Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus - Impressions & Reviews

Several hours in and I'm enjoying it a-plenty. The tone is still crazy very often, but I just enjoy it. It helps that the actors are doing a great job. There's also a crazy amount of character interaction in this thing, whatever between you and someone else or just the NPC characters doing something with each other. I really hope this'll sell well, because it sure seems like their budget got a lot more hefty for this.

I'm afraid most of the people you kill will not be actual genocide perpetrators, just defenders and legitimizers of a regime that is perpetrating genocide.

So I stayed up to play a little over 4 hours of this, and its fucking great. I have no idea how long this is just because some are saying 6 hours while others say 14 so who knows. All I know is that there has been a whirlwind of shit that has happened in this game that I was not prepared for, and also that has made me gasp more than once in just sheer "WTF" moments. Its soooo good.

@halodude442: Not 6 hours, that's for sure. According to some reviews, it's around 12-15 hours.

GameSpot's Kallie Plagge who reviewed The New Colossus said (at Lobby podcast) she spent around 20 hours, playing stealthy and taking her time to beat the game.,

@adamjensen80: Cool, I also just read Gameinformer's review which said 15+ so awesome

Man, where can I buy more time to play all these games I've missed this year. If from now on no more games would release I would be good for another 3 years for sure.

Is the gameplay a direct copy of the first one (in terms of how it controls and such)? Because I've played the New Order after finishing Doom 2016 and it was kind of rough to play sometimes on console. (aiming and weapon switching did not feel that great).

Do any games ever come out that you actually do like?

Totally picked up the deluxe edition of this is anticipation though I am still playing though the first game and plan to play The Old Blood next.

hrmmm.. i'm having an issue where scaling is all wacky when in 4k. (1080p and 1440p are fine) - i'll guess i'll wait to see if there is a fix. End of week release make me sad because the first patch always takes longer :(

I'm having some problems getting this game to run in 16:9, 1842x1036 resolution. I'm using my HDTV as the monitor and want to use this resolution but the game is not scaling it properly. Like more than 60% of the stuff is cut off and it's unplayable in this state. Anyone know how to fix this? Usually this is not a problem.

@mike: That's a dangerous question to ask.

i'm having odd stuff on only the 4k. There is a Nvidia hotfix, but i think it is only for perf on older cards.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1027449/announcing-geforce-hotfx-driver-388-10-for-wolfenstein-ii-the-new-colossus-released-10-26-17-/?offset=1

@zurv: Thanks, I'll look at that. I have a GTX 1060 3GB, I don't know if that is considered an older card, though it's a relatively cheap one.

Was just about to ask the same thing.

Anyway, a question for everyone else: So as someone who still has new order sitting on his shelf is this better or worse than the first game? I remember really liking some parts of it but I thought the robot stuff wasn't as strong. The tone seems more over the top here which I think i'll enjoy but if it's mostly giant robots I don't know.

I fixed the resolution problems. Some of it may be on me, I'm not sure. I had to mess with the Nvidia and Windows settings a bunch to get it to work. Anyway, I'm just about an hour in (still on the u-boat, in a wheelchair) and playing on über settings the game looks pretty good. I have to say though, playing this game I feel like a lot of stuff gameplay wise is not as sharp or "clear" compared to New Order. A lot of times I'm not even noticing when I'm getting shot, or I look at my health bar during combat and see that I've gone from 80 to 20 HP without even noticing and it just feels kind of chaotic in a way. I don't know, maybe I'll get used to it. The cut scenes so far have been fantastic though, just as good as in New Order.

It's so fucking good so far.

@ezekiel: Not to get too Off Topic, but did you play Hollow Knight or Night in the Woods?

@opusofthemagnum: I'm hardly the first person to notice and comment on the tendency of American media criticism to be perfectly okay with violence and utterly scandalized by sex. I noticed this sort of thing in my own home when I was growing up. I was allowed to watch Starship Troopers, except for the co-ed shower scene. I'm 100% sure that I'm not the only person who was raised like that. To speak to another video game related matter: Fox News was shocked--shocked, I say!--that your character could have sex in Mass Effect, but never mentioned the 20+ hours of shooting people.

I was wrong to assume that @ezekiel is American. I was speaking from my own experience, and I made a bad assumption.

He liked the visual novel adaptation of Vanderbilt's guide to etiquette

i put about 2.5 hours into it this morning before work. it's running great on my FX8320/R9 390 with 16GB RAM at 1080 on the ultra preset. Game looks great, plays fantastic, and the writing and characters are exactly what i wanted. My only gripe with the game so far has to do with the super early flashback scene that i felt had some objectionable stuff in it where young boy BJ is forced by is asshole dad to shoot his own dog. I found that pretty objectionable and i had to go hug my pup for a few minutes after i played that part. I'll murder video game nazis but the thousands but don't ask me to pull the trigger on an innocent dog. Other than that one part, i'm loving the game so far. Doom 2016 engine is proving to be amazing tech.

