Thank you for this video. I was one of the developers on this game - I was a gameplay programmer and then gameplay designer on the title from 2005 till it shipped. The amount of memories this video brought up are shocking and man if you knew the stuff we didn’t ship your mind would be blown. Like at the beginning of the project - everything was open world. id was sure old school linear games were dead and wanted the entire game to be like GTA. It was awful. The tiny hub section we shipped was a remnant from that, and we pushed for linear levels the last two years of the dev cycle to unfuck the game. Weird to watch five years of your life summed up in 50 min but great video, glad you enjoyed the game and gave it another chance.
Holy crap, this game took FIVE YEARS to make? Thanks for sharing all this, I think we could all do with a tell-all about this game, especially since it seemed to come out of nowhere (at least, in my perspective--I think I only knew about this game from the old id website).
One of my favorite little details in this game was how enemies would sometimes react to what weapon you're using, although it would usually go something like "He's got a particle weap-AHHHHH"
I really enjoyed the game, played it through some years ago. Visually it still holds, like the audio, too. Some mechanics are superannoying like the constantly respawning enemies in hub area and the mumbojumbo supernatural twists; would be better without definitely like RTCW as well! Later games in the series are worth playing for all fps gamers.
@@pistool1 But the supernatural elements are what made Wolfenstein stand out from other shooters (not counting the original Castle Wolfenstein from the eighties). Return To Castle Wolfenstein would be like Medal Of Honor Allied Assault or Soldier of Fortune 2 without these elements.
@@stevekramerf242 I agree, I much prefer Wolfenstein having supernatural/sci-fi elements. I really like how the reboot made it clear that the only reason the Nazis had such advanced tech is because they STOLE IT from ancient, advanced Jewish technology. Fascism is an inherently anti-intellectual ideology so of course they wouldn't be able to create anything cool on their own.
@@stevekramerf242 Eh, the sci-fi elements are more than enough (either they stuck with supernatural or sci-fi). I mean most shooters set during WW2 at the time constantly steered away from stuff like “German prototypes of superweapons/gear”. Just look at the reboot. No supernatural stuff, and pure sci-fi/alt-history.
To summarize Civvie’s feelings towards Military FPS games: Games like CoD are Nazis and Games like Doom are Jews and every small group of people that the Nazis wanted to kill
Rage was the first game I got on my Xbox 360. I loved it as a kid. The new rage was TERRIBLE. Between Roseanne and Rage, I fell in love with John Goodman as a voice actor.
@@SIGNOR-G Look up "256-bit rollover" or "integer overflow", basically when an operation in code tries to output a number beyond it's range, it overflows back to zero. This is also what the whole Y2K thing was about.
It bothers me because it's technically wrong. The highest value an 8-bit system can display is 255 not 256. An 8bit system can display 256 DIFFERENT values with 0 being the 1st. So at the very least the old counter was using a weird 9bit system and could've counted into the mid 500s before needing to be updated
@@mesaprime4368 I still thought it was a funny joke despite it not being technically correct. For all we know, the old sewer counter could have used the MAC-10 numeration system.
Omega Lul. Also Civvie, throwing fire axe at the demon thing the "One's That Can't See" (Because YT) solider shoved the generic scientist NPC through demonic portal thingy. Then in less than seven seconds out comes an Insta gibber mutie-huma-demon thing to only just boringly Agent 47 the "Can't See" mans. Lame-O. Raven had a chance than then they blew it. They had a horn and did not toot it, had a Semi-Truck horn and did not Goose (Blare) it.
If I had a nickel for every time Robin Downes voice acted an insane German doctor who did questionable things in WW2, I'd have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
With all the post-war "recruit as many Nazis as possible in preparation for the Cold War" going on, the TF2 Medic might _be_ Deathshead. You don't know. (He might have had plastic surgery).
He slowly turns into a badass nazi ass-kicking soldier at the end of the day. Why have him be a spy? Have they not seen how many Nazi soldiers and SS troops he has torn a new hole in??
Well, usually the good spies work alone. Every time he is captured, he is with someone else. So was he a terrible spy? Or was his partner/team the terrible spies?
This game has a special place in my heart. I bought it as a Freshman in college and faked being sick so I could play it all day. Best decision ever....
To summarize Civvie’s feelings towards Military FPS games: Games like CoD are Nazis and Games like Doom are Jews and every small group of people that the Nazis wanted to kill
I remember ordering the Bionic Commando reboot from Gamefly around the time this game came out, but they sent this game by mistake. I was really disappointed until I put the game in and started playing it.
I know a lot of people think this game is pretty meh, but this genuinely my favorite Wolfenstein. The powers you get, the weapon upgrade system, how downright nasty it get's, absolutely love this game. Also, fun fact, Erik Engle is voiced by a Pre-fame Matt Mercer.
I would upvote your comment, but dont want to be the one to spoil the 69. Anyway, I never understood why this game got the hate it did, aside from the regenerating health mechanic, as the gameplay/shooting is really well done, the visuals still look really good, and the overall presentation feels quite immersive too. I played it when it came out, and since then played it through at least 3 more times - and I still find it really fun.
@@19RaxR91Upvote? It's like. I guess you use Reddit which is ok but some people might not like that and mock you and keep quoting the "upvote" you said.
i just wanna say that I don't seen enough appreciation for Civvie's voice acting. Anytime he gets injured he really puts in his all in his screams and pain-sounds. Respect Civvie!!!
All the Wolfenstein games from RTCW forward are all related. Deathshead is the major connection, followed by caroline becker who holds together 2009 and the machine games titles. A major connection point is that in 2009 she is shot and paralyzed, we assume she died only for her to return in new order. accurately describing what happened in the 2009 title. so yes these small things actually do prove that they are all canonically connected
Civvie doing a "maybe this game deserves more credit than it got" and "I'm not playing this because I feel it would be bad" in the same minute or so is just ... perfect.
Chronicles of Riddick did regenerating health right. Your health bar was a series of cubes and getting shot took some off of the right most cube. It would regenerate after a few seconds, but if it depleted, it would shatter and you'd need to find a health station to restore one cube at a time, and those stations had a limited supply.
Funny that you mention the Chronicles of Riddick games, as they were developed by Starbreeze Studios, where MachineGames was formed by a couple former Starbreeze members.
@@stevekramerf242 IIRC Resistance had the same system but I played it long time ago. Overall, Resistance 1 felt like WW2-ized alternate history Quake 2.
"You're not the one giving orders here. Drop your weapon, Agent Blascowitz!" I'm now imagining him dropping his smg and kicking it aside... followed by a rifle, rocket launcher, lightning gun, experimental weird energy gun, flamethrower, grenades.....
In New Order it would be both pistols, both rifles, both smgs, both shotguns, both laser guns, kraftwerk, several grenades and a selection of knives. I've probably forgotten some
I've been saying this for years. Yes, it's Wolf of Duty, but it's also Raven's Wolf of Duty. It checks the necessary boxes, but they put so much love and care into it that it ends up still being an awesome game. It's a shame so many people overlooked it because they thought they knew what it was before even touching it, and also that it had to be held back to fit the demographic of the era.
@@CunnysmytheThe very same Donna indeed. A couple of midi tracks in Doom and Doom 2 were named after some of the id Team (The Demons in Adrian's Pen and Waiting for Romero to Play are a few examples).
"If you want me to *BUY* the game, you need to *SELL* me the game" Genuinely my one rule for Yo Ho Ho'ing - if I can't buy a game in a way where the developers get my money, no one gets my money.
Exactly. Anyone expecting me to go hunt down a copy of something on ebay for hundreds or thousands of dollars just to "stay legal" can go fuck themselves.
