Review: In Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, Killing Nazis Is a Robotic Affair

The game’s first-person-shooter sequences aren’t just dull and familiar, but also clunky, given the touchy VR controls.

Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot
Photo: Bethesda Softworks

Every inch of Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot—which is set in an alternative history where Paris, in 1980, is occupied by Nazis—feels as if it’s been scrubbed of meaning, turning as it does the City of Lights into a gussied-up virtual reality shooting gallery that provides the emptiest of thrills. As you navigate three distinct robots through a grand total of four linear areas, you’ll come to feel as if you’re running on autopilot as you gun down Nazis or snap together color-coded parts in order to assemble a weapon that you’ll later use to kill your fascist enemies. Despite the three-dimensionality of the game’s virtual terrain, this is the most one-dimensional title in MachineGames’s modern Wolfenstein series.

Had Cyberpilot given deeper context to its milieu, or offered a hook on which to hang our emotional investment, it might have felt as if it there was something more to the game, which sees you mount a series of low-stakes resistance missions in order to destroy the German Brother 3 base. Because neither your hacker protagonist nor his unseen handlers, who speak to you remotely, are fleshed out, you may care little about whether they live or die. And only the background graphics distinguish the Nazis you face on the streets of Paris from the computer-generated ones you encounter in your VR training simulator. They mindlessly charge toward you—or stand in place, waiting to be shot—and then unrealistically vanish after dying. None of your actions seem to have any repercussions or lasting effect. Worst of all, the game’s virtual reality immersion is insubstantial, as you never feel as if you’re actually inside a hulking machine, and a fading strip of LED lights is the only indication you’ve taken damage.

At most, Cyberpilot succeeds in giving players a more intricate understanding of how three classic foes from the modern Wolfenstein series go about committing mayhem. Before piloting the flamethrowing, fast-charging Panzerhund or the twin-armed, rocket-launching, machine-gunning Zitadelle, players will manipulate their massive frames within a hangar bay, looking to repair, reboot, and repurpose the robots. But getting into the cockpit of these machines doesn’t actually add all that much to the franchise. As the game puts it, you’re just turning “Nazi killing machines into Nazi-killing machines.” The emphasis is entirely on the killing part, whereas at least the previous two Wolfenstein games took the time to worldbuild. In The New Order, you interact with those trapped in a European concentration camp, and in The New Colossus, you witness the casual racism of a resurgent KKK on the otherwise cheerful streets of Nazi-subjugated America. Cyberpilot tells us nothing about Paris, its occupants, or the resistance. It only parades the soulless sheen of mechanical monstrosities.

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The game’s first-person-shooter sequences aren’t just dull and familiar, but also clunky, given the touchy VR controls. It’s difficult to hit the strafe buttons while moving forward or backward, and the snap-turn function (instantly pivoting a certain number of degrees to the side) creates a juddery sense of progression. Moreover, the robots you pilot are handicapped by a lack of versatility, at least compared to the moveset of Wolfenstein’s usual protagonist, B.J. Blazkowicz, who could swap weapons, sneak through vents, and explore secret passages. When you’re playing as the slow and tanky Zitadelle, you’re firing rockets and bullets and occasionally popping your emergency shield, with little need to move out of harm’s way, and when operating the Panzerhund, you’re using your ramming attack to quickly close gaps so that you can then electrocute or immolate your foes. While piloting the Drone, players have a second option—using the cloaking device to sneak by foes—but even here, the limited level design (and horrible AI) encourages players to simply gun each and every Nazi down.

Cyberpilot doesn’t end so much as it trails off, with you strapped into a bombed-out cockpit beside a Nazi’s corpse. The game leaves you with a subtly terrifying understanding of a soldier’s disposability, but before the credits roll, its m.o. is to provide you only with the ostensible thrill of shooting Nazis in VR, which, as it turns out, is too flimsy a proposition to sustain a two-hour campaign. Films like Inglourious Basterds make us care about its Nazi-killers, but the nihilistic Cyberpilot doesn’t bother to care about anyone or anything.

The game was reviewed using a download code provided by fortyseven communications.

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Score: 
 Developer: MachineGames  Publisher: Bethesda Softworks  Platform: PSVR  Release Date: July 26, 2019  ESRB: M  ESRB Descriptions: Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence  Buy: Game

Aaron Riccio

Aaron has been playing games since the late ’80s and writing about them since the early ’00s. He also obsessively writes about crossword clues at The Crossword Scholar.

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