Remember gaming magazines? Remember when gaming magazines came with floppies with game demo's? Even though I received countless over the years I only remember one - the demo for Wolfenstein 3D. Though it was a bit too stressful for my young self, my brother loved it. It only contained the first three levels, but I remember him playing them over and over and over, poring over each stage trying to find secrets, while I watched.
Then it was quiet on the Wolfenstein front for a while and I largely missed the games released before 2010. But then in 2014 Wolfenstein was suddenly back into my conscious with a bang - with the release of Wolfenstein: New Order, developed by Swedish company MachineGames and published by none other than Bethesda. This looked like a fresh and fun take of the by then long running game franchise, that also fit my matured taste, and I was very curious to try it. But back-logs being what they are, I didn't actually get around to it until ten years later (!), when I finally booted it up this year. Fortunately, the game turned out to be well worth keeping around...
You play as William "BJ" Blazkowicz who was first introduced in the series in Wolfenstein 3D - coincidentally, I had no idea what the main character was called all those years ago watching my brother play, but it was very fun to see that it was lore wise supposed to be the same. BJ hasn't changed much from Wolfenstein 3D and presents such a chiseled look as to almost look parodically non-human.
In the New Order the Nazis win the war. Consequently the Nazis, always being the most grateful villain since they have zero redeeming qualities, take over the world and BJ needs to fix it by killing the new leader Wilhelm Strasse also known as Deathshead. Apparently there are some characters and story elements that carry over from the games that I missed, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Deathshead being one of them.
To do this you get equipped with a ton of weapons and kill a ton of nazis. The game straddles a very well balanced point between a "spray and pray"-game like Serious Sam and "Only kill what you must"-game like Dishonored. There are elements of trying to stay out of sight and getting the surprise attack, but never to the point where you actually ever feel sneaky. The game knows this and isn't designed with any HUD that shows you whether you are visible to enemies or not. You find out because you suddenly hear screaming and get shot at. This never becomes a problem, instead you lean in to it. Even though I might start out trying to stab people one by one in silence, it almost always ends up with me running like a crazy session of paintball and shooting anything that moves. No enemy feels like an ungrateful bullet sponge and all combat feels satisfying.
I played the game on normal difficulty and most of it was fairly easy. The game is very generous with health and ammo at almost all points. It's still not advisable to run into the center of the room and shoot wildly at whatever you see, that will get you killed, and especially if you haven't taken care of sentries first. Most stages take at least some planning and tactics, and utilizing a variety of your arsenal. I had to replay certain segments a few times because I got stuck in the open and was quickly gunned down.
You might see where I am going with this, so let's just say it - the game does pretty much everything right.
All the weapons are fun and they all pack the right punch. Using different weapons in different ways allows you to unlock perks that improves BJ in different ways, like allowing him to reload faster or carry more ammo. This encourages you to play a bit outside your comfort zone and try all the different weapons in different ways.
The atmosphere is great, they even made re-recordings of famous songs as Nazi-versions, this is something you have to go check out on Youtube. The music playing in the background will get you pumped at the right times. There is definitely an extra level of atmosphere if you can read German like me, the game is littered with world building tidbits - a lot of them are translated into English but not all. The attention to detail is astonishing, there is even a playable remake of Wolfenstein 3D in a corner of the game!
But the most important thing that New Order gets right is how it constantly manages to keep things fresh. BJ will travel all over, with varied stages and challenges - you even go to the moon for part of the game (!). New weapons and upgrades get introduced at a perfect speed. There is never a moment to get bored, you'll always want to check what there is around the corner and how you can take on the next stage.
You'll meet a well written set of characters that help you forward. The jargon is rough and tough, just like everything else in this game. BJ gets to do an absurdly heavy load of work for the resistance, but then he seems to be basically immortal. The stages let you sneak one moment to get some head shots in, to swiftly let you don double shotguns to run around the corner and fill some dudes face with bouncy bullets. You'll drive a mini-sub and like mentioned jump around on the surface of the moon. I don't want to spoil too much in case you like me have saved this game in your catalogue for a rainy day, let me just say that the 13-14 hours the game will take you will not be wasted.
Rarely do I play a game and constantly smile over all the great gameplay and design choices that the developers have made. I can barely even nitpick but I am going to do my best. At one point in the game you discover some sort of super armor, it looks rad as all hell. Two of the NPCs get to use it, but BJ never does and I was a bit disappointed at that missed opportunity. Also I had trouble swapping to the right weapon in the heat of battle some times, and that got me killed more than once. I can't really complain at the controls though, on PC there is both the option to use mapped keys and scroll to swap weapons so the problem was most definitely on me.
The game got two prequels, Old Blood and New Colossus, that I am definitely looking forward to playing as well. If they're half as well made as this game I know I am in for a good time.
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