Wolfenstein NY Comic Con Preview

February 7, 2009 by admin
Filed under: PSP News

With the press all in town for the New York Comic Con, Activision took the opportunity to walk us through the latest build of id and Raven’s new Wolfenstein. It was a good chance to get a sense of how the game plays out through the first few levels. As you’ve likely heard by now, our hero B.J. Boskowitz is back for another FPS in set in a WWII fictional German city. Though, this is time around it’s a much more fleshed out experience — some of your supporting NPC characters help narrate your story. For lots of people, the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to Wolfenstein is zombie Nazis. I didn’t see any of those today (we only saw two levels, so maybe they’ll show up later), but I did get a chance to get a better sense of how the game’s weapons and special powers work.

B.J.’s introductory mission sees him at the destruction of a train containing an unknown Nazi experiment — the premise behind the sci-fi elements within the game. During his battles, the environment periodically loses its gravitational pull, sending rubble and unsuspecting Nazis floating into the air. For whatever reason, this has no affect on our protagonist, who remains firmly planted on the ground while continually shooting at the now vulnerable and motionless enemies. It would be nice to witness the villains flailing around while spraying bullets from their weapons — I mean, the game makes it obvious that they’re still alive because when gravity sets back in, they stand right back up and fight — so why would anti-gravity place them in a lifeless state? But maybe there’s a good reason that I missed. Anyway, it’s not quite as appealing to kill unresponsive and defenseless enemies while they’re seemingly floating on cloud nine, but I assume this only for that part of the game, since this never occurred in the “Church” level, a third of the way into the campaign.

Somewhere between the first level and Church, B.J. discovers a Veil Amulet, a device that gives him access to the Veil dimension. In this dimension, the environment around you retains its shape and form, but everything has a shade of green coating; the combat with the Nazis still persists although they and B.J. are in two different dimensions. And from what I was told, the Nazis don’t have access to the Veil, but are continuously seeking the energy that comes from it called the “Black Sun,” the focus of their experimentation.