Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is a prequel to The New Order and sees our hero BJ fighting the Nazi cause over two parts and 8 chapters, originally designed to be DLC for the main game. This is now a piece of standalone content which means you don’t actually need the main game to play it and because it’s a prequel, you don’t even need to catch up on the story.
The first four chapters see you infiltrating Castle Wolfenstein to retrieve an important document that points towards Deathshead’s stronghold you’ll be going after in The New Order. Things don’t quite go according to plan and so you have to escape and of course shoot loads of Nazis who’ve been combined with futuristic tech despite this being the late 1940s.
New things to contend with are super soldiers connected by wires to a power grid. Quite why this would ever be a good idea for a prison is beyond me but it results in a mechanic where you have to pull a lever to shut them down and then rip them apart with a piece of pipe. This is before you get hold of any decent weaponry which, of course, you can dual wield to sacrifice accuracy for more bullets flying towards your enemies.
The pace isn’t quite right at first but things soon pick up and actually, things are more enjoyable than the full priced game thanks to there being more focus here. This is a shooter first and foremost so there’s not much room for wandering around your base and being sent on fetch quests this time around.
The second half of the plot from chapter 5 sees the game take a wild turn towards familiar territory covered by recent games – zombie Nazis. It seems they’ve been digging deep in search of something foul and a massive earthquake unleashes hell on everybody. The fiery zombies are fun to smash around the face and they’re actually extremely deadly. A couple of swipes will kill you. There’s also the added fun of real living Nazis turning undead when you kill them. The chapters are super short here and you’ll rattle through this section fairly quickly which is good in a way as it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
The perk system is back which rewards you for specific gameplay, for example overcharging your health above a certain percentage means your max resting health can be upgraded. It’s stripped down but does encourage further playthroughs on harder difficulties where you can also search for all the secrets. Again, you can also find beds dotted around the place where you can delve into BJ’s nightmares of times gone by. Essentially you play through sections of the original game but with the addition of you and your weaponry looking like and being able to move like this next-gen game.
Because this game is also just for PC and new-gen consoles it also looks very pretty indeed – character models are slightly cartoony but detailed and convincing.
You can rattle through The Old Blood in a day but I still think it’s worth the price of admission at just under 15 quid. It gets an excellent 8 out of 10.
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