There’s an alternate world where Arkane made The Crossing, and it’s not necessarily a better one. Before Dishonored, the developer was looking down the wrong end of a bad publishing deal which, in the estimation of founder Raphaël Colantonio, would have ended in either The Crossing’s cancellation or a deeply underwhelming end product. In that timeline, there’s no telling whether the studio would even exist today.
Nevertheless, for fans of Arkane’s sophisticated and immersive first-person adventures, this lost project remains tantalisingly forbidden fruit: a foolhardy mashup of single and multiplayer in which teams of invading players would attack the protagonist of a solo campaign, against the backdrop of a multiversal Paris co-designed by Half-Life 2’s Viktor Antonov.
]]>GeForce Now's streaming catalogue has shrunk even further since launch. Following Activision Blizzard's lead, now it appears Bethesda Softworks have backed away from Nvidia's cloud streaming service. All but one of the publisher's games on the service - from Doom to Dishonored - were pulled from GeForce now yesterday, leaving only Wolfenstein: Youngblood standing and streaming.
]]>Alternate history first-person shooter (of Nazis, specifically) Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a spin-off from the main Wolfenstein games. It's set in 1980, and developers Machinegames don’t go halfway on it. The game is soaked with 1980s references, from early electronica and synthpop in the French Underground to 3D glasses and UVK Tapes (VHS tapes but, um, more Nazi-like). The in-game explanation is that Nazi dominance is so complete that it pervades popular culture.
The music of our 1980s is rooted in our postwar reality, tied to its precedents of the 1970s - particularly punk music and punk culture - and a further evolution of postwar youth culture. But how could musical ideas like New Wave possibly have flourished in an alternate postwar world dominated by Nazi occupation? Well… they couldn’t have. All this stuff isn’t in the game just because it looks and sounds cool. It creates an important storytelling dynamic that empowers the player to fight evil for a culture worth keeping.
]]>Wolfenstein: Youngblood was one of Nvidia's big ray tracing games of last year, and it was even one of the free games you could get if you bought a new RTX graphics card over the summer. However, whereas its other freebie stablemate Control teleported its ray tracing support in at launch, Wolfenstein: Youngblood positively dragged its cybernetic heels over it, with months and months passing after its initial July release date without any word on when it might finally pitch up. Finally, the reflection gods at Nvidia have spoken, and it's going to be patched in as part of their latest CES GeForce driver update available this week. Hoo-rah.
]]>It's never a good sign when Skyrim's back in the Charts. It means mischief is afoot. And not the good kind. In this case, it's Bethesda's Quakecon sale, meaning a whole bunch of the dreariest of usual suspects return to droop our eyelids and weary our souls. And Nier and Flibble Glibble Pants are both on sale yet again. In fact, this week's top 10 features precisely one game released in the last TWO YEARS.
So this week I think I shall describe to you the feelings I feel when I see these games appearing once more.
]]>Every time you find a new gun in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, B.J. Blazkowicz's twin daughters gush about how their daddy killed a bunch of Nazis with it. "Cor", Jess will say, "remember when Dad told us about all those Nazis he vaporised?". "Yeah", Soph will respond, "that was tubular."
When I think about how best to sum up Wolfenstein 2's co-op semi-sequel, tubular is not the first word that comes to mind.
]]>It's twenty years after Blaskowicz's last big bash. When a night-out goes wrong on a foreign business trip, BJ's gone and done a runner in Paris (it's lovely this time of year). This summer, Twin kids Jess and Soph are on the case in Wolfenstein: Youngblood. The Blazkowicz sisters are about to take on a Nazi-slashing road trip from hell across the city of lights. C'est la vie!
We'll have a full review up on the site tomorrow, once our reviewer's worked out how many dead Nazis is enough dead Nazis.
]]>Because reasons, compunauts will get to play Wolfenstein: Youngblood one day earlier than our console brethren. The cooperative Nazi-smashing shooter was slated to launch on Friday the 26th, Bethesda have shouted across millions of dollars of marketing, but now they've quietly mentioned it'll be out on PC from Thursday the 25th. Alright. Sure. Thanks. Inform your co-op partner that plans have changed. Or if you're playing solo, well, you already know so we're done here.
]]>Wolfenstein: Youngblood may be one of Nvidia's current poster children for their ultra shiny ray tracing technology, what with it being one of the free games you get when you buy any Nvidia RTX graphics card right now, but it turns out the game won't actually have said ray tracing support when it launches this Friday on July 26. Speaking in an interview with GamesBeat, executive producer Jerk Gustafsson has revealed he doesn't actually know when the game's ray tracing support is going to arrive, as Nvidia's engineers are still tinkering with it.
]]>Wolfenstein: Youngblood looks set to provide a same-but-different experience to that of MachineGames' previous (and excellent) Wolfenstein titles, placing players in the shoes not of beloved B.J. Blazkowicz but of his twin daughters, Jess and Soph. Our Wolfenstein: Youngblood guide will walk you through everything we know about the game so far, from release date and pre-order details to info on story, setting, combat, and anything else you might want to know.
]]>Co-op Nazi-mangling spinoff Wolfenstein: Youngblood launches on July 26th, just before my birthday. It looks to be a gift that literally keeps giving, too; the Deluxe edition comes with a 'Buddy Pass', so you can invite a special someone to join you on your power-armoured rampage. Set some years after Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, it casts one or two players as BJ Blazkowicz and Anya's twin daughters, now old enough to hunt Nazis for themselves with the aid of matching super-suits. Check out the debut trailer below, featuring Carpenter Brut's appropriately titled Turbo Killer.
]]>Bethesda are backing down from plans to make Rage 2 and other upcoming games exclusive to their own launcher, announcing today via Twitter that they'll all be sold on Steam. Confirmed headed back to Valve's storefront is Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, VR spinoff Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and (most importantly) Doom Eternal. The move will be partially retroactive as well, with Fallout 76 confirmed for a Steam release "later this year", although no date has been nailed down for that yet.
]]>This article contains major spoilers for Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (and Jacob’s Ladder).
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus was one of the critical darlings of last year. A first person shooter that moves at a blistering pace, in Wolfenstein 2 you step once more into the big stompy shoes of William Blazkowicz and mow down armies of Nazis. But Wolfenstein 2’s easiest-to-miss scene has a chilling implication, which calls into question the reality of the game’s entire second half. It’s this:
]]>Not satisfied with bringing snow trolls and hellspawn to expensive cyber goggles, Bethesda are bringing two more of their games to VR – Prey and Wolfenstein. Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and Prey: Typhon Hunter are set in their respective universes and, of the two, Typhon Hunter seems the most interesting. It’s a prop hunt-like bit of multiplayer hide and seek, in which five players are mimics pretending to be everyday objects, and one player is Morgan Yu, trying to find and kill them. "Typhon Hunter is a deadly game of cat and mouse," say Bethesda, "except in this instance the cat is sometimes a trashcan or a bottle of cleaning supplies and the mouse has a shotgun."
]]>The splendid new line of Wolfenstein first-person shooters from MachineGames will continue next year with Wolfenstein: Youngblood, a cooperative game starring BJ Blazkowicz's twin daughters. It's set in 1980, see, 19 years after Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Would you be surprised to hear that the twins are also very keen on shooting Nazis? Meet 'em in the game's announcement trailer.
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