I continued to play the first game yesterday but for some reason it makes me feel weirdly nauseated. Could this be because it doesn't have native controller support on PC so the turn speed is off? Or possibly a FOV issue? I've read that can cause problems.

I have the exact same feeling. The feedback when taking damage just isn't obvious enough, I am finding myself constantly having to watch my health total to see if I'm actually taking damage or not. In New Order and Old Blood that system was much better, it was always very clear when you were taking damage and where it was coming from.

nope, that is a new gen card. I tried the new drivers and they didn't help. It windows mode it doesn't look crazy, but when i captured the video, it showed the real resolution which was 2560x1440. Not the 3840x2160 I set it too.

Also, oh my, the first 30min goes places... I was very uncomfortable.

@zurv: Have you tried getting SLI to work at all?

@mike: They officially said that SLI doesn't work. I'm getting about 170fps on uber settings. But it is unclear to me what resolution the game is running in. (it is set to 4k, but doesn't look like it. Even simple stuff like hud, subtitles, cpu counter, etc don't look as sharp as they should.)

The first game ran fine on one card (titan X (2106) in 4k maxed, I'm assuming (once the resolution is worked out) a titan Xp will be able to handle it. I'm looking forward to playing it now and i'm bounced off desinty 2 already (yeah.. already.. sooo boring and ez)

@oldmanlight: you didn't have to do "it" - you can move the gun away. But then your jerk dad is going to do it for u.

Do I need the play the game before this to understand the story?

@marcsman: Not really, the game brings you up to speed. But you can also just watch the collection of Old Blood cutscenes on YouTube if you really wanted to.

Yeah it's really strange but I feel like there is a big disconnect happening. Like you said there is not enough of a feedback to when you hit someone or when you are getting hit like there was in New Order and Old Blood. It all sort of feels flimsy and not at all like the punchy and heavy action of New Order. I hate to say it but that was a lackluster first hour. Hoping it picks up.

@mike: Thanks. My wallet is not going to thank you though. Ha ha

I feel like this game is sacrificing the subtlety and humanity of the last game for whacky grindhouse fun. I dunno, guys. I found the last game's tone very unique, and this seems like its just giving up its identity to be like every other shooter out there in terms of character and story.

@zurv: my experience too. i pointed it as far away as i could but it didn't matter because the dog still died.

I'm about four hours in and the characters are story are definitely not like every other shooter.

I'm really enjoying it so far. Some parts can be a bit frustrating when you die a lot, but it's still great fun. There is one particular new weapon that feels amazing to use.

The only impression I can give so far is that it's very comforting to be offered soup or porridge. The game crashes without fail for me immediately after that though, so that's not so great.

I hope I won't regret buying this and AC: Origins on Xbox One instead of on PS4 Pro or PC. While my PC is more than three years old by now, I just got the OLED 4K TV that Jeff and Dan also bought and, having also pre-ordered an XBox One X, it just made sense to buy both games for the console which is not out yet. Yeah, that feels strange: Buying games for a console that is not out yet, but that you can already play on the old version of the console with the downside that it might not look very good or run very well. First world problems. Anyone else who went ahead and bought it on Xbone in anticipation for the new X console?

@knurrunkulus: I have a xbox x coming.. but my PC is a billion times more powerful than it. (and i have a PC as powerful also connected to a 2017 oled too)

If your PC is old the xbox x isn't a bad pick. for the money you can't get a pc as power as the x. (that said you could have picked up a gtx 1080 for that game price and then your PCs would be much more powerful. (neither would be able to run 4k @60 tho :)

Just did my first stealth kill and...that was a bracing splash of ice cold awesome in my face.

Loving it so far, and I'm barely an hour in. HARROWING intro.

So far it seems like they've ratcheted up just about everything in this game. The speed, craziness, violence, budget, etc... My one gripe is something that appears other people are having. The feedback about where you're getting shot from and how much health you have. I've died a number of times already because I have no idea if my health is running down or not. Other than that, this game is nuts and completely ridiculous. I hope it's able to straddle the line of seriousness and complete absurdity for the rest of the game because it could easily jump the shark in a heart beat.

