Wolfenstein: The New Order

In an alternate post-WWII Europe (1962) in a world where the Nazis emerged victorious in the Second World War, war veteran William "B.J." Blazkowicz (Terror Billy) thwarts the Nazis and puts an end to their world domination, defeating infamous Nazi scientist William "Deathshead" Strasse in the process. This game's level design and aesthetics accurately depict the time period and alternate plotline and doesn't hold back in examining the brutality of a world controlled by Nazis. All the characters are well-developed, especially the protagonist - William B.J. Blazkowicz (in previous Wolfenstein games B.J. is just "the guy you play" with little to no characterization, but in The New Order he has a fully developed personality). In addition to this, there's great voice acting, especially Brian Bloom as B.J. who brings character life giving B.J. a soft but charismatic voice, making this one of interactive media's finest voice-acting yet. The relationship between Anya and B.J., however, suffers from Instant Seduction. On the train to Berlin, the scene cuts from Blazkowicz and Anya (who previously didn't do much beyond look at each other in the previous mission) talking about possibly sharing a bunk, to them mid-coitus. However, it was foreshadowed that Anya had already taken a liking to Blazkowicz when he was in a comatose state. There's also some dialogue indicating it's Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex after all the insanity the two of them have been through in the past couple of days. Despite that, the relationship between the two seem to escalate too quickly. There are also many times where the game will switch to full cutscenes almost every time you interact with another character, which feels jarring. The graphics are awesome with very detailed character models, but there are also some textures in the game that look terrible so much so that you'd think they're from the GameCube/PS2/Xbox Classic era. This is mainly due to the engine: id Tech 5. Unlike other engines which use multiple textures per environment, Id Tech 5 uses what's called 'Megatextures', a massive texture placed over the entire level, hence why the game is 40GB big. A technique called Virtual Texturing is used to control how much of an MT is moved into your GPU VRAM at a time which is what causes all the pop in issues. While the soundtrack is amazing, making gunfights and boss fights even more fun, the mixing is poor since the music is too quiet especially when in combat. What doesn't help is the lack of a slider to adjust the volume of the music like in most modern games. At the end of the first chapter, you can choose who to sacrifice, Fergus or Wyatt. In doing so, things will be different depending on who you choose. These include the kind of upgrades you pick up, what character appears ('J', who is a tribute to the pop-culture icon Jimi Hendrix, or Tekla, who is a personification of Nikola Tesla and is an homage to him), and even hidden areas in some levels. Guns have solid, heavy feedback when being shot and all of them, and even the pistol feels very powerful. Also, most weapons can be dual wielded, ranging from the basic hand cannon to laser rifles. You have the option to either go in guns blazing or do a stealth-oriented approach in almost every level. Enemies also don't endlessly respawn until you move forward like in Call of Duty; once a room is cleared, it will stay cleared for the entirety of the level. Collectibles can be found throughout the game. Most common is treasure, which is usually just golden items, however, some can be actually rewarding. Armor upgrades, which appear only in Wyatt's timeline. Each collected upgrade increase the armor value gained from armor pickups by 10%, up to a maximum of 100% (if all 10 upgrades are collected). The player's overall maximum armor value remains 100. Health upgrades appear only in Fergus' timeline. Each collected upgrade boosts the player's maximum health by 10, up to 200 (if all 10 upgrades are collected). Letters: While not very important story-wise, these items can provide some background insights into the lives (and probable deaths) of some unseen individuals under the rule of the fascist regime. Records: In some levels, you can find tracks that are mostly parodies and homages to real pop songs of the period "modified" to suit Nazi themes and doctrines. These parodies range from songs from The Beatles to The Monkees. Even Enigma Code fragments are hidden in the game world, appearing as red booklets with a black Wolfenstein logo on the cover, followed by the words "GEHEIM - Enigma Codes". Solving each code unlocks a bonus game mode with rules altered from the normal gameplay. Solving Enigma codes can unlock new game modes, but for some reason the game doesn't explicitly tell you how to solve the Enigma Clues, instead giving you hints via numbers on a chalkboard in some levels, though no one would know that's what they are for. These unlocked bonus modes include: 999 Mode: Difficulty is set to Über, but the player starts with 999 temporary health that slowly decays down to 100. All weapons have infinite ammo and the player can use an unlimited amount of grenades. Walk in the Park: All HUD elements are removed entirely except for interaction prompts and the difficulty is set to I am Death Incarnate! Hardcore: Difficulty is set to Über and all health and armor pickups are removed from the game's levels. Ironman: Difficulty is set to Über and the player only has one life. No checkpoint saves and the game will start from the beginning upon death or quitting. Oh, and I forgot to mention one final thing I really like: EVEN THE NAZIS ACTUALLY SPEAK GERMAN WELL instead of speaking English with an embarassing German accent (that is because of two things, this game was developed by a Swedish developer called MachineGames, and id Software opened a studio in Germany). This is id Software at their very best yet!