Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Wolfenstein. Christ, we’ve been getting fat headed lately. Not “wolfenstein 2” or “wolfenstein: revenge of the man with a chocolate box concealed in his hairdo”, just “Wolfenstein”. It’s like what they did with Star Trek, Friday the 13th, or Final destination. What, did some sort of apocalypse happen while I wasn’t looking and now everything has to reset? You know what future historians will say about us: “there were two very different games within the same twenty year period both called wolfenstein and the second was not, strictly speaking, a remake of the first. Which leads us to conclude that people from the early twenty-first century were taking the piss!” It feels weird to call it “generic” since this is the franchise that practically invented the genre, but wolfenstein, the new one that is, subscribed to so many current generation clichés that it’s like “The Spy Who Loved Me” of FPSs. It’s so obnoxiously safe and committee designed that any attempt to critique it in my normal manor would be equally as dull. So that’s why I’ve decided to review this game in limerick form!
In the tumultuous time before D-day,
There once was a man named BJ
With chocolate box hair
And face like a bear
And a jacket he picked up off EBay.
He was out one day murdering Germans
As they tried to ignite London’s burnin’.
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 othery
He brought back a bangle
With some mystical angle
To which the allies responded “Oh buggery”
At the secret service of queen Lizzy
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 s**t’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 comities
Mystical preachers
And slavering creatures
And gymnasts with stonking great titties.
You may wonder if this is a sequel
To a 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
‘Cus 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 that just like the title adds ******** 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.
If you get into fights
You can look down the sights
And bullets come out of the end
Weapon choice doesn’t start out exciting
Two machine guns, a rifle for sniping
But later on, BFGs
Coming with guarantees
To shoot various flavors of lightning.
There are soldiers all over the place
Who can’t take two shots to the face
But before you forsworn
They always respawn
At a pretty disquieting pace
You don’t need to worry about health
If you’re retarded and lousy at stealth
You can hide behind cover
If you’re in a bother
And it’ll 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 armored bastards
With weak points the size of a grape
To help out along on your side
Magic powers for which 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’s too easily drained
In the middle of a fight
You’ll end up in the shite
And discover a whole world of pain
And in between all the shooting
You must think about looting
Cuz if you wanna look great
Someone has to be payed
And the shop keeps don’t like free booting
Why do all games need upgrading elements?
Even 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 back track through all of the chambers
Searching every last nook
For cash and checkbooks
Which you won’t find much fun I would wager
It transpires that the in game reality
Has pretensions to nonlinearity
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 bleeding feet
Through the same boring streets
Just to get to the next ******** stage
There’s nothing to do except hunt
For secrets and money up front
But the reward’s pretty lame
All the streets look the same
And the bads keep respawning, the cunts
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 is 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?
Well if you like starting punch ups in bars
Or your head has been lodged up your arse
Wolfenstein may give
At least some joy to live
But then why do I bother? Two stars