For those of you who entered gaming in the mid to late 90’s, you might not know about the history of Wolfenstein. This is the shooter that really launched FPS into the stratosphere. Wolfenstein makes its foray back into the gaming world and in next-gen for that matter. Wolfenstein follows the formula that made it great: killing Nazis with bad ass weaponry. Does this iteration do its predecessors justice? Put it this way, vaporizing Nazi’s with a particle cannon is about as fun as it sounds.

The first detail you will notice about Wolfenstein is that you are going to shoot people. A lot of them. Hundreds if not thousands. The game drops you into a convoluted storyline about the Nazi’s doing something with the Occult to be masters of the world. Who cares? You get to shoot them all. A great facet of the game is that you don’t get 30 kinds of weapons, you get about 8. You can edit them, refit them, and customize them all with increased killing power. By the time you are done souping up your MP-40, it won’t resemble the same gun you picked up in the beginning. The way you navigate around the world is through your supernatural power called The Veil. I won’t spoil it for you, but you this sort of like a cross between Neo seeing the Matrix and using the Sword of Omen in Thundercats. You see shit no one else does. Does this give you an unfair advantage? Yes. Do you care? No, because they are Nazis. They don’t have feelings.

The world you explore can get very repetitive. You walk down street after street of rubble going between safe houses and off site missions to unravel the back story, which in itself makes not much sense. The missions are basically the same formula: go to a house or building. Kill everyone in site. Find some hidden things. Escape. The formula works and there are some moments where you use implaced guns, but it is really all of the same bag. The levels do increase in difficulty, but so do your four Veil powers, which make the game rather easy. I stormed through the Normal difficulty with little problem once I got the controls down. The Veil makes your player so overpowered, I found myself not using it too often for some challenge. The issue with that is, you will miss a lot of the secret items strewn about. It is like the Clapper. Veil on, Veil off, repeat.

The multiplayer feels really tacked on and I had a hard time finding a game because there a far better online shooters out there occupying everybody’s time. The game is great for what it is. It is a straightforward kill-everything-in-sight shooter with better than average graphics, tight controls, and a fun upgrade system. The campaign will last you about 10 hours, depending how much you want to look for hidden stuff. The weapons, especially the Particle Cannon and Tesla Gun make this a serious must rent. If you love it, keep it. You do owe yourself one more return to Wolfenstein. It has been far too long.