John Carmack, id’s head retiree, has lost his fucking marbles. Not in his typical, probably from outer space way. No, he’s joined the short yet growing line of former game developers-turned-professional character assassins in service of Microsoft. This time it’s steadily declining claims of what the PS3’s processor is capable of, currently being the apparent equal of the 360.

But the latest id shooter, Wolfenstein, proves that the graphics engine guru is either losing his touch or passing on his high level work to complete shitheads. This is an average game engine wrapped like semi-burnt bacon around a turd called terrible design, both graphically and gameplay-wise. And I guess you heard it here first, because gamerankings.com sure as shit doesn’t have any reviews of it up yet.

Here’s the environments I’ve played through: Sewer… yes, it starts with a sewer, really setting your expectations low. So sewer, train station, war-torn city, cave (the other sewer), war-torn city, warehouse, house, war-torn city, five minutes of farm with half an hour of underground base, sewer, canals… In accordance with whatever laws govern game design, everything is rendered in a drab, unrelenting variety of brown gradients. Just as Mike has about eighty differently definitions of what “Kotaku” means (example: Kota meaning small boys, ku meaning to touch) the developers at Raven have about the same number of words to describe their color pallette. To your mortal eyes and my semi-mortal ones, it ranges from light brown to dark brown, but to the boys at Raven it starts somewhere around tan or ecru and just gets fruitier from there. I mean hell, I can barely tell the buildings from the ground, but I guess there’s a reason for that.

A little more playing and you shouldn’t be shocked to find out that Nazis’ homes are also decorated solely by that nasty-ass hue that you get when you combine every single one of your watercolor paints into a single, gloopy stain. Seriously, the only notable deviations from the scheme are the giant swastika flags that are hung about ten feet apart, constantly.

And on top of that, it’s really dark. My friend Tim, of former Working Designs glory, was admiring the HDR lighting and advanced surface textures. Okay, Carmack still has it. But when you pass this on to a group that uses it to create the most goddamn boring, bleak game world I’ve seen since the last American war game, all your effort means jack and crap.

Dear developers: Cut this shit out. SIMULATE darkness, don’t actually make me fucking squint at my screen hoping to see through a patchwork of murky black assitude. You guys have advanced power-ups beyond a picture of a beef joint on a white square, bordered in blue. Do something that doesn’t just sum up the history of Iron Maiden covers dumbed down, stripped of what little cover they have, and given motion!

Don’t believe me? First, fuck you. Second, check this out:

The story? Just as patently stupid as the design. You’re sent into a war-torn city to investigate… something nebulous. You run around an ill-advised hub level that forces you to fight your way to each linear mission, and then you return to spend whatever Nazi gold you found strewn around in random places on black market upgrades… that are perfectly legal.

Upon finding gold in a locker in the hospital:

DIET MIKE: Where you want your gold, doctor?

I think Raven and id are basically endorsing Uwe Boll with this.

The plot is never fully explained, and is so poorly expressed that you’d never imagine World War II was happening. Hitler is never even mentioned, which is stupid; the point of Wolfenstein is killing a hypercephalic Hitler who is piloting a mech suit. It seems like everybody’s just there to shoot each other for no particular reason, and the only revelation around the Nazis building a spiritual superweapon is that they intend to blow up the city. And then… win the war! I think.

DIET MIKE: (All color drains from the screen and we find a floating, spinning device that emits some form of energy.) Oh, it’s a device that steals all the color.

ME: (Melees the device, destroying it. The color returns.) Holy fuck, you were right.

DIET MIKE: This is the first game that makes me LIKE the Nazis.

ME: They are basically the Beagle gang from Duck Tales.

DIET MIKE: Yeah, they’re just cuddly and inept.

ME: HOOGAAAAAAAAAAN!