Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot (PS4)
The virtual reality game Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot takes place in the specific alternate history that Bethesda began to explore with Wolfenstein: The New Order, although it doesn’t really come out and explain how the world ended up the way it is in this particular entry. In this game’s world, World War II was won by the Nazis thanks to incredibly advanced technology they developed years before the world we know would see things even close to their power. Their conquering of other nations was built on the back of advanced robots and energy weapons, the player in other Wolfenstein games going up against these powerful machines. Making an enemy interesting to fight in a video game meant that Nazi Germany is the side of this conflict that normally gets to use things like the giant fire-breathing metal dog known as the Panzerhund. However, technology truly has no hard allegiances, meaning in Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, you get to turn those terrifying and powerful tools of war back on their creators.
Taking place in a conquered version of France, you are the Cyberpilot recruited to remotely control the hacked versions of the metallic war machines at the heart of an ongoing resistance movement. There isn’t much of a story outside of setting up this situation, although the woman guiding your resistance efforts, Maria, does talk quite a bit and there’s a tiny bit of effort to give her a backstory. Someone else named Jemma also speaks with you by way of a monitor that is also used for displaying mission objectives, Jemma not taking many opportunities to chime in which often leaves Maria talking to your silent hero at length. The point of Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot mostly doesn’t veer from that focus on just taking control of a few different robots to tear through enemy troops, this VR adventure feeling like it doesn’t want to make any steps in the story that would impact its world when that’s better saved for much longer and more involved adventures.
For Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot’s short campaign, there are three robots you’ll be given control over. The Panzerhund mentioned earlier is a ferocious looking figure when you see it from the outside, it having an uncanny litheness that would make it terrifying to face on the battlefield. In this game though, your movement is rather limited. The PlayStation Move controllers are used for aiming as you press buttons to do things like walk backward, forward, or side to side, movement free but not at all fast. It is possible speedy motion in the Panzerhund would cause extreme motion sickness, but it does rob some of the potential thrill you would have expected of this first machine you get to take control of. It is still a powerful instrument of war though, its flamethrower breath able to roast ground troops in an instant, and it feels like Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot believes that should be thrill enough on its own. You do get a ramming attack and a shock pulse to push things away from you, but when playing the Panzerhund’s dedicated level, you mostly just point and spray fire to easily clear out the resistance and make sure not to stand in place when some enemy robots join the fight. Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot at least makes healing conditional, the player needing to find safety away from combat to activate some repair drones, although doing so is handled a bit poorly. You are meant to jam one of your controllers into a dock on the side of the cockpit, but if you ever need to aim at anything to your right, it can be very easy to accidentally enable the healing, leaving you vulnerable as you try to get things back in order.
Another one of the machines that is much cooler to look at than to play as is the Zitadelle, a large mech with miniguns and a rocket launcher as well as a temporary energy shield it can activate to account for the fact its size makes it an easy target if there are many enemies out in the field at once. The Zitadelle’s more cumbersome walking feels more in line with its humanoid design and colossal size, but you’ll quickly realize that it is too powerful for its own good as well. Aim your weapons, shoot until the enemy is dead, and make sure you don’t hold down the triggers too long since weapons overheat if you don’t occasionally relent. Trying not to overheat doesn’t really add any depth to the fights, it just means you can’t hold the trigger the whole time, although again at least the healing system does encourage you to sometimes try to get behind cover or at least prioritize heavy hitting enemy machines since they can wear you down faster. It does feel pretty mindless much like your time in the Panzerhund level, although it at least technically has more action than the interstitial sections between stages. You’ll often find yourself back at base doing little tasks like popping open the machines as part of taking them over, the process simple but also prone to unintentional error like when my crowbar just disappeared and it required a game reset and sitting through unskippable dialogue to get back to the point where I was. It does feel like there could have been more to machine maintenance, like repairs or weapon expansions, but it’s mostly just color and a chance for Maria to speak, and in a game that’s likely not going to take you two hours to beat, it feels even a bit like padding in a game that really needed more time in the mechs.