43:43 Yeah if you visit the Black market right before the airfield and talk to the older brother,he reveals Anton (along with Alexandrov) told Deathshead about BJ coming to the train and where to find Caroline (before the castle she mentioned meeting a "contact") so he shot anton dead. It's pretty easy to miss because you need to interact with him to know this,though I think the game just sidelines it in the objectives by telling you to go the market for some reason
According to the top comment from a dev, this is likely thanks to them trying to repurpose and rework the game to be more linear than the “open world” idea that ID was planning on. They probably forgot about it.
I was tickled when The New Order acknowledged the events of this game, the same way Doom 2016 references Doom 64, thus enforcing it's status as official canon 😊
That Hospital mission libes rent free in my mind as the most horror experiences in gaming you are introduced to a new enemy, showed that he can be invisible and is a maniac, not sure how much of a threat to u he is then you follow his path of unnecessary murders, arriving just seconds late to a carnage you could prevent catching glimpses of him escaping then u finally get to fight him and if you dont shoot first on hard, u are dead even later, they make his encounters impressive, being older now I still feel anxiety knowing he is there
I remember a buddy visiting us after a long time of not seeing him, and while waiting for the whole friend group to arrive for festivities, we played a copy of this game together at one of the friends' house. It had couch co-op for the campaign (you could each take a turret in that opening section) so it seemed like a fine way to pass a bit of time. The friend whose house we were at kept telling us how worthless the game was and that we wouldn't have fun. But we played for a couple hours and actually had a pretty good time, much to the surprise and dismay of that friend who owned the copy of the game. That's it, that's the story. It's not a very crazy story or anything, but Civvie's surprise at enjoying this game felt similar to that friend's surprise that my buddy and I were having a good time playing this game together.
I'm sorry, why aren't we talking more about the death animation at 38:40 where the enemy disintegrates into individual bones with their own physics, that goes HARD
"Careful of your own success, your company may be bought out by Activision and you'll be send off to the Call of Duty mines" has become my favorite way of describing irony.
Machine Games were chads, they made their version of Wilhelm Strasse scarred by the zeppelin crash which is why he's so fucked up looking. They said as much in the official character bio, that the near-death experience gave him a new outlook on life.
24:03 Ah the Particle Cannon! Still my absolute favourite weapon of all time. The look, sound design, particle effects, the visceral impact,... pure perfection.
Fun fact: I discovered a Swastika in the german version that Raven forgot to censor. The sale in all of germany was stopped few days after that and every single copy was called back. Good times.
@@ghoulbuster1 Yeah. Because that symbol literally represented Germany at its absolute worst. That time they killed MILLIONS of people for a monstrous cause. It's like if your brother committed a horrible irredeemable act. You and your family wouldn't want to bring them up often after that, wouldn't ya?
I have to admit, I really had a lot of fun with this one. It's my favorite Wolfenstein after Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It just had some original ideas, the atmosphere was really spot-on, just like RtCW. This review is the second best thing that happened today, the first one was meeting John Romero. Thank you Civvie 🤘
I've always really enjoyed this game and thought it got too much hate. Raven was incredibly talented and I love the creativity that shows in their games
That level where you go through everyone with an axe was the gnarliest thing I’ve seen in quite a while!!! On the whole, the storytelling, level and character design were pretty top notch!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
The most redeeming features of this game are throat-shot animation, high-pitched death-screams of particle-cannon victims, kar98 (which is basically a Q2 railgun after the damage upgrade) and these moments when you kill enemy which is dashing towards you, making him fly pass you at light-speed.
Pretty sure it's not out of the question that at this point Axis intelligence has entire teams keeping track of BJ's movements at all times, and the Allies will send him on busywork missions purely as a diversionary action so the rest of the armed forces run in to less resistance on offensives far away from wherever Blazkowicz happens to be that week.
I never beat this game, but it has a special memory. I had just had surgery and I was undergoing cancer treatment, but the treatments were intensive and I was away from home with my mom for a while. I missed my dad and my dogs very much. My dad visited and brought my 360, other games I liked, and this Wolfenstein that he'd bought for me. I didn't particularly click with this game, but when you're loopy on morphine and trying not to focus on an insanely sore surgery wound- any escapism is welcome.
That little segment right before the 4 minute mark is a great example of why i love civvie so much. His colorful word play while also having genuine critisism and venting anger is so beautifully done.
I liked this Wolfenstein, the fact that treasure/gold you find served for upgrading your weapons was a neat idea. The arsenal was more or a refined version of the RtCW.(MP44, L44 and Particle Cannon still being my favourite guns in this.) By the end, having everything upgraded, along with the Medallion powers, you felt like the Doomslayer- or Nazislayer in this case. The medallion and it's powers was also a neat touch, a staple in the 2008-2013 era. It felt like a prototype for the device in Singularity. Only critique I had was, using the medallion and it's "otherworld" made me sick from overuse. And the sprinting wobble combined with it... ugh. I think the wobble is actually the worse I've seen in any FPS game.
The wobble is so strange, and for some reason its linked to the scopes, so if you disable it (its disabled by default in the my abandonware) it breaks the game
CV glosses over it, but Mire has an awesome upgrade to it, which turns any closeby low level enemy into a litteral dust, or more accurately, sand in time or sant, since you are turning them into a past tense great power up, you run to your enemies and just the moment they are about to open fire, they are sant statues
One of the local gaming magazines managed to send their crew to Raven's offices while this game and Singularity were still in development - they recorded a little studio tour with Raven guys showing off bits of their tech, especially on the audio/video side. One of their big bragging points was a 3D scanner device that was supposed to make prop-making quicker (you scan the object, or even a person, and get a rough 3D model that you can rework into a game-ready mesh) - I wonder how much it actually contributed in the end. The game itself got a solid 7/10 "it's fine" when the review came out, and looking at its footage now... man, was this baby strangled in the crib by 7th gen design trends and the blind chase after the mythical "CoD audience".
Man, that's so cool, I like 3D modeling and wish I was better at it lol I feel like not enough people appreciate 3D modelers, all anyone talks about is textures or coding, nobody ever talks about 3D modeling.
The Old Blood is kinda like if RTCW had the first and last half of the game's events switched in terms of what order they happen in. There's a reference to the X Labs in the beginning of The Old Blood, which leads me to believe: In the MachineGames Wolfenstein timeline, BJ did his globe trotting and trying to find Death'sHead before discovering any of the Paranormal Division's activities. Also, Helga in the Old Blood finds a completely different set of paranormal things in a different place. She also was more of an archeologist / ancient treasure hunter, whereas in RTCW, she was a cultist of the final boss, who was leading a witches coven. So it's very similar to RTCW to the point of being a reboot, but to make sense of it being a prequel to The New Order, they switched around what events in RTCW happen at which time.
RTCW and Wolf '09 always gave me Indiana Jones vibes. Wolf '09 overall was a banger when it came out. I'm glad its getting more love now, and i hope it gets a re-release on gog and steam.
Let us pray for the Raven devs trapped in the Activision mines, condemned to lifetime of solitude and servitude. Brothers, we must band together and break the shackles that confine them. We must free the Raven so it may rise and strike at the heart of this (Pulls out picture of Bobby Kotick) grotesque abomination. Free the Raven, Brothers.
4:22 Wrong, Wolfenstein 2009 actually does take place after RTCW. The two guys you meet with in the beginning are the same as from the previous game, and there were even tie-in motion comics that connected the game to RTCW and even Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny. Wild stuff.
