Wolfenstein: Youngblood

It was an interesting weekend from a gaming standpoint and a real world standpoint as well. I played a mix of games in part because in my current exploration of all things single player… I aimlessly found myself searching for the next game a few times. Friday I wrapped things up with Quantum Break pretty early, and I feel like I have already shared most of what I want to say about the game. It absolutely stuck the landing and if you find yourself with roughly eight hours of time and this game on sale… I highly suggest checking it out. There is no doubt in my mind that the standout performance by Courtney Hope is ultimately what ended up with her as the protagonist for Control. I really enjoyed this game and its setting and I hope we see elements of it in future Remedy games.

In the realm or real world stuff… I did in fact set my mind to configuring everything downstairs in preparation for Horizon Forbidden West coming out next Friday. This was a bit more tricky than just dragging the console downstairs and connecting it up. It involved adding a new powerstrip, rearranging the base unit for our security system, and also hooking up a small 4k60 HDMI switch that I had been originally planning on installing upstairs at some point. Essentially I was out of HDMI ports on the television and now my consoles are sharing a port. At some point I would like to relocate my Nintendo Switch to downstairs in prep for maybe some Switch Sports and Ring Fit shenanigans. Ultimately I got everything fit into the small area I was working and my controller charger in a manageable state. However I think it goes without saying that the PS5 is always bigger than you expect it to be in your mental math.

From there I was looking for the next game to explore and ultimately I decided to reinstall the 2017 version of Prey by Arkane Studios. I had bounced off this game a few times in the past, but after six hours… I am deciding that this is just not my jam. It is a mechanically interesting world and I dig the whole art deco appearance of the space station you are roaming around. However there just isn’t enough character to drive it forward. It reminds me a lot of a Bioshock game or more directly System Shock… but those games had a much more interesting mythology as well as way more interesting characters to keep you moving forward. This station feels dead and most of your story is delivered in the form of audio diaries you find laying around or emails that you can read off open terminals. There are three voices talking in my ear trying to get me to do what they want, but also… I don’t really have any attachment to any of them.

So ultimately I chucked Prey back in the bin and reinstalled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. I am not exactly sure why I stopped playing this, but if I am remembering correctly there was some technical issue that I had encountered with a save file. As a result when I returned this weekend I rolled back a half dozen saves or so and gave myself a bit of an on-ramp to get caught up to where we were in the game. This is honestly not a bad practice because I remembered the general shape of the story, and backing up a few missions helped to ease me into remembering what was going on. I loved the first game and I have to say that the second game continues introducing us to interesting characters as we take the fight to America.

All told it was a much shorter game than I was expecting, and I think that the intent was to have players spent more time running around and retracing their steps hunting the commanders in various areas you had already visited. I did some of this but nowhere near all of it, because really… at the end of the day on this current play through I was there to see the rest of the story… not be a completionist. There are definitely some really interesting moments, and some others… that I am not sure what the heck was going on. There is one particular moment at the very end, or really close to it… that made almost no sense but whatever. Up until that point I was fully on board with this game, and honestly continued to be on board in part because Debra Wilson is a great actor and Grace Walker is a deeply enjoyable character.

After finishing up Wolfenstein II… my initial thought was to roll straight into Youngblood. So far… I am not really enjoying it as much as I would have hoped. It is very clear that this game was designed to be a co-op experience first… and as a result the single player experience suffers greatly. What you have is a series of big open zones that feel very much like Dishonored 2, where you can roam around freely… but this is also a game where stealth is either perfect or not at all in the form of a stealth suit. So as such skulking around is way less interesting than it was in Dishonored, and it also means you are going loud pretty much from the moment you enter the zone. I can already see the shape of this game and it is going to involve me retreading the same set-pieces over and over as I knock out smaller missions until I finally take on the big boss towers that are seemingly the final area. I want to see the story… but so far I am not really feeling the game. So apart from some errand running, that was pretty much my weekend. I finished Quantum Break and Wolfenstein II: New Colossus and bounced off Prey and am on the border of bouncing off Youngblood. The post The Family Blazkowicz appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.