Introduction

"Wolfenstein: Youngblood" is the fourth chapter in the 2014 reboot by Machine Games. The backstory of the series is fascinating and shocking at the same time—Wolfenstein Youngblood is set in an alternate timeline in which the Nazis have won World War II and dominate the world. In this universe, you play as a vanquished B.J. Blazkowicz who organizes and leads a resistance cell to become the Nazi's worst nightmare.

"Youngblood" sees a big time jump from the events of "The New Colossus," in which Anya and B.J. have twin daughters that have taken up a life of Nazi ass-kicking like their parents. The two are the game's playable protagonists. At the beginning of the game, you can choose to play as either Jess or Soph, although both have identical characteristics and weapon choices. You play cooperating non-linear missions in which your sister is either an AI or a human in cooperative multiplayer.



The plot for "Youngblood" is simple. An aged B.J. Blazkowicz is captured by the Nazis and held captive somewhere in 1980s France of the alternate timeline. It's up to Soph and Jess to rescue him by traveling to Paris, and meeting up with the French resistance movement in a bid to free their country from the Nazis.

"Youngblood" is a first-person shooter with some additional RPG elements in which your missions include a mix of run-and-gun and stealth. The game is based on the idTech 6 engine and leverages Vulkan. This is one of the first non-DirectX AAA games to incorporate NVIDIA RTX real-time ray-tracing technology, although not at launch. In this performance review, we test "Wolfenstein: Youngblood" fresh out of the oven across our vast selection of graphics cards, with the latest drivers that include optimizations for the game.