Another correction: more like a slightly different take on RtCW, especially since the OSA advisors have different names in Wolf2009 and also TNO+TOB. I swear, I really hope that promised MachineGames Wolfenstein III goes the Multiversal route and explains all these suspected reality warping moments from shenanigans caused by the terribad Youngblood universe.
@michaelandreipalon359 Hopefully the first thing that happens in the next game has the daughters get vaporized or something and you see different, more lucid, daughters at the end.
Also Deathshead is back, and wants revenge on BJ for destroying his x-lab and his super soldiers. So if the game wasn't connected to RTCW then him wanting revenge on BJ would make no sense.
@merasmurry1460 I would accept an AI Deathshead like Marvel Zola, that would actually be pretty interesting, leaving him capable of taunting the Blaskowitz family the whole game...
It's a flawed, but good game. Could stand a remaster to iron out some of the issues, maybe even replace the regen health with healthpacks and turkey dinners.
@@lukabrasi001 Return To Castle Wolfenstein has much of that as well. Very healthy mix of the evil occult and Nazi super science, and it's a bunch of fun adventures all the way until the end.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine i know, but what i'm saying is this movie had much more of that, it's like everything RTCW set up, things are dialed higher here. RTCW is good too but it generally lacks variety and it's one concrete bunker after the next, the night level in the village was top tier though
OK as someone who wrote his BA on the Kreisau Circle I am baffled by them being mentioned as well as stunned in which context they are mentioned, what a roller coaster xD
We are one step closer to Civvie and Ross doing a whole review together. Also remembering when Yahtzee thought this was as bland as shooters would get so he did it in limerick style is still how I picture this game.
I feel one very important thing was missed out on this review. When you get the Kar98 the big bore upgrade, the shots now sever limbs and provide a whole new slew of death animations. The animation on that bolt action is still amazing, like it is meant to be chopping through fingers and carrots rather than sliding in cartridges.
Makes me wonder if Kurt Vonnegut is there as an easter egg. Theres a member of the Kreisau circle in RTCW called Karl Villigut, and Blaskowicz quotes Slaughterhouse Five in TNO so it goes.
Civvie never mentioned it but so many game protagonists looked exactly the same around the 2000s and early 2010s. Short hair, 5 oclock shadow, leather jacket. He looks like Daniel Garner from Painkiller and that other guy from exodus
Feels like it was just yesterday that I rented this game from Blockbuster.... hearing you say it was almost 15 years ago gave me goosebumps. Literally half my lifetime ago. Though the game wasn't especially memorable and as I recall rather short, I did have a good deal of fun playing it.
I did not play this game when it came out, playing it for the first time only a couple of years ago, and I must say that I honestly thought it was fantastically fun right off the bat. I loved how prominent the occult stuff was and being able to use the cool powers was fun.
Fun fact: you can use the timer app on your iPhone as a sleep timer by setting the ringer to “STOP PLAYING”, which makes any video you’re listening to stop and locks your screen. Been using it and old Civvie vids to fall asleep for months now.
The funny thing about this game; is that The New Order goes off THIS GAME. Mainly because of Deaths Head. “They didn’t do anything with this guy; so let’s do something about it!” And so they did.
You might hate me but this is my favourite Wolfenstein game. Raven just were masters at what they were doing, and this game shows it! This game was heavily censored here so I got myself an internet copy, and I was so impressed that I immediately ordered it from the UK, fearing that I might get into legal trouble if it was discovered at customs. Germany did not take swastikas lightly then. But it came without trouble, but still I was waiting for at least a month for a letter from the courts. It never came :) The box is one of my favourite collectables! Thank you for bringing it back into the spotlight!
8:45 "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" also had English-speaking German soldiers (Heck, even the Spanish dub version I played as a kid had Spanish-speaking German soldiers), and I honestly don't see much of an issue with it. It adds to the cheesiness of Wolfenstein in general (thinking of Indiana Jones fighting German soldiers that spoke English too). So I always get so confused when this is a "big" issue with only Wolfenstein '09, when this was a thing that was done in the past with their better entries. We had other WW2 shooters like classic "Call of Duty "and "Medal of Honor" that had German soldiers speak German, so having Wolfenstein go the other way was fine by me.
If you had both this game and Wolfenstein 3D on PS3, then you'll get a message at the beginning of 2009 that says something like "Due to BJ's heroic escapades in Castle Wolfenstein, he will start this journey off with extra gold" which, of course, is given to you. Like 2500g I think.
Ah yes... The violent retching memories from that sprint animation. I'm glad most developers have learned that literally no one wants view bobbing in their first person game since then. You know what, I'm gonna watch the rest of the video down here, I can't with this shaking
I remember playing the demo of this game over and over again on the Xbox 360 as a ‘person of appropriate age’. At the time, this and the left for dead 2 demo was all I could get my hands on and I honestly found it a lot of fun. Tried to find it once then forgot about it when I couldn’t find a place to buy it, thanks for spurring the memory
With the recent spat of UA-camrs retiring, stepping down, or going on hiatus, I'm glad Civvie is here. Though obviously if he does need to take a break he should totally do so
@@wolfgangvan-uber6515 off the top of my head, Meat Canyon is pivoting from frequent animations to more of a vlog style of thing, Matpat is spending more time with their family (terrible priority sarcasm), JoCat was bullied off by sociopaths for making a wholesome song animation, and I'm sure there are others
Btw, apparently the reason the game isn’t available for legal digital distribution is because Bethesda thinks the game is bad and that Activision did a crap job on it, and this, re-releasing it would damage the brand, no joke. Oh, but Youngblood is totally an awesome game by comparison in their eyes. Thanks a lot Bethesda. Anyways, I look forward to when you eventually cover The New Order. That’s my favorite one in the series, and one of my all time favorite games in general.
Wolfenstein 2009 didn't sell well, but definitely didn't damage the brand. That'd be Wolfenstein The New Colossus or especially Youngblood. New Order was great, almost beat Return to Castle Wolfenstein as my favorite Wolf. Shame Raven never got to make Soldier of Fortune 3.
basically the tone of new colossus is just kind of all over the place... let me set the scene. Bj and his wife have a serious conversation and then a guy steps out of a bathroom shouting about the awesome shit he just took. I'm serious.
@FREECIVVIE, The tone of New Colossus is pure cringe. We went from the over the top but taken serious tone of New Order and The Old Blood to a freakin crazy cartoon. Youngblood is worse and arguably the worst Wolfenstein game so far.
@@michaelandreipalon359 'M, I don't know.. The Old Blood was a stand-alone prequel and, judging by the ending, canonically so. Freedom Chronicles were single-digit-hour long dlcs reusing campaign maps to tell in universe comic book stories.
Story wise, i feel this one was the timeline that leads to the modern games. And that return to Castle wulfenstien is the timeline where things went correct.
Thank you! I remember seeing the box of this on the shelves - back when video games still sold mostly in brick-and-mortar stores - and thinking I need to save up play this. Never got around to it, though. I think this was the era where I was fresh out of college, had just moved cities and met my to-be-and-now wife. Raven has always been good at implementing elements into gameplay design. Tomes of power/alternative fire modes, inventory systems. One thing that caught me off-guard here was the Veil system. This game came out in 2009, but the first time I remember functional viewmodes in Thief (2014) and Tomb Raider (2013). Was this the first game to have this functionality? (Screw you, Corridor 7, no one cares about you!)
Oh, i remember this one. I have it on disk, too! Always kinda enjoyed the blend of gun combat and weird abilities you can juggle. Probably the only game i would like to have a physical merch of. Having a replica of amulet would be nice.
