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First Person Shooters (Games) Entertainment Games

Early Look At the New Wolfenstein Game 88

Posted by Soulskill from the killing-nazis-is-a-now-national-pastime dept.
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."
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Early Look At the New Wolfenstein Game More

Early Look At the New Wolfenstein Game

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  • marketing gimmick (Score:4, Insightful)

    by romit_icarus ( 613431 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @12:48AM (#27398043) Journal
    Pluck an epic game from the past, slap on a 'feature' = cheap marketing and product development = low-risk/decent return game product.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jessica_alba ( 1234100 )
      "RTCW: Enemy Territory" should be good enough for anyone. Its free, will run at about 1000fps on modern hardware, and has the essentials of a FPS without the fluff.
      auf wiedersehen! ET [wikipedia.org]

    • Is it fun? If not, people will figure it out soon enough. I don't have a problem with it. Most of the time I just want new content (commercial quality) to play around in (mods are fun yes but professional art has its value in my book).

    • Obviously Activision can do whatever they want if they own the rights, but agreed... it's a lame tactic.

      And what's this mystical powers story?! What about taking out an entire Nazi base with your Luger!

      Wonders if they will remake the secret level with Commander Keen, 3D style...

  • Uh, graphics are surfing the uncanny valley anyway (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Walkingshark ( 711886 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @12:52AM (#27398075) Homepage

    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 [ign.com] 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.

    • Re:Uh, graphics are surfing the uncanny valley any (Score:4, Interesting)

      by electrosoccertux ( 874415 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @01:38AM (#27398331)

      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.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A. This has nothing to do with the Uncanny Valley. No commercial game has come anywhere close to reaching that level of realism; indeed, it's doubtful that it will even be possible to achieve that response via a computer monitor.

      B. You don't appear to even know what the Uncanny Valley is.

      C. The Uncanny Valley is an interesting idea but may not even exist.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Creepy ( 93888 )

        some commercial games are pushing into uncanny valley space, especially sports games that want to put real players faces into the games. There is also a company selling facial and movement software and one of their targets is video games.

        the theory does have some merit, IMO - those creepy talking japanese baby robots are freaky (look on youtube - they're white and somewhat anime looking, and that's about all I remember).

    • I had Gain Ground on the Master System and you get it for the PSP now in the Sega Classics Collection ...


  • As expected, I didn't read the article. Just skimmed the images and text. They're reviewing a game that is prioritized for console sales, not PC. ID has sold out for quantity over quality. They're aiming for the people who used to play PC games, but have switched to consoles and remember playing ID releases like Wolfenstein 3D in the olden days. And they'll scoop up some curious new customers as well. Goodbye ID.

    Seth

  • Please...please...no more sequels...please... ...our culture is rotting away, packed with tons of sequels and remakes...

    Somebody...please make something new and fresh...my survival depends on it... ...farewell from the vault...

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Try Fallout 3

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BPPG ( 1181851 )

      There's tons of fresh new games out there. You just have to look for them. A lot of great mainstream games of note have been Portal, and Braid, No More Heroes, Little Big Planet, Left4dead, the list goes on.

      Of course, you may not like them all, but they definitely aren't sequels. (Well, I guess Portal is a kind of spiritual sequel to that one old game that was made by the same team...)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bonch ( 38532 )

        In the same package Portal came in was Half-Life Episode 3 and Team Fortress 2...

  • RTCW:ET (Score:5, Informative)

    by c.r.o.c.o ( 123083 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @01:08AM (#27398175)

    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.

    • I switched to ET:QuakeWars when it was released and really haven't looked back (much :D ). I find it has the same level of teamplay and I enjoy the vehicle play.

      Just wondering, what puts you off in QuakeWars?

      • Personally, I don't like the large maps in Quake Wars. It's way too open (haven for snipers) and I either spend most of the time running around or clumsily crashing my vehicle.

        I think the change in distances requiring people to be good at medium to long range combat really changed the nature of the game, and it doesn't really work for me.

        It probably raised the difficulty bar too high. I'm a fairly average FPS player, and I could play respectably well in ET -- but I get pretty badly pwnd in ETQW (although no

        • I felt that way at first too, but it was because I had a sloppy style honed in RTCW:ET and Nexuiz etc where it was mostly close quarters. Sometimes you can quickly run and gun in when in indoor environments or closed areas and go terminator style, but many times this will end you.

