Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Machinegames, Arkane Studios
Platform: XB1, PS4, PC, Switch
Genre: FPS

Girl power, kapow dude. All the dudes and dudess brace yourselves because am going to say it like straight, Youngblood is great. There I said it.

Like who needs good stories, wonderful multi-faceted characters and well-designed levels when you can have twin sisters wondering in much-less sprawling Paris, killing Nazis like TGI-Fridays(Note, Am Bengali, my terminologies and cultural understanding of US humor might be tad bit sketchy, just a heads-up).

Throw in some mission and objective design that makes you grind on and on, while also having to fork out your actual money for in-game items. Nifty right?

Story

B.J Blazkowicz is now a daddy to twin sisters, setting place nearly 20 years after the liberation of America in New Colossus. B.J living in Mesquite, Texas with his wife and kids, disappears all of a sudden and since nobody is willing to find him, the twins decided to use what they've learned from dear old daddy and go on a rescue mission. Of course, this seems like a weird convoluted story structure, but hey bear with me, it gets better.

Story has a few twists and turns but you're mostly spending around the Paris, doing mind-numbing chores over and over, before you start following up with the story, the girls with their "twin power" manage to stomp the Nazi opposition in Paris and liberate France while saving their father from imminent death. Then they all live happily ever after.

Now what about the characters? Well, remember that baby of Grace's, she's now all grown up and seems to be the objective and rational brain behind the operation while the twins wreak havoc with their bro humor and snazzy one-liners. Goes to show how much a game is great thanks to its characters.

Gameplay

What could make a good entry to a well-esteemed franchise seem worthy of a step up? Improve the gunplay? Create better enemy A.I? Fix how the clunky the controls feel sometimes? Fix the damn item picking issue? Maybe improve the level design?

Nope, just rehash everything that New Colossus did and hamfist, churn in convoluted RPG mechanics that makes you reevaluate what a really, really...good shooter is. I mean I wish more games did this, why not?

In Paris, doing missions and killing Nazis earn you upgrade points and coins. Points you can use to unlock tiers of abilities from Mind, Muscle and Power. You wanna flex your appeal? Find and earn coins to buy cosmetics, unlock new pep signals which boosts your stats and buy boost packs. If you can't earn enough, fork in real money to get them.

Now, the level design in this game is entirely different, because you can have much more verticality thanks to the twin's ability to double jump. Especially in much-open areas of Paris. This partly thanks to Arkane's involvement helps you navigate through open pathways to find and collect items of sorts. Including collectibles.

Travel from one location to another via Metroway, your main base of operations is the Catacombs.

You do side missions in order to increase your overall level so that you can tackle tougher enemies, but you if decide to be precocious about it, you'll be facing higher level enemies with skull icons indicating that they're very tough to kill unless you're on their level. While you're at it, you also help Abby by doing her chores. It does do a good job of keeping you busy. Enemies have some obtuse armor with health where you're required to shoot them on and on till ad nauseam.

Most of the time in the game, you spend fighting Nazis respawning over and over, with lofty goals like finding computer terminals and decoding floppy disks, rescuing rebel fighters, finding Enigmas for Abby and so on. Mundane stuff like this while not adding any meaning to the experience, at least has you running around, shooting Nazis while sharing 80's rhetorics with your sister.

I mean slaying Nazis is fun and all, but you know what's even greater? A pause option, which this game doesn't have even if you play offline with your.....mentally challenged A.I companion.

Local/Online Co-op

(Apologies for the audio, didn't realize my mic was being recorded or maybe it was the other player)

Ok, now I can drop the whole sarcastic tone and just get to be more lenient.

So get this, playing Co-op with friends isn't easy because the NAT code is bad. I've faced ridiculous situations where my character would get stuck and I had to wait out several seconds before it stabilizes

There's no local co-op, including for the Switch version. But I heard the game gives you a buddy-pass which is a nice touch somewhat.

There are times it helps to bring a higher level friend to get past difficult levels thanks to arbitrarily difficult enemies.

Bit of a disclaimer for this part, I played online only once and it wasn't fun so I decided to solo throughout the rest of the game.

Production Value

Like New Colossus, Youngblood is developed using id tech 6. I've actually noticed how pristine the visuals are without any glitch or hitches to detract from the graphical fidelity. It runs very well, butter smooth. I'd say this is a more technically proficient title than its predecessor.

Music, however, isn't highly notable because Mike Gordon was not present for the score. So part of the time you're just passing through the moments without something as riveting as Gordon's work.

The sound design still gets your blood-pumping, every blood splatter, burst from barrel gets you really hooked into killing Nazi savagely. Then again, nothing like you haven't heard from New Colossus because they've recycled some of the weapons here.

Verdict

Yeah, I didn't like this game. From the terrible mission designs, goals to this forced leveling system in order to progress to the story, the most juvenile characters I've seen without any good sense of appeal or proper character development and lastly, the crappy story has me disappointed with the game entirely.

This is a bummer though because I love Wolfenstein even with the issues that the last game had, this title isn't deserving of mention. I've played all the Wolfenstein games from Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein 2009 to the MachineGames series. 2009 is leagues ever than this.

Unless you can tolerate its inadequacies, this game isn't worth the purchase even at 30 USD price.

6.0