The early mention of forcing quicksaves brought back memories. I inadvertently broke the boss battle at 45:20 where I couldn’t destroy the machines because of a badly timed quicksave, but ran around for ages not realising they could be destroyed in the first place.
4:35 Actually [fixes glasses] The MachineGames Wolfenstein titles are directly linked to Wolfenstein 2009. In The New Order when we meet the resistance the lady running it is the same one that leads the one in 2009. She even mentiones how she survives the headquarters destruction.
Kind of, but also kind of not. Same with how it's kind of a sequel to RTCW due to BJ mentioning clashing with Deathshead at the X-Labs, but the timeline just doesn't really make sense.
Yeah, i always thought old blood and new order is a bit of a retelling of RTCW, in both helga dies to the monster, however deathshead dies in new order only, so honestly its not worth the effort of trying to piece together these timelines because i doubt even the devs cared
Not really. Caroline and Deathshead are the only things to connect the 2009 game as well as some vague throwaway nods of their backstories. But they are completely different characters (BJ as well is nothing at all like his 2009 incarnation), and there is nothing to reference the events of Wolf 2009 if it even occurred (or if it did, it is a completely different sort of events). There are also some other inconsistencies when you try to pass TNO as a direct sequel to 2009 (the obviously different clashing tones, The Old Blood replacing the first half of RTCW, and even the playable Wolf3D levels in TOB having a boss fight with Hans Grosse). It's a confusing mess all around.
My distinct memory of this game as a kid is getting it for a few bucks used from a GameStop and I played up until the ninja enemy things I just stopped playing and returned it for pennies.
@@diggadirt393 probably consumed by global financial crisis back then I remember that era - great games on great consoles and on the other side of life? crisis
I remember when Ross reviewed this game for a Game Dungeon episode, and he put on the Halloween mode where all the enemies had pumpkin heads. I don’t think he ever pointed it out either.
Thank you for this video. I was one of the developers on this game - I was a gameplay programmer and then gameplay designer on the title from 2005 till it shipped. The amount of memories this video brought up are shocking and man if you knew the stuff we didn’t ship your mind would be blown. Like at the beginning of the project - everything was open world. id was sure old school linear games were dead and wanted the entire game to be like GTA. It was awful. The tiny hub section we shipped was a remnant from that, and we pushed for linear levels the last two years of the dev cycle to unfuck the game. Weird to watch five years of your life summed up in 50 min but great video, glad you enjoyed the game and gave it another chance.
Thanks for sharing!
Holy crap, this game took FIVE YEARS to make? Thanks for sharing all this, I think we could all do with a tell-all about this game, especially since it seemed to come out of nowhere (at least, in my perspective--I think I only knew about this game from the old id website).
That’s super interesting. Given how much fun the linear missions are you guys definitely made the right call.
Great work on it. Seriously such a fun game. Sad that it fell into the abandonware category
It's shocking to hear how out of touch id was back then. I genuinely enjoyed this game back when I played it. I hope it gets a digital release!
One of my favorite little details in this game was how enemies would sometimes react to what weapon you're using, although it would usually go something like "He's got a particle weap-AHHHHH"
I really enjoyed the game, played it through some years ago. Visually it still holds, like the audio, too. Some mechanics are superannoying like the constantly respawning enemies in hub area and the mumbojumbo supernatural twists; would be better without definitely like RTCW as well! Later games in the series are worth playing for all fps gamers.
@@pistool1 But the supernatural elements are what made Wolfenstein stand out from other shooters (not counting the original Castle Wolfenstein from the eighties). Return To Castle Wolfenstein would be like Medal Of Honor Allied Assault or Soldier of Fortune 2 without these elements.
@@stevekramerf242 I agree, I much prefer Wolfenstein having supernatural/sci-fi elements. I really like how the reboot made it clear that the only reason the Nazis had such advanced tech is because they STOLE IT from ancient, advanced Jewish technology. Fascism is an inherently anti-intellectual ideology so of course they wouldn't be able to create anything cool on their own.
My favorite was always "nein! He's got a tesla gun!"
@@stevekramerf242 Eh, the sci-fi elements are more than enough (either they stuck with supernatural or sci-fi). I mean most shooters set during WW2 at the time constantly steered away from stuff like “German prototypes of superweapons/gear”.
Just look at the reboot. No supernatural stuff, and pure sci-fi/alt-history.
With this, we're one step closer to Civvie making a proper video on Rage.
Geez you guys really want him to play rage eh
@@Arclightning How many games have John Goodman in it?
@@mrbigglezworth42 looks like about 9
To summarize Civvie’s feelings towards Military FPS games: Games like CoD are Nazis and Games like Doom are Jews and every small group of people that the Nazis wanted to kill
Rage was the first game I got on my Xbox 360. I loved it as a kid. The new rage was TERRIBLE. Between Roseanne and Rage, I fell in love with John Goodman as a voice actor.
That gag about the sewer count not going over 256 really got me.
Elaborate
@@SIGNOR-GBe polite.
@@SIGNOR-G Look up "256-bit rollover" or "integer overflow", basically when an operation in code tries to output a number beyond it's range, it overflows back to zero. This is also what the whole Y2K thing was about.
It bothers me because it's technically wrong. The highest value an 8-bit system can display is 255 not 256. An 8bit system can display 256 DIFFERENT values with 0 being the 1st. So at the very least the old counter was using a weird 9bit system and could've counted into the mid 500s before needing to be updated
@@mesaprime4368 I still thought it was a funny joke despite it not being technically correct. For all we know, the old sewer counter could have used the MAC-10 numeration system.
"What's wrong, run out of bullets?" - Nazi who was chopped in half
Has very similar energy to:
"What're you gonna do, stab me?" - Stab Victim
Omega Lul. Also Civvie, throwing fire axe at the demon thing the "One's That Can't See" (Because YT) solider shoved the generic scientist NPC through demonic portal thingy. Then in less than seven seconds out comes an Insta gibber mutie-huma-demon thing to only just boringly Agent 47 the "Can't See" mans. Lame-O. Raven had a chance than then they blew it. They had a horn and did not toot it, had a Semi-Truck horn and did not Goose (Blare) it.
Duuude! Civvie has over 400 thousand views in only 2 weeks! That's crazy to me.
half the enemies you kill in morrowind. "I'M GONNA ENJOY THIS" *immediately dies*
Shades of enemies in No More Heroes shouting "MY SPLEEN" after being chopped in half
Nothing is more hilarious to me than Deathshead being voiced by the TF2 medic.
If I had a nickel for every time Robin Downes voice acted an insane German doctor who did questionable things in WW2, I'd have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
"Ze healing is not as rewarding as ze hurting!"
Really? Not the fact that B.J. is just a higher-poly Max Payne?
With all the post-war "recruit as many Nazis as possible in preparation for the Cold War" going on, the TF2 Medic might _be_ Deathshead. You don't know. (He might have had plastic surgery).
This comment genuinely made me laugh.
B.J. being a terrible spy make sense. He is captured in nearly every new reboot right from the beginning.
He slowly turns into a badass nazi ass-kicking soldier at the end of the day. Why have him be a spy? Have they not seen how many Nazi soldiers and SS troops he has torn a new hole in??
I mean dude was also captured in Wolf3D E1 so yeah he was always not so great
Well, usually the good spies work alone. Every time he is captured, he is with someone else. So was he a terrible spy? Or was his partner/team the terrible spies?
All I know is that he didn't practice his german in the old blood, he's a more of guerilla fighter than a spy
@@lordpalandus11What about E1 in Wolf3D?
This game has a special place in my heart. I bought it as a Freshman in college and faked being sick so I could play it all day. Best decision ever....