The last machine you get to control though is the surprise stand-out despite being the least interesting in terms of its visual design. The drones are simple hovering robots that are actually very weak. A regular gunmen can take it down with only a bit of sustained fire, and yet, that’s what makes playing as it the best part of the game. In the drone’s level, you actually have to treat things more like a stealth mission. Your drone has a rather satisfying electric gun that disintegrates what it hits, but its range is small so you need to be careful how you approach Nazi patrols or other drones. You can turn invisible but it needs recharging and attacking reveals you, and there’s actually a bit of tension at play as you need to consider the environment and how to fly around to get to the terminals you need to hack. It’s not as flashy or conceptually exciting as the literal war machines elsewhere, but it does have the most potential for unique and engaging scenarios. The areas you explore as a drone aren’t too expansive, but they still give you alternative paths for taking down foes or avoiding detection whereas the other levels have mostly just been power trips with little true danger.
After playing through each designated level for the three hacked robot types, you’d hope the game might have some follow-up stages to actually put them all through their paces. However, clearing those introductory levels is actually the prelude to a final mission where not much has been advanced in terms of what each machine will be doing. You do at least swap between them at times, the drone once again getting the most time to shine in terms of activities with substance while Panzerhund mostly just needs to roast more Nazis and Zitadelle bombards most threats in its path with ease. Perhaps a better balance of how much time is spent in each machine could lead to the heavy hitters being moments of catharsis after weak periods as the drone, but it doesn’t distribute the portions in such a manner so you are still left aching for more interesting or thrilling battles to make being a Cyberpilot an actually exciting experience.
Sadly, there really isn’t much else to do in Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot besides beat its story. You can play it on different difficulties, try to get PlayStation trophies for playing levels in unusual ways like not cloaking as the drone or not using your flamethrower as the Panzerhund, and that’s about it. Not even the old PSVR standby of a looser challenge mode where you just fight enemies with no context is present, meaning pretty much the only moments Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot feels like it’s offering much are those drone missions or the brief but fleeting thrill of that first time you get behind the controls of a machine before it swiftly loses its novelty.
THE VERDICT: It’s rather remarkable that Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot manages to make piloting its least exciting robot conceptually the most entertaining to control, although that’s because its two heavy hitters hit all too hard. The Panzerhund and Zitadelle are just too capable and simple in their controls, the player tearing through any resistance easily with only the occasional need to step aside and do a quick repair. The drone at least produces some small but decently challenging stealth sections, the player needing to be careful and aware to safely fly around enemy territory and still getting the satisfaction of disintegrating enemy soldiers. The game being so incredibly short also means the powerhouse bots never get to face anything that really puts them to the test, the drone the only thing keeping this game from being a completely shallow power trip.
And so, I give Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot for PlayStation 4…
A BAD rating. The idea of playing as the Panzerhund may be what drew me in, but it was the humble drone that kept the game from getting scored lower. One reason machines like the Zitadelle can have such incredible firepower in enemy hands is because it makes the player work harder to overcome them, but when you invert the power dynamic, you either need it to be a brief reward or you gradually introduce some danger that can take on even your tough new increase in ability. You fight other Zitadelles, other Panzerhunds, yet they fold easily to your machines still, and while it might provide simple satisfaction, it also has little value. Taking down a Panzerhund as a regular soldier would be a monumental feet, easily cooking a squad of Nazis in the Panzerhund though is almost as easy as just saying out loud that you did so. The bigger robots and occasional Nazi with some stronger weaponry means it’s not entirely an unopposed march through enemy territory, but its the drone that actually makes for play with some stakes. You need to be smart in how you move and when you take your chance to go in and reduce someone to ash, and as mentioned earlier, there probably is some way to distribute things so you better get a balance of tearing through enemy troops in the heavy duty machines before doing some involved work as the drone without either dominating things. Many shooting games have turret sections for a similar reason, you worked hard and now you get to have a more straightforward period of easily destroying waves of enemies. Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot is mostly like getting those turret sections but without much of the standard situations that would give the power trip its situational excitement.
Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot likely only exists at all because they wanted a Virtual Reality game in the Wolfenstein universe, but it’s much easier to imagine its premise working in a game with more traditional controls. The Panzerhund could be made into a more spry beast without motion sickness to hold it back, and the Zitadelle could have longer levels to test its mettle against other juggernauts. The drone actually works a bit well in VR, the controls working nicely for hovering around and the added tension of not being able to look around as easily leading to some more engaging stealth. It would, funnily enough, be the section whose presence likely should be reduced in a more traditional approach to a first-person video game to avoid frustraton, but in the world of Virtual Reality, what makes this game about mowing down Nazis in overpowered robots more than a mindless massacre is the little vulnerable drone that actually has to work to earn its satisfying kills.