And yeah, I guess it is almost as long as New Order, although it’s all relative — New Order took me around 11 hours, Youngblood took 8, which is around 30% shorter, but they’re both quite short games in the grand scheme of things so it feels about the same.

First of all I really enjoyed playing this for all but maybe a 20-minute window of our 8-hours jaunt. It was still fun even with the rough edges and even allowing for a degree of co-op gloss (which did some extremely hard work back when we played Hunted. Remember that?) I think it’s a testament that they’ve found a good fun core to the game. Also the fact that true to Arkane’s games Jess and Soph hoover up whole banquets in-between firefights for health and that will never cease to amuse.

Second – heavy weapons are only ok. They feel a little underpowered past the mid-game unfortunately and I ended up using fully-upgraded end-game weapons (such as the elektrokraftwerk) much more. Also the theoretically best weapon (the one picked up off top-tier nazi megarobots and with scarce ammo) was a decidedly damp squib – despite firing off a mini-nuke or something, it could do some ok area-of-effect damage, but was absolutely inferior to the AOE damage of the elektrokraftwerk or the single-target damage of the laserkraftwerk.

Third – upgrades were interesting in at least one respect which I hope Machine Games can carry over. The upgrades to the three special weapons (the kraftwerks, which in addition to the above had the grenade-launching dieselkraftwerk) actually changed the way they could function and generally did so in fun ways. The diesel could turn its bombs into cluster bombs, the elektro had a bullet-absorbing shield and the laser had the supercharge Hentzau mentioned among other modes for each, so there was an actual choice in how you upgraded your weaponry. If this could have been stretched to the other guns (or to the heavy weapons to make them more useful in the endgame) that would have been even cooler. In any case, at least this aspect should make it over to more Wolf games.

Finally – The only thing I was genuinely a bit disappointed by was that the extra missions you had available past the end of the story were extremely lacklustre. True, the main missions didn’t outstay their welcome and as Hentzau pointed out – why hide the good stuff at the end, but since they were providing more stuff past the final point I would have liked at least 2-3 missions that did something fun.

I definitely don’t regret playing the game and though the flaws might seem significant, it did feel fresh, interesting and generally fun.

The Internet says this game is almost as long as Wolfenstein The New Order. That game threw new levels at you all the time, half of is was about admiring the scenery. Still it became stale and boring by the end, and it also felt obliged to include sewer level. Your review doesn’t make me hopeful about Youngblood.