To summarize Civvie’s feelings towards Military FPS games: Games like CoD are Nazis and Games like Doom are Jews and every small group of people that the Nazis wanted to kill
Aaah, life decisions... Very decisive.
Oh my God what an incredible story
not every day of ones life needs to be productive hell i am on day 11'870 and still kickin.@@rem792
I remember ordering the Bionic Commando reboot from Gamefly around the time this game came out, but they sent this game by mistake. I was really disappointed until I put the game in and started playing it.
I know a lot of people think this game is pretty meh, but this genuinely my favorite Wolfenstein. The powers you get, the weapon upgrade system, how downright nasty it get's, absolutely love this game.
Also, fun fact, Erik Engle is voiced by a Pre-fame Matt Mercer.
I would upvote your comment, but dont want to be the one to spoil the 69.
Anyway, I never understood why this game got the hate it did, aside from the regenerating health mechanic, as the gameplay/shooting is really well done, the visuals still look really good, and the overall presentation feels quite immersive too. I played it when it came out, and since then played it through at least 3 more times - and I still find it really fun.
@@19RaxR91Upvote? It's like. I guess you use Reddit which is ok but some people might not like that and mock you and keep quoting the "upvote" you said.
@@19RaxR91Upvote? It's like. People might not like you said that and make fun of it.
I can't see my own two replies.
@@justhere4637I can't see them either and youtube does say they should be there.
i just wanna say that I don't seen enough appreciation for Civvie's voice acting.
Anytime he gets injured he really puts in his all in his screams and pain-sounds.
Respect Civvie!!!
Well, Civvie is a (mandatory) method actor.
BJ has "Max Payne" face throughout the entire game. It's kind of hilarious.
"The final usage of the Thule medallion was an exclamation that everything had led to this point. I released my finger off my STG43 and it was over"
Well if you were fighting nazis as long as he has non stop you’d have to poop too!
@@benr7652Nice xD
Only less constipated looking
@@benr7652 nice reference to Max Payne 1 ending slides
All the Wolfenstein games from RTCW forward are all related. Deathshead is the major connection, followed by caroline becker who holds together 2009 and the machine games titles. A major connection point is that in 2009 she is shot and paralyzed, we assume she died only for her to return in new order. accurately describing what happened in the 2009 title. so yes these small things actually do prove that they are all canonically connected
Dude I was looking for this comment lol!!
Civvie doing a "maybe this game deserves more credit than it got" and "I'm not playing this because I feel it would be bad" in the same minute or so is just ... perfect.
Perfect? He used to be a lot smarter than this. I wonder if that self parody joke he made in the beginning was hinting at something...
@@nononoohfuckwhat crawled up your ass and laid eggs?
Chronicles of Riddick did regenerating health right. Your health bar was a series of cubes and getting shot took some off of the right most cube. It would regenerate after a few seconds, but if it depleted, it would shatter and you'd need to find a health station to restore one cube at a time, and those stations had a limited supply.
Funny that you mention the Chronicles of Riddick games, as they were developed by Starbreeze Studios, where MachineGames was formed by a couple former Starbreeze members.
Condemned 2 has a similar health system. Also a game that is near unknown today.
@@stevekramerf242 IIRC Resistance had the same system but I played it long time ago. Overall, Resistance 1 felt like WW2-ized alternate history Quake 2.
@@noop9kI wish they would port those games to PC
There’s no one way to do it right. It can be used in multiple ways to best accommodate the gameplay. Only closed-minded boomers can’t appreciate this
"You're not the one giving orders here. Drop your weapon, Agent Blascowitz!" I'm now imagining him dropping his smg and kicking it aside... followed by a rifle, rocket launcher, lightning gun, experimental weird energy gun, flamethrower, grenades.....
They actually did that joke in "The Old Blood"!
Blascowitz confirmed for Leslie Nielson in VG format!
@@vaclav4435yeah he puts all his guns in a box
In New Order it would be both pistols, both rifles, both smgs, both shotguns, both laser guns, kraftwerk, several grenades and a selection of knives.
I've probably forgotten some
I've been saying this for years. Yes, it's Wolf of Duty, but it's also Raven's Wolf of Duty. It checks the necessary boxes, but they put so much love and care into it that it ends up still being an awesome game. It's a shame so many people overlooked it because they thought they knew what it was before even touching it, and also that it had to be held back to fit the demographic of the era.
Mind you, it's the CoD, Cod:UO and COD 2 version of WW II FRPS, so it's still quite good.
More like cod2@@psychodrummer1567
Honestly, a vestige of a bygone, better era. A meh game from Raven is well above average quality by today's standards.
@@psychodrummer1567 Yeah tbh I'd love if we were still getting CoD1/2 clones.
"You're going to be a grease fire nobody remembers" goes hard.
The end of Randy Pitchford.
This shit ain't nothin' to me, man.
@@TheTundraTerrorI’m a dog.
Fun Fact: Kevin Cloud was a producer on this game whose been with id Software since Wolfenstein 3D.
And he is one of the only two OG id members to still be working at id today, the other being Donna Jackson.
@@smugplush which is why I brought it up. ^-^
He "played" the Doomguy in the original Doom games (i.e. his manly Wookiee arms were photographed to make the hand sprites)
@@brendanhinderliter6627 Is that Donna of 'Donna to the Rescue' fame
@@CunnysmytheThe very same Donna indeed. A couple of midi tracks in Doom and Doom 2 were named after some of the id Team (The Demons in Adrian's Pen and Waiting for Romero to Play are a few examples).
"If you want me to *BUY* the game, you need to *SELL* me the game"
Genuinely my one rule for Yo Ho Ho'ing - if I can't buy a game in a way where the developers get my money, no one gets my money.
Arrr, pass me the VPN browser matey. We be sailin' the Seven Severs with untouched games!
(with slight russian accent) And this is why we, mateys, should stick together to each other
Exactly. Anyone expecting me to go hunt down a copy of something on ebay for hundreds or thousands of dollars just to "stay legal" can go fuck themselves.
That’s the same rule I follow.
Sorry to break it to ya, but developers get a salary and a yearly bonus.
43:43 Yeah if you visit the Black market right before the airfield and talk to the older brother,he reveals Anton (along with Alexandrov) told Deathshead about BJ coming to the train and where to find Caroline (before the castle she mentioned meeting a "contact") so he shot anton dead. It's pretty easy to miss because you need to interact with him to know this,though I think the game just sidelines it in the objectives by telling you to go the market for some reason
He might be a crooked business man/criminal...but at least he ain't no Nazi.
According to the top comment from a dev, this is likely thanks to them trying to repurpose and rework the game to be more linear than the “open world” idea that ID was planning on. They probably forgot about it.
I was tickled when The New Order acknowledged the events of this game, the same way Doom 2016 references Doom 64, thus enforcing it's status as official canon 😊
Love how literally all aesthetics of this game were inspired by first scene of Hellboy
Ain't Hellboy got released after Wolfenstein?
@@mr_sauce_cooks no Hellboy was 2004
I always felt like they were deliberately setting up the Doom connection in this one
There's a doom connection?
@@jeremygalloway1348 the whole game revolves around magical artifacts and has a heavy emphasis on the occultish/hellboy part of nazi belief
That Hospital mission libes rent free in my mind as the most horror experiences in gaming
you are introduced to a new enemy, showed that he can be invisible and is a maniac, not sure how much of a threat to u he is
then you follow his path of unnecessary murders, arriving just seconds late to a carnage you could prevent catching glimpses of him escaping
then u finally get to fight him and if you dont shoot first on hard, u are dead
even later, they make his encounters impressive, being older now I still feel anxiety knowing he is there
I remember a buddy visiting us after a long time of not seeing him, and while waiting for the whole friend group to arrive for festivities, we played a copy of this game together at one of the friends' house. It had couch co-op for the campaign (you could each take a turret in that opening section) so it seemed like a fine way to pass a bit of time. The friend whose house we were at kept telling us how worthless the game was and that we wouldn't have fun.
