Wolfenstein: The New Order

Fun Fact: I bought Wolfenstein here in Austria at a local store went home to fire it up just to realise that it had FORCED German voice over in the PS4 edition and that put me so off at first that I almost didn't give the game another chance. Good thing I came back around to it because Wolfenstein The New Order is a very refreshing FPS in a mostly very self serious genre.

You start out playing as B.J. Blazkowicz who is on his way to overthrow the last Nazi general/mad-scientist "Totenkopf" who is holed up in a huge castle somewhere in Europe. Some may remember BJ from the older games because he's the same guy who killed "Mecha-Hitler" all these years ago. All this seems pretty cliche at first but the story takes a very unexpected hard left turn after the opening mission.

For everyone that's sensible to mild spoilers just skip the next paragraph because it may contain some but nothing you would't find out yourself in the first 20 minutes within the game.

You were warned.

So things happen and Blazko gets knocked into a sort of awake coma and stays that way for 14! years. As the player you see how the world change over the years because in this universe the Germans won the war. Somehow you wake up from the coma just in time to safe the nurse, that took care of you all those years, from being killed. From there on you learn about the state of the world and that there might be a small resistance group somewhere in Berlin, so you and your almost love interest set out to search for them. So much for the setup of the game.

The thing that Wolfenstein does so much better than a lot of other FPS's is that it uses its setting and story in a very creative an unique way.They don't just say that the Germans simply rule the world now, there is detailed information how they have invaded america, where and how they produce their "super concrete" even things like where the Beatles ended up in this universe (including real music you can listen to from them).

What I want to put across is that the detail and afterthought, that the folks at MachineGames have put into this game is absolutely stunning and on the level of some complicated RPG worlds. It shows that a lot of the people at MachineGames are the same guys from Starbreeze that made those incredible Riddick games back in the day. No one expected this "reboot" to have such a fleshed out world and story and it came as a pleasant surprise.

Besides the great world building the game also looks pretty good art design wise, is fairly long for an First Person Shooter (it took me around 10-12 hours) and has a great diversity in mission design and locations (you even go to the German special research base on the moon for gods sake!)

But sadly not everything is sunshine and rainbows in Wolfenstein The New Order. I found it funny that they did a good job with the stealthy parts of the game (especially in an FPS) but somehow made the shooting parts feel odd. The weapons felt cheap and kind of tinny without any real "umpf" to them. I kept shooting guys with my machine guns for days without them even giving two shits about that. On the other hand the rate at which you loose health and how the whole“you are being shot at“ mechanic is represented to you is bonkers. At one moment you walk down a hallway with full health and 100% armor than suddenly you see how the screen starts fading into a blackish red with your health almost at 35% and that all happens without you even noticing that you were being shot in the back the whole time. The impact of the bullets is just not portrayed right. When 5 enemies shoot at you at the same time and your view doesn't even shake or something like that than you know that the hit response is janky.

The second complaint I have is that especially in the later levels the game gets unnecessary hard. It all devolves into a somewhat clunky shooting gallery where the game throws the hardest enemies at you in every room just because it can. That combined with the poor bullet impact mechanic makes the last 2 missions sort of a chore you just want to get through to be done with the game. It‘s a real shame that a otherwise good game ends so poorly.

To sum it all up I can recommend Wolfenstein The New Order to everyone that wants to play and experience a pretty OK FPS in a really well realised and fleshed out world. I enjoyed my time with it and I'm really curious about what MachineGames does next.

7/10

(This review is originally from my lame blog where I try to write about games and I really appreciate every eyeball that sees it :) )