to this part). Although it's a brief game (5-6 hours), you'll get your money's worth, assuming you wait until the game goes on sale for FOUR DOLLARS, and more than your money's worth if you like the combat enough to hit the challenges. They're basically isolated combat sequences from the campaign, and while I would rather have seen a proper challenge mode with unique designs, anything it offers to increase the firefight density is welcome when the FPS fundamentals are this good. Now it's time to talk about the less than good: this is not a well-maintained piece of software. High framerates breaks one of the firing modes of the AR (and harmlessly alter ragdoll physics), I've had sound output detection issues, borderless fullscreen issues, etc, and the first two hours of revisiting this game consisted of bugfixes rather than getting into Billy Boy's blood-soaked shoes. Two of the weapons in the game don't even have keybinds, and the slide inputs are pretty iffy if you don't use toggle crouch/sprint. But, once you find a solution to these issues (and I did solve most of my issues), there is a great, inexpensive game here waiting for you.

[h1] Introduction [/h1] Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is the prequel to TNO, set sometime just before the prologue of the game, where Blazkowicz and Agent One undertake a mission to recover a top secret folder containing information that can change the tide of the war. [h1] Positives [/h1] [list] [*]This game to me is more of an "expansion pack" if you will, as it's a lot shorter than TNO, taking only about 4 hours for me to complete, which is a good thing! [*]The only game in the new saga where Blazkowicz actually talks in moment to moment gameplay - Usually it's always him talking in monologue and in cutscenes, but never in gameplay, which I found to be really cool. I'm surprised that they scrapped this in TNC, makes no sense to me [*]Loved that this game is basically the same narrative as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, just told differently. To me, it feels more like a remake of that game, despite having some differences, like the zombies not being knights and having swords and shields or the lack of Elite Guards [*]Combat and stealth is pretty much cookie cutter from TNO, don't expect anything crazy here. The nice addition of weapons, like the Bolt-Action Rifle and the explosive grenade pistol added some much needed variety. I couldn't get enough of one tapping enemies in the head with the sniper, had that "oomph" feeling [*]The pipe climbing was something that I hated at first because of how its handled on mouse and keyboard, but I learnt to love it after a while [*]The level design is top notch, I'd argue it's better than New Order! More killing and getting up in your face, something that game lacked [*]Runs great out of the box and still looks good to this day - Castle Wolfenstein has never looked better [/list] [h1] Negatives [/h1] [list] [*]Lack of graphical options - I'm not the biggest fan of Depth of Field or Film Grain in games and I found it annoying that I couldn't turn it off in the game's settings. You can probably edit this in the game's ini files or something, but I shouldn't have to go through that just to turn a few things off. DoF only had a medium setting and it made it look arguably worse in my experience, so I just kept it on high [*]Locked to 60 FPS - Thankfully there's a way to unlock the frame rate with a tool called id5 Tweaker, but it can cause issues. Something to note, but doesn't take away from the whole experience [/list] [h1] Conclusion [/h1] Keeping this review short since the game is short, but Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a great addition to the Wolfenstein Universe and is just... more Wolfenstein, with some flashbacks to RTCW in terms of its story and simple yet fun gameplay.

The best Wolfenstein to date. Fun fact: Annette Krause is a reference, in both design and name, to Anne Frank, the famous Jewish girl who was murdered in the Holocaust and whose diary became widely published after the war. (There is evidence to suggest that she died from a typhus epidemic that spread through the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, killing 17,000 prisoners.) Source | Wolfenstein Wiki: https://wolfenstein.fandom.com/wiki/Annette_Krause