But we played for a couple hours and actually had a pretty good time, much to the surprise and dismay of that friend who owned the copy of the game.
That's it, that's the story. It's not a very crazy story or anything, but Civvie's surprise at enjoying this game felt similar to that friend's surprise that my buddy and I were having a good time playing this game together.
I'm sorry, why aren't we talking more about the death animation at 38:40 where the enemy disintegrates into individual bones with their own physics, that goes HARD
"The Nazis fuck around, and I'm an agent of finding out."
Hardest line ever spoken by Civvie
"No, I absolutely MUST fuck around and additionally FIND OUT!"
- Freiza, Dragon Ball Z, probably
Put is on the Steam page!...Wait..you cant.
He's going to break them, like a Kit-Kat bar.
I'm not locked in here with you your
Locked in here with me.😂
This guy killed hitler.😮
"Careful of your own success, your company may be bought out by Activision and you'll be send off to the Call of Duty mines" has become my favorite way of describing irony.
The whole game is just B.J. running all over Isenstadt on a secret mission to charge his crystals.
Starfield is way worse than Fallout 76
I too fight demonic nazis to charge my JO crystals
JO crystals
Machine Games were chads, they made their version of Wilhelm Strasse scarred by the zeppelin crash which is why he's so fucked up looking. They said as much in the official character bio, that the near-death experience gave him a new outlook on life.
24:03 Ah the Particle Cannon! Still my absolute favourite weapon of all time. The look, sound design, particle effects, the visceral impact,... pure perfection.
Fun fact: I discovered a Swastika in the german version that Raven forgot to censor.
The sale in all of germany was stopped few days after that and every single copy was called back. Good times.
Am I reading your post right? You found it and reported it to the authorities?
Such a totalitarian response. One could say the germans are swastika nazis
Nah, it was published as an article on a german website and Activision decided to pull it back. No authorities involved
They are so afraid of a little symbol 😆
@@ghoulbuster1 Yeah. Because that symbol literally represented Germany at its absolute worst. That time they killed MILLIONS of people for a monstrous cause. It's like if your brother committed a horrible irredeemable act. You and your family wouldn't want to bring them up often after that, wouldn't ya?
I have to admit, I really had a lot of fun with this one. It's my favorite Wolfenstein after Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It just had some original ideas, the atmosphere was really spot-on, just like RtCW. This review is the second best thing that happened today, the first one was meeting John Romero. Thank you Civvie 🤘
I've always really enjoyed this game and thought it got too much hate. Raven was incredibly talented and I love the creativity that shows in their games
That level where you go through everyone with an axe was the gnarliest thing I’ve seen in quite a while!!! On the whole, the storytelling, level and character design were pretty top notch!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
The most redeeming features of this game are throat-shot animation, high-pitched death-screams of particle-cannon victims, kar98 (which is basically a Q2 railgun after the damage upgrade) and these moments when you kill enemy which is dashing towards you, making him fly pass you at light-speed.
Pretty sure it's not out of the question that at this point Axis intelligence has entire teams keeping track of BJ's movements at all times, and the Allies will send him on busywork missions purely as a diversionary action so the rest of the armed forces run in to less resistance on offensives far away from wherever Blazkowicz happens to be that week.
oldest trick in book! Under nose whole time!!
And if the distraction can complete a couple objectives other than just being a decoy, then the higher-ups ain’t gonna complain.
@@RickJaegerJUST SO GORDON CAN PLAY ON EASY MODE!?!?!?!?
nothing more late 2000s shooter than having a giant enemy spider boss
I never beat this game, but it has a special memory.
I had just had surgery and I was undergoing cancer treatment, but the treatments were intensive and I was away from home with my mom for a while. I missed my dad and my dogs very much.
My dad visited and brought my 360, other games I liked, and this Wolfenstein that he'd bought for me. I didn't particularly click with this game, but when you're loopy on morphine and trying not to focus on an insanely sore surgery wound- any escapism is welcome.
So brave 🥲
Always wondered what morphine would feel like. I hope all is well with you
@Itsokaytoleaveyourdoginahotcar I'm fine, this was over 14 years back. I appreciate the concern, though
Damn, I'm glad you're doin alright, stranger.
Doing alright? I hope you the best.
That little segment right before the 4 minute mark is a great example of why i love civvie so much. His colorful word play while also having genuine critisism and venting anger is so beautifully done.
I liked this Wolfenstein, the fact that treasure/gold you find served for upgrading your weapons was a neat idea. The arsenal was more or a refined version of the RtCW.(MP44, L44 and Particle Cannon still being my favourite guns in this.) By the end, having everything upgraded, along with the Medallion powers, you felt like the Doomslayer- or Nazislayer in this case.
The medallion and it's powers was also a neat touch, a staple in the 2008-2013 era. It felt like a prototype for the device in Singularity.
Only critique I had was, using the medallion and it's "otherworld" made me sick from overuse. And the sprinting wobble combined with it... ugh. I think the wobble is actually the worse I've seen in any FPS game.
The wobble is so strange, and for some reason its linked to the scopes, so if you disable it (its disabled by default in the my abandonware) it breaks the game
To think it was Ross who couldn't get through this, but course Civvie can
Ross even said that the title is horrible in his video in the game.
I can agree on calling it Wolfenstein: Black Sun.
@@ChaseMC215 Wolfenstein: Teal Edition
@@durandol @ChaseMC215 Wolfenstein: That Man is a Spy! edition
BJWENEEDYOUTODEFENDUSWITHTHEMG42
CV glosses over it, but Mire has an awesome upgrade to it, which turns any closeby low level enemy into a litteral dust, or more accurately, sand in time or sant, since you are turning them into a past tense
great power up, you run to your enemies and just the moment they are about to open fire, they are sant statues
I was wondering what had happened to that one guy who was petrified before he shot him.
The timing is perfect, I just got this game and started playing around the same time as you. Great video, I enjoyed this game.
I fondly remember this Wolfenstein game and wish more people knew about it and that it was actually available to buy. Great video!
That joke about how the sewer count won't go over 256 is actually brilliant
It should be 255, computers start counting with 0. :)
I don’t get it
@@caesarpizza1338me neither, and I can't be bothered Googling it
@@caesarpizza1338 It's an 8 bit joke (I think), specifically about how 8 bit stuff can only hold 256 colors.
@@MrTheilcolors?
Love Raven so much. Singularity was such a blast to play.
Bring back Singularity and Soldier of Fortune. I miss FPS games like those now.
Generic game.
Here's hoping that Microsoft liberates them along with the other studios from the Call of Duty slave mines.
Yeah it was great but those Phase Ticks can go right to hell
@@DrundeFPS Bullshit
One of the local gaming magazines managed to send their crew to Raven's offices while this game and Singularity were still in development - they recorded a little studio tour with Raven guys showing off bits of their tech, especially on the audio/video side. One of their big bragging points was a 3D scanner device that was supposed to make prop-making quicker (you scan the object, or even a person, and get a rough 3D model that you can rework into a game-ready mesh) - I wonder how much it actually contributed in the end.
The game itself got a solid 7/10 "it's fine" when the review came out, and looking at its footage now... man, was this baby strangled in the crib by 7th gen design trends and the blind chase after the mythical "CoD audience".