I got to play about an hour last night and it’s a great continuation. Weirdly enough the story is still my main motivation in playing. I never really thought the shooting part of the game felt all that great in New Order and New Colossus continues to feel awkward. As many have mentioned there is little to no feedback on how hard you’re getting hit and even on “normal” a single soldier can shred through your entire health bar in seconds. Shooting enemies will often feel like emptying a clip into a piece of wood - like this dry soaking up of bullets not at all what shooting another human being should feel like (that sounds real nuts but you know what I mean). The guns take up a lot of real estate on your screen and the muzzle flash is absolutely blinding to the point where I can’t see what I’m even shooting. I dunno it’s all just kinda more spectacle than anything else and that doesn’t necessarily translate into good gameplay.

That said the art design is amazing, the story bonkers and the set pieces incredibly satisfying. I wish it played more like Doom as I still feel kinda clumsy waddling about but overall I’m having a fun time. It is HARD though, and whenever I get tempted to go all Rambo into a room I get instantly put in my place.

Holy christ, the story is just going places - again and again. This game's got a whole handful of picks for GOTY deliberations.

This is the biggest thing that I see convincing me to get DOOM over this when they both come to Switch, since I could see myself dying from this a LOT and getting annoyed. Would you guys say you've suffered a lot of unfair deaths from the lack of a damage indicator?

So should I go back and finish the first one or can I just start this without being too lost?

I'm loving everything about it so far except the part where you actually play it. I thought New Order had excellent gameplay that felt pitch-perfect. Here, it feels almost too loose, and combined with the movement speed, it makes it frustratingly hard to shoot dudes at times. I'm not really sure why any of this had to change from the last game. I am getting the hang of it, but this is one of the few times where I really would prefer to play on M&K.

More of an issue, though, is definitely the damage feedback as others have already mentioned. I've died a ton already, and I'm less than two hours in. Most of the time my death comes as a surprise because the last time I looked, I had plenty of health and armor. Then, all of a sudden, BAM, I'm dead. You have no survivability on top of that. I had to knock it down to medium from hard on the second level because it was just ridiculous. It kind of goes against the way the games seems to want to be played. If you go into a room guns blazing, you're gonna have a bad time. Basic enemies shred you apart like wet paper. I finished TNO on Nightmare but I can't even fathom what the hardest difficulties in 2 are going to be like. Probably not fun.

The story and characters are keeping me hooked so far, luckily. The opening hour or so is gut-wrenching.

@nicksmi56: I wouldn’t say “unfair” but rather completely “unexpected.” Today I was playing a brand new level, killed a guard, started getting shot from some direction and by the time I turned around I was dead. This is from full health. I was completely shocked to have gone down so quickly. People make fun of the “raspberry jam” effect from Call of Duty, but the increasingly red covered screen was a decent indicator of how hurt you are without having to glance down the screen. In Wolfenstein you get hit and the screen doesn’t change until you go below 10HP.

Doom is all around a better shooter in my opinion with a less interesting story. The movement and weapons in Doom feel excellent. Wolfenstein in comparison feels clunky and slightly dated. Earlier today I was getting stuck trying to jump over a handrail because there is no vaulting - stuff like that seems like it shouldn’t be a thing in modern games anymore.

This. Borderlands is another good example on how to show feedback in a shooter. When you lose your shield, the screen has a small animation showing your shield "bursting" (for lack of a better term).

@colonel_pockets: Yah I think a lot of us have gotten conditioned to some sort of on-screen damage indicator and as such I’ll often find myself tearing through a level thinking I’m doing amazing cause my screen is “clear” and then I glance down and I have 15HP.

In case you didn't find out during the last eight hours, there's a story recap for New Order when you start a new game in Colossus.

I also mentioned elsewhere about the damage indicator. I find the lack of it pretty odd, but I've learned to keep an eye on my health often enough by now. Still, I'd like to know why they've decided on removing the hit indicator almost completely.

Definitely agree that the damage feedback in this game is missing, and I find myself dying quickly without even knowing that I had been hit. I've started playing the game very slowly and sticking to cover a lot, which is weird given that Blazkowicz is supposed to be a superpowered badass.

On the bright side the story is great, the graphics and presentation are phenomenal (Vulkan on an RX 480 is magic), and I'm really digging the universe they created. Excited to play some more of this.

Just finished the game, and I really liked it. The story was fucking nuts. The gameplay was good if not incredible. I agree with everyone saying there's not enough player feedback. I really just played it for the story, and I'm glad I did cause HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK!?

Mid-game spoiler: The whole sequence leading up to, including, and following BJ's execution is completely bonkers and totally unexpected. Has to be a Best Moment contender for GOTY.

Late-game spoiler: They made some choices about how to depict Hitler. I was ready to see him in this game, possibly as a robot-man. I was not ready to see him pissing and vomiting on the floor at an audition for a movie he wrote on Venus. It was shocking and hilarious and crazy.