          Once I changed my style to take advantage of cover all the time, drop to crouch or prone every time I am not running and avoid taking the straight line when crossing open spaces I had a much longer life span. Also, always zoom. Ac

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AvitarX ( 172628 )

        I find you need too many people working together in ET:QW. As a casual player it makes it harder to be useful. With vehicles showing their best with a couple people in them, 9v9 no longer feels like a decent amount of people, and I find it hard to get in games with many more people where I am not dominated by better players.

      • I never played the original ET, but ETQW is a beautiful work of art. I'm tempted to install the original ET just to see where ETQW's roots are. But yea..I love the amount of teamwork that's required to accomplish the various objectives. Not to mention the deployables and vehicles rock :). What's your name on ETQW? I've probably played with you, as I'm a regular on the servers. I'm 'ricecraka'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hrieke ( 126185 )

      Fueldump, with two trick jumps, 2m23s.

      Now, what I really want is ET to be updated so it can take use of the multi-core CPUs that I have and not bog down with large open spaces.

  • I'd rather make a sniper shot into Hitler's head in Wolfenstein or be accompanied by a platoon and taking on enemy positions.

    If they're going to 'brand' a game about fighting the Nazis - WTF do ghosts, the paranormal and all this other BS come from. WFS II was great up until all the paranormal crap starting coming up. I just cheated through the rest of the game after. I'd lost all interest.

    I would have hoped that the quality work ID does could be implemented into a -A++ version of COD, brother in Arms or si

    • Re:Lost Touch (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tadrith ( 557354 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @01:25AM (#27398255) Homepage

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Justus ( 18814 )

        Although Spear of Destiny is the prequel to Wolfenstein 3D, it was released about six months afterward. Not that Wolfenstein 3D itself was particularly serious, what with mecha-Hitler, the zombies, etc.

        The series has always had a pretty fantastical bent to it. It's actually worked rather well, in my opinion, and I just hope that they have something similar to Enemy Territory (or original RTCW) multiplayer included.

  • 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.

    • The quantity of killing in a video game is often better than the act of hunting down one person.

      Even if that one person is a game reviewer?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tjstork ( 137384 )

        Even if that one person is a game reviewer?

        Oh, don't be turning my sweeping statements against me with self contradiction now! Ruins the drama of the whole thing. You are supposed to react emotionally to my opening slam of reviewers, not actually -think- about it! :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Triv ( 181010 )

      I mean, did we bail on Dr. Who because it was not Star Wars?

      Absolutely not, considering Doctor Who predates Star Wars by over a decade. Star Wars was not the beginning of all things science fiction.

  • I don't give a damn (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @01:35AM (#27398317) Journal

    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.

    • Just what I thought when reading the summary. Who cares if some blogger out there doesn't like the graphics? IMHO, at this point, graphics look "real enough" to stop noticing them after a few minutes anyway (and have been that way for a few years).

      RTCW had plenty of (again, IMHO) undeserved criticism, but to me, it was just about perfect (well, except near the end). If they can keep about the same level of variety in the story/missions (supernatural, covert ops, plain shoot-em-up, etc.) throughout this one,

  • Have yesterday's titles taught you nothing? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Gameplay over graphics, no exceptions.

  • ...forgive me if I'm missing something, but... it was announced at GDC? I haven't been to GDC for a number of years, but it used to be a developer's conference with lectures, round-tables, etc - not something like E3 where you announced release titles, and nothing much the general public was interested in. When did publishers start pushing wares to the press there?

    • They started pushing things to the press cause its all free. Think about it they didn't have to spend a dime of advertising cash on it to get people to start talking about it. Just look at all of this conversation on it, people are going to keep their eyes out for it to see how it turns out.

  • Generic FPS, slightly-outdated graphics, potentially-fun gravity gimmick, not much else going for it... hrmmm, where have we seen this before?

    Then again, iD tends to make good games so maybe it'll be good this time around.

  • Funny I never thought about it before, why are these id Software Nazis dabbling with abrahamitic zombies...

    At least one could expect them to summon Wothan, Thor, or some other Germanic deity.

  • Insta-Port (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyanara ( 708075 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @07:59AM (#27400211)
    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?

  • RTCW: a very entertaining single player FPS. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @08:57AM (#27400623)

    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).

  • From stuff I have previously read on this title, it will be developed for consoles and the ported to PC, which means in no uncertain terms that it will suck horribly.

    As much as I like Wolfenstein, and loved ET, I will take a pass on this one I think.

  • Google Necrovision, its made by some obscure Ukraine company.

    You play as an American who went to World War One because he is a badass, and you spout cheesy one liners all over the place as you impale zombies on your bayonet.

    I already think it will be better than Wolfenstein.

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