Man, that's so cool, I like 3D modeling and wish I was better at it lol I feel like not enough people appreciate 3D modelers, all anyone talks about is textures or coding, nobody ever talks about 3D modeling.
The Old Blood is kinda like if RTCW had the first and last half of the game's events switched in terms of what order they happen in. There's a reference to the X Labs in the beginning of The Old Blood, which leads me to believe: In the MachineGames Wolfenstein timeline, BJ did his globe trotting and trying to find Death'sHead before discovering any of the Paranormal Division's activities. Also, Helga in the Old Blood finds a completely different set of paranormal things in a different place. She also was more of an archeologist / ancient treasure hunter, whereas in RTCW, she was a cultist of the final boss, who was leading a witches coven. So it's very similar to RTCW to the point of being a reboot, but to make sense of it being a prequel to The New Order, they switched around what events in RTCW happen at which time.
RTCW and Wolf '09 always gave me Indiana Jones vibes. Wolf '09 overall was a banger when it came out.
I'm glad its getting more love now, and i hope it gets a re-release on gog and steam.
Let us pray for the Raven devs trapped in the Activision mines, condemned to lifetime of solitude and servitude. Brothers, we must band together and break the shackles that confine them. We must free the Raven so it may rise and strike at the heart of this (Pulls out picture of Bobby Kotick) grotesque abomination. Free the Raven, Brothers.
4:22 Wrong, Wolfenstein 2009 actually does take place after RTCW. The two guys you meet with in the beginning are the same as from the previous game, and there were even tie-in motion comics that connected the game to RTCW and even Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny. Wild stuff.
Another correction: more like a slightly different take on RtCW, especially since the OSA advisors have different names in Wolf2009 and also TNO+TOB.
I swear, I really hope that promised MachineGames Wolfenstein III goes the Multiversal route and explains all these suspected reality warping moments from shenanigans caused by the terribad Youngblood universe.
@michaelandreipalon359
Hopefully the first thing that happens in the next game has the daughters get vaporized or something and you see different, more lucid, daughters at the end.
@@VerdeMorte Amen to that possibility.
Also Deathshead is back, and wants revenge on BJ for destroying his x-lab and his super soldiers. So if the game wasn't connected to RTCW then him wanting revenge on BJ would make no sense.
@merasmurry1460
I would accept an AI Deathshead like Marvel Zola, that would actually be pretty interesting, leaving him capable of taunting the Blaskowitz family the whole game...
I finished this game so many times. It was a weird ass mixture of wolfenstein and bioshock with sidequests and a kind of open world. It was great.
It's a flawed, but good game. Could stand a remaster to iron out some of the issues, maybe even replace the regen health with healthpacks and turkey dinners.
this really feels like an indiana jones game more than the rest of wolfenstein games
@@lukabrasi001 Return To Castle Wolfenstein has much of that as well. Very healthy mix of the evil occult and Nazi super science, and it's a bunch of fun adventures all the way until the end.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine i know, but what i'm saying is this movie had much more of that, it's like everything RTCW set up, things are dialed higher here. RTCW is good too but it generally lacks variety and it's one concrete bunker after the next, the night level in the village was top tier though
And Also have FEAR vibe in it.
Thank you for covering this game. It's massively underrated and I'm still bummed it cannot be purchased today.
OK as someone who wrote his BA on the Kreisau Circle I am baffled by them being mentioned as well as stunned in which context they are mentioned, what a roller coaster xD
What were they up to in real life?
We are one step closer to Civvie and Ross doing a whole review together. Also remembering when Yahtzee thought this was as bland as shooters would get so he did it in limerick style is still how I picture this game.
Civvie and Ross Collab, yes please
Civvie/MattyFatty feels like a closer possible event
I mean, it's not the same but Ross' cameo in Half Life was great.
I feel one very important thing was missed out on this review. When you get the Kar98 the big bore upgrade, the shots now sever limbs and provide a whole new slew of death animations. The animation on that bolt action is still amazing, like it is meant to be chopping through fingers and carrots rather than sliding in cartridges.
Makes me wonder if Kurt Vonnegut is there as an easter egg.
Theres a member of the Kreisau circle in RTCW called Karl Villigut, and Blaskowicz quotes Slaughterhouse Five in TNO
so it goes.
I love Vonnegut, Player Piano is one of my favorites of his, but everyone seems to overlook it.
No fucking cat. No fucking cradle.
Civvie never mentioned it but so many game protagonists looked exactly the same around the 2000s and early 2010s. Short hair, 5 oclock shadow, leather jacket. He looks like Daniel Garner from Painkiller and that other guy from exodus
I thought he looked like Tommy Vercetti from GTA:VC 😄
I definitely got Daniel vibes during the intro cutscene.
Feels like it was just yesterday that I rented this game from Blockbuster.... hearing you say it was almost 15 years ago gave me goosebumps. Literally half my lifetime ago.
Though the game wasn't especially memorable and as I recall rather short, I did have a good deal of fun playing it.
I did not play this game when it came out, playing it for the first time only a couple of years ago, and I must say that I honestly thought it was fantastically fun right off the bat. I loved how prominent the occult stuff was and being able to use the cool powers was fun.
Anyone else just endlessly binge this and Game Dungeon on repeat, and squees a bit when they review the same game, even years apart?
Sounds a lot like me!
Yes, i do that exact thing.
Game Dungeon is the Civvie we have at home.
Yep.
Fun fact: you can use the timer app on your iPhone as a sleep timer by setting the ringer to “STOP PLAYING”, which makes any video you’re listening to stop and locks your screen. Been using it and old Civvie vids to fall asleep for months now.
The funny thing about this game; is that The New Order goes off THIS GAME. Mainly because of Deaths Head. “They didn’t do anything with this guy; so let’s do something about it!” And so they did.
You might hate me but this is my favourite Wolfenstein game. Raven just were masters at what they were doing, and this game shows it!
This game was heavily censored here so I got myself an internet copy, and I was so impressed that I immediately ordered it from the UK, fearing that I might get into legal trouble if it was discovered at customs. Germany did not take swastikas lightly then. But it came without trouble, but still I was waiting for at least a month for a letter from the courts. It never came :)
The box is one of my favourite collectables!
Thank you for bringing it back into the spotlight!
8:45 "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" also had English-speaking German soldiers (Heck, even the Spanish dub version I played as a kid had Spanish-speaking German soldiers), and I honestly don't see much of an issue with it. It adds to the cheesiness of Wolfenstein in general (thinking of Indiana Jones fighting German soldiers that spoke English too).
So I always get so confused when this is a "big" issue with only Wolfenstein '09, when this was a thing that was done in the past with their better entries.
We had other WW2 shooters like classic "Call of Duty "and "Medal of Honor" that had German soldiers speak German, so having Wolfenstein go the other way was fine by me.
I always saw it as a way to show that BJ is fluent in German, which makes sense for a spy.
@@adcon00 That's how I always imagined that too.
"Golden Dawn?"
"I read about them in time magazine."
Glad someone else had the same thought I did. RIP Hans Gruber.
If you had both this game and Wolfenstein 3D on PS3, then you'll get a message at the beginning of 2009 that says something like "Due to BJ's heroic escapades in Castle Wolfenstein, he will start this journey off with extra gold" which, of course, is given to you. Like 2500g I think.
I remember it being flawed but decent. That particle cannon-thingie was freaking amazing though.
I still would have preferred the return of the Venom Chaingun.
Best summary
Merci civvie ! Et toute ma gratitude à mon compatriote qui traduit chacune de tes vidéos !
