The latest Wolfenstein is a terrific single-player first-person shooter adventure that is a lot more fun than many seemed to be expecting.
The New Order takes place largely in an alternate history 1960s, with the prologue being set in World War II. In the game's story, the Nazis win the war through advanced technology, and they rule the world as very mean men after that. They're super mean, those Nazis.
The setting is the stage for a simple yet compelling game that is at times hilarious and at others shocking, at times frivolous and others genuinely moving. It's willing to address some difficult themes, and avoids predictable tropes in a way that's clever and satisfying.
A lot of work and skill gone has gone into the narrative, which means that The New Order fits into the first-person shooter genre closer to BioShock than it does to Call of Duty.
Character-wise, The New Order also goes well over and above bog-standard shooter expectations. BJ Blazkowicz was once just a head at the bottom of your screen with exaggerated facial expressions, but now he's a cool, fully-formed dude.
Yes, Blazkowicz can dual-wield hugely powerful shotguns and kills a few thousand bad guys as a one-man army, but he's always doing it to try and get back to America and live a chilled life with a wife and kids and barbeque... OK that doesn't sound like a very deep character, but trust me, there is surprising depth to Blazkowicz, but not so much as to over-complicate him as a classic action hero.
I also really like how he drops cool one-liners like "wake up, you're dead" after stabbing a sleeping Nazi to death, and "stupid way to die" if you make him fall off a high platform.
Later on in the game, after Blazkowicz has taken enough damage to rival the battering Lara Croft received in the latest Tomb Raider, someone tells him "you were born to kill Nazis", which is a lovely compliment and pretty bang on the money.
General Deathshead is a great villain for BJ to go up against, as are the other villains. Blazkowicz' buddies are all nicely fleshed out and interesting, too. Wyatt's earnest, all-American quarterback personality and Fergus' ridiculous Scottish annoyed a little to begin with, but very quickly they won me over.
The score of the game is also very cool, combining a lot of grunty electric guitar business with dark and moody synths.
Wolfenstein: The New Order has a lot of care put into these important building blocks of a game, clearly developed over a number of years under the management of a publisher that favours quality over anything else. But a great setting, a great story and great characters do not necessarily a great shooter make.
As you're going to spend the vast majority of the game shooting down bad guys, that's got to be fun and dynamic too. I'm happy to say the basic shooter gameplay of The New Order is brilliant, although it's not quite perfect.
Unfortunately the enemies are occasionally stupid and, despite the generally great and diverse level design, some of the set-pieces could be more interesting and epic.
But there is a lot MachineGames got right, and a lot to love. This is an ultraviolent romp of a game, with a cool mix of old-school first-person shooter elements with all-new ones. There's various RPG elements employed in to keep things interesting, too, making sure you constantly feel rewarded and have goals to work toward as you slaughter Nazis.
The perk progression system is simple but very solid, as is the commander system. Basically, certain sections will be patrolled by a Nazi officer and a bunch of grunts. If you don't take out the officer, he'll be calling in endless reinforcements.
That sounds simpler than it is in reality, but it's a nice way of making you play through levels more tactically.
There's a nice mix of enemies too, with some nasty Nazi robots and dogs and such. The "retro sci-fi" vibe MachineGames was going for is way up my alley.
By combining medipacks with a regenerating health system, complete with overcharging and additional armour, makes the classic first-person shooter system work in a contemporary game.
The cover-and-lean mechanic is great and the weapons are super fun, with an emphasis on big, beefy firepower that constantly blows holes through concrete and squirts brains onto walls. I also really liked the laser cutter, mostly for getting through metal obstructions but also for eviscerating Nazi scum.
I found using stealth to get through the game was a lot more rewarding, and meant a lot less dying, than charging through dual-wielding. A few of the 16 missions are weapons-free with Blazkowicz walking around the resistance hideout. These are some of the more boring parts of the game, but stealthily taking out enemies with knives and silenced weapons to get through levels is anything but boring.
You bounce around a lot of locations as Blazkowicz from Berlin to London to the moon, it's wonderful. On a next-gen system these locations all look gorgeous too.
There's a choice you make early on that then turns the rest of it into effectively two games in one. The single-payer campaign is definitely fun enough to warrant more than one play-through anyway, but this double timeline factor makes it almost unthinkable not to play through at least twice.
There's a lot of optional side missions and a tonne of collectibles to find, including Nazi gold, enigma documents and lost letters. Enigma codes are actually worth getting your hands on as they unlock additional gameplay options.
For older players who actually got amongst Wolfenstein 3D way back when, there's a very cool easter egg hidden in The New Order that you'll love. Hard to believe it came out 22 years ago, and it's still fun.
If you don't spend a lot of time looking for hidden stuff and collectibles, getting through the campaign will take around 15 hours - less if you have the difficulty setting down and favour a guns-blazing approach rather than patience and stealth.
Replayablility is important as there's no multiplayer. But double timeline or not, it wouldn't be replayable if it wasn't fun to play, but it most certainly is.
The shooter gameplay is great fun but ultimately not too amazing, but what really makes this memorable is the storytelling. It's a bizarre balancing act MachineGames has managed to pull off where one minute you're thinking about morality, humanity and sentimentality, then the next you're cheering and laughing at an incredibly graphic throat-slitting animation or a skull exploding.
It's hard to explain just how this works, but it'll make sense when you've got the controller in your hands.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is a great game. It's a surprisingly meaningful, highly entertaining and a very engaging single-player experience I'm looking forward to playing through again.
Four-and-a-half stars.
3 News
Wolfenstein: The New Order
:: Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
:: Developer: MachineGames
:: Format: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC
:: Rating: R18
source: newshub archive
