Downhill for id

“Wolfenstein” came out today, and the gaming press seems to be giving it a resounding “meh.” Now even though I have high esteem for the reviewing process as it now functions, I’m not necessarily beholden to their opinion, especially if I haven’t played the game myself. So I won’t commit to anything too extraordinary here, but I will point out that IGN’s review was reasoned and fair-minded. Their relatively indifferent score is justified in the following ways:

1. Meager multiplayer offerings. Son of a gun, I knew it. Every time I saw an interview with someone from id, they gave the sketchiest answers to the multiplayer question I’ve ever heard. They started by patting themselves on the back over how much everyone loved multi in “Return to Castle Wolfenstein,” then they made vague proclamations about continuance. No concrete details. As it turns out, the Live package here is paltry at best: three game modes, none of which are interesting, and a decent but unspectacular 12 person per round cap. That is quite a letdown, especially from such a venerable franchise. I knew there was something fishy.

2. Significant graphical downgrade in multiplayer from single. Yikes. I saw some people make comments to that effect on various boards, but I didn’t believe it until IGN made an adorable attempt to put a positive spin on it:

“Then it’s on to multiplayer, and it’s interesting in that it goes for a decidedly retro look and feel; it ditches the glossier graphics of the single-player game to give character models and animation that is reminiscent of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the 2001 game.”

Aww, you guys, that’s almost cute. But seriously, with a BS filter on, you’re telling me that the software couldn’t take the heat, which I find hilarious because far prettier and more ambitious games have managed to translate their artistic vision into multi without knocking down textures.

3. Absolutely nothing new. You’ll shoot some Nazis, because apparently you’ve never done that before. How on God’s green Earth does id/Raven think this middling entry is going to stack up against “Call of Duty: World at War” or “Battlefield 1943?” The market is clogged, people, you need to do better if you want a seat at the table.

Right, right, they added “the Veil,” which is some kind of alternate reality you step in and out of. This is fancy talk for “turns the screen bright blue and puts outlines around the bad guys.” Amazing. I mean really, a paradigm shift. Let me ask the folks at Raven a question: a few years ago, a game called “Prey” (which used your engine) allowed me to disconnect my soul from my body, and then navigate my comatose corpse through an alien spaceship while hanging upside down in a suspended-gravity chamber. That was years ago. If the word “innovative” is going to be associated with your product, you have to be at least competitive with that. Do you really think you are?

I know I sound harsh here…and I am. It irritates me that a brand name like this can just be pumped for cheap thrills. You’ve got “Wolfenstein,” you have a built-in audience, brand recognition, why not do something new? Don’t just slap the name on a box and shuffle it out the door, you’re wasting time and money that creative people could be using.

In fairness, though, IGN was very kind to them. They gave them the score they deserved, but the wording of the article was as nice as it could possibly be. I mean, did you see how they tried to turn the crap multiplayer graphics into some kind of conscious decision? If you had asked me to find a positive spin on that, I’d have come back with something like “silky smooth frame-rate,” but calling shoddy craftsmanship an “artistic homage” genuinely takes a rhetorical “pair.”

Hey, so unrelated note, I did intend to post a review of “District 9,” but my web browser at work crashed midway through and I don’t feel like doing it again. Here’s a ten second version:

It’s decent. The first half is really good, the second half falls flat by trying to be an action movie. Things that are supposed to be difficult are too easy, bad guys who are supposed to be trained killers have hilariously bad aim (and I mean hilariously bad, it’s not your average convenient missing), and characters make decisions that just don’t feel correct. The whole thing becomes very dramatically lazy and unsatisfying. By the very end, “D-9″ is just barely together, like the zipper on a pair of jeans that don’t fit. And unfortunately for this movie, endings count; a rough beginning wouldn’t be as big a problem.

So yeah, it was fine, but it could have been much, much better if it had held to the boldness and originality of the first half.