Holy shit. I forgot about this game, I remember playing it back on the xbox 360 and loved it
I nearly sprayed my drink on my screen for that "mein leben" on the Black Sun Hustle bit haha! Bravo
I see Civvie is covering all the RavenSoft masterpieces, keep it up.
More steps closer to Star Wars: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, and also Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force I and II.
@@michaelandreipalon359Elite Force 2 was done by a different studio.
"My Axe! It has unlimited ammo!" -Gimli.
8:06 The 256 joke got me. Awesome vid!
You've got fun videos.... I'm gonna watch them all lol
The Zero Punctuation limerick was the only thing I could remember about this game
I remember being 12 and playing this. The kar98k has stuck with me as one of my favorite guns in video games because of it.
Ah yes... The violent retching memories from that sprint animation. I'm glad most developers have learned that literally no one wants view bobbing in their first person game since then.
You know what, I'm gonna watch the rest of the video down here, I can't with this shaking
31:43 underrated moment, holding that axe for a while then whiffing it with a tiny clack sound
My goodness that Kar98 has a nice BEEEEEFY sound to it. I like. Thankyou Raven Software.
And thank YOU, good sir, for the video!
I remember playing the demo of this game over and over again on the Xbox 360 as a ‘person of appropriate age’. At the time, this and the left for dead 2 demo was all I could get my hands on and I honestly found it a lot of fun. Tried to find it once then forgot about it when I couldn’t find a place to buy it, thanks for spurring the memory
With the recent spat of UA-camrs retiring, stepping down, or going on hiatus, I'm glad Civvie is here. Though obviously if he does need to take a break he should totally do so
Which ones retired or stepped down exactly?
@@wolfgangvan-uber6515 off the top of my head, Meat Canyon is pivoting from frequent animations to more of a vlog style of thing, Matpat is spending more time with their family (terrible priority sarcasm), JoCat was bullied off by sociopaths for making a wholesome song animation, and I'm sure there are others
@@wolfgangvan-uber6515 I think MatPat announced it like a month ago
CV aint retiring any time soon, hr isnt even close to repaying the crimes he has comitted
He gets a year off his multiple back-to-back life sentences for each video he makes, so he's gonna be sticking around for a while!
Btw, apparently the reason the game isn’t available for legal digital distribution is because Bethesda thinks the game is bad and that Activision did a crap job on it, and this, re-releasing it would damage the brand, no joke.
Oh, but Youngblood is totally an awesome game by comparison in their eyes. Thanks a lot Bethesda.
Anyways, I look forward to when you eventually cover The New Order. That’s my favorite one in the series, and one of my all time favorite games in general.
Wolfenstein 2009 didn't sell well, but definitely didn't damage the brand. That'd be Wolfenstein The New Colossus or especially Youngblood.
New Order was great, almost beat Return to Castle Wolfenstein as my favorite Wolf.
Shame Raven never got to make Soldier of Fortune 3.
I haven't heard much criticism of the new colossus, what was wrong with it? @Gruntvc
basically the tone of new colossus is just kind of all over the place... let me set the scene. Bj and his wife have a serious conversation and then a guy steps out of a bathroom shouting about the awesome shit he just took. I'm serious.
@FREECIVVIE, The tone of New Colossus is pure cringe. We went from the over the top but taken serious tone of New Order and The Old Blood to a freakin crazy cartoon.
Youngblood is worse and arguably the worst Wolfenstein game so far.
If he cover Machine Games Wolfenstein, he will basically just watch cutscenes and scripted sequences.
4:38 Hopefully he hasn't forgotten The Old Blood exists. It's the only supernatural game in the Machine series.
To be frank, it is basically a part of TNO, not unlike how The Freedom Chronicles are a part of TNC.
@@michaelandreipalon359 'M, I don't know.. The Old Blood was a stand-alone prequel and, judging by the ending, canonically so. Freedom Chronicles were single-digit-hour long dlcs reusing campaign maps to tell in universe comic book stories.
Story wise, i feel this one was the timeline that leads to the modern games. And that return to Castle wulfenstien is the timeline where things went correct.
Thank you!
I remember seeing the box of this on the shelves - back when video games still sold mostly in brick-and-mortar stores - and thinking I need to save up play this. Never got around to it, though. I think this was the era where I was fresh out of college, had just moved cities and met my to-be-and-now wife.
Raven has always been good at implementing elements into gameplay design. Tomes of power/alternative fire modes, inventory systems. One thing that caught me off-guard here was the Veil system. This game came out in 2009, but the first time I remember functional viewmodes in Thief (2014) and Tomb Raider (2013). Was this the first game to have this functionality? (Screw you, Corridor 7, no one cares about you!)
Oh, i remember this one. I have it on disk, too! Always kinda enjoyed the blend of gun combat and weird abilities you can juggle.
Probably the only game i would like to have a physical merch of. Having a replica of amulet would be nice.
Honestly, this is my 2nd favorite Wolfenstein. The lack of this serious, but pulpy tone is why the later games just never clicked with me.
nice of civvie for giving us lesson of gaming history and roasting cooperate
Dude I loved this one so much when it came out I'm so stoked to see you blasting it on this channel!
"I don't have any melee weapons."
Real therussianbadger energy woth that panzerschrek at medium range.
The Space Balls reference at the Grosse fight is spot on.
The early mention of forcing quicksaves brought back memories.
I inadvertently broke the boss battle at 45:20 where I couldn’t destroy the machines because of a badly timed quicksave, but ran around for ages not realising they could be destroyed in the first place.
4:35 Actually [fixes glasses] The MachineGames Wolfenstein titles are directly linked to Wolfenstein 2009. In The New Order when we meet the resistance the lady running it is the same one that leads the one in 2009. She even mentiones how she survives the headquarters destruction.
🤓
Kind of, but also kind of not. Same with how it's kind of a sequel to RTCW due to BJ mentioning clashing with Deathshead at the X-Labs, but the timeline just doesn't really make sense.
Yeah, i always thought old blood and new order is a bit of a retelling of RTCW, in both helga dies to the monster, however deathshead dies in new order only, so honestly its not worth the effort of trying to piece together these timelines because i doubt even the devs cared
Not really. Caroline and Deathshead are the only things to connect the 2009 game as well as some vague throwaway nods of their backstories. But they are completely different characters (BJ as well is nothing at all like his 2009 incarnation), and there is nothing to reference the events of Wolf 2009 if it even occurred (or if it did, it is a completely different sort of events).
There are also some other inconsistencies when you try to pass TNO as a direct sequel to 2009 (the obviously different clashing tones, The Old Blood replacing the first half of RTCW, and even the playable Wolf3D levels in TOB having a boss fight with Hans Grosse).
It's a confusing mess all around.
@@KingLich451 Grand old grade school burn, kid. Next time pull up your pants first.
Not gonna lie it is nice to see Civvie get surprised by a game he didn't expect to have fun with
I had this on xbox 360. The pumpkin head cheat after you beat the game was really fun. The weapon mods were great too.
My distinct memory of this game as a kid is getting it for a few bucks used from a GameStop and I played up until the ninja enemy things I just stopped playing and returned it for pennies.
What ever happened to those pennies?
@@diggadirt393 probably consumed by global financial crisis back then
I remember that era - great games on great consoles and on the other side of life? crisis
The Wolf That Stein Forgot.
It is a dreary lazy Sunday. And this is the perfect way to enjoy it. Thank you, Civvie!
I remember when Ross reviewed this game for a Game Dungeon episode, and he put on the Halloween mode where all the enemies had pumpkin heads. I don’t think he ever pointed it out either.
Man, I used to spend hours in the hub sniping respawning fools. It was so satisfying and clean. Good game from a weird time in my life.