Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a peculiar spin-off for the Wolfenstein franchise because it establishes that Germany was pushed out of the United States off-screen before it had a chance to happen in the mainline titles. Then towards the end, the game gets uncertain if things will go that way in Wolfenstein III after all.

Okayish small-scale co-op addition to the shooter series

In Youngblood you play as B.J.'s and Anya's twin daughters Jessie and Zofia who decide to go find their missing father in still Nazi-controlled Europe. The game was purposed for co-operative play with a human but I found AI partner to perform adequately on default difficulty. A post-release patch did improve that and enemy bullet-sponginess as well though: at release things may have felt different.

Many did not enjoy the humor in Youngblood: they thought the goofy sisters were cringey. I personally found them funny. I also liked how much Valerie Lohman and Shelby Young made Jess and Soph sound like B.J.. Sometimes they speak in such a similar manner.

In some previous post I scorned Youngblood's microtransactions but, like it often turns out, they're not too offensive. Being able to acquire every single alternative power armor and weapon cosmetic with in-game accomplishments would of course be preferred if just for the sake of completeness.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood's problem, and the franchise's in general, is in my opinion how uninteresting the setting and its lore are. That extends to the upgrade system: too many perks didn't affect my playstyle in any significant way. There is also a perk and its upgrades that are hidden until they're finally revealed before the final mission. I was expecting more, and would instead just shoot my guns than use the new power. I'd say Youngblood is better with its upgrades than the previous titles though. Especially gun mods are cool as you can switch them around for different ones and they can have distinct effects added.

Both sisters get a pep signal, a cooldown-limited support ability. You start the game with a health and armor granting signals and can unlock more later. Saving silver for the costly quad damage pep signal first might be worth doing. The buff lasts only like 5 seconds but it's just enough to charge up and fire the Übergewehr, Wolfenstein's version of the BFG. With quadruple damage it will one-shot even the game's towering Zitadelle robots (again, on the default difficulty).

Youngblood was not released as a full price title so I wasn't expecting the game to have huge amount of content. It does try to make you return to it for continuous play however. There are daily and weekly missions as well as random events that happen as you are fighting through the few streets of Paris there are. I enjoyed Youngblood's faster gameplay the most I have in the Wolfenstein series but killing the unchanging enemies gets old pretty fast. Different colors for your power armor and guns aren't that great of an incentive to grind for.

There are some added roleplaying game elements in the form of character levels and weapon skills. It's a dumb implementation though because enemies scale up with you. You don't get to feel any more powerful from your higher level. And you better specialize into some guns because otherwise their damage won't keep up with enemies' increased health.

MachineGames co-developed the game with Arkane Lyon. The latter are not strangers to such a task as they revealed in a recent Noclip episode. Apparently Arkane even helped uncredited with BioShock 2. With specifically Lyon being the helper Arkane studio in Youngblood, I do wonder though what Arkane Austin has been doing...

I don't know if Arkane had a specific single or multiple aspects of the game they worked on in Youngblood. Maybe it was level design. The game's maps do have a similar feeling to Dishonored. I think there is increased verticality but it's kind of wasted in this game because it doesn't affect the gameplay that much. I didn't have the patience for Wolfenstein's stealth mechanics and sneaking didn't seem worth it anyway.

Youngblood has a minimap instead of a compass which I have gotten used to seeing. I think in this case the former is more useful however. Otherwise in places like Paris sewers you'd just keep opening the map screen all the time to see where you need to go. The compass would probably only serve to confuse you in there.

I was expecting to find the 0451 code in the game due to Arkane's involvement and it indeed was there. But there was also a whole shrine to the Outsider which was a fun surprise to discover.

Edited 2021-07-22: Arkane Studios is in fact listed in BioShock 2's credits.