Wolfenstein II: The Deeds of Captain Wilkins DLC Review
It’s a good time to enjoy the nicest looking Nazi slaying simulator around, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. With the release of the game’s third and final DLC in the Freedom Chronicles trilogy, we’ve had a good amount of time to get acquainted with the parallel universe WWII baddies that conquered the United States. I was excited to find out whether The Deeds of Captain Wilkins would send the game off with a bang, or if we’ve only come this far to end with a whimper.
Captain Gerald Wilkins as you may be able to guess, is an American Army Veteran turned resistance fighter. After Stealing a Nazi submarine, this crazy red blooded American hero returns to Alaska to destroy a Nazi super weapon known only as Operation Black Sun. Equipped with only a Kampfwanderer (robo extendo legs), a hankering for cheese burgers, and more guns than one person could realistically carry, Captain Wilkins is ready to go down in a blaze of glory… or so he thought.
A lot of this DLC felt like leftovers from the cutting room floor, from Wilkins’ glory seeker trope to weapons and gadgets recycled straight out of the base game, this title didn’t introduce a lot for the series. In fact, there wasn’t even anything resembling a boss fight in this campaign, which is what I found most disappointing of all. At least in the last DLC, The Diaries of Agent Silent Death, there were assassination targets to work towards and add some kind of overall significance to your actions, even if they could be taken out in one well aimed shot.
Instead, The Deeds of Captain Wilkins is all about taking on a swarm of Nazis at once, while throwing in a few of the big heavy armoured guys with big fuck off weapons that can one shot you from across the room when they see you, to keep you busy. I’m not particularly against this level of crazy wanton destruction and emptying a shotgun into every Nazi I see while sprinting aimlessly to somewhere that might have healing items, but it’s nice to have some kind of epic set piece to tie it all off.
The only other redeeming factor apart from the gunplay being smooth as hell, which is an engine standard not unique to this DLC, was that Captain Wilkins was at least a more interesting character than B.J. Blazkowicz. It’s not a high bar, since anyone that’s not a whimpering fridge box is more interesting than Terror Billy, but Wilkins’ Soldier 76 meets TF2’s Soldier kind of vibe was definitely a fun part of this DLC.
It’s an unfortunate last piece of content for a game I overall enjoyed, and with no announcement yet of further DLC it’s a relatively wimpy end to Wolfenstein until Bethesda decides to cash another check from Machine Games. After coming all this way and killing so many giant Nazi Death Robots, the game would rather end on an anticlimactic button push, which made playing The Deeds of Captain Wilkins feel a bit like sitting down to shit and only managing a squeaky fart.
Originally published at The Insatiable Gamer.
