Wolfenstein: The New Order truly surprised me. Not because it is an amazing game. I fully expected to get a polished shooter filled with buckets of blood, and plenty of Nazi killing. It delivered those things. It also delivered a thoughtful narrative, and true, raw emotion.
Just fifteen minutes into the game, I was vertically scaling the wall of a large Nazi fortress as a giant three legged machine stalked the trenches behind me, killing other allied troops as they attempted to join the assault. Wolfenstein starts in 1946, and "The world has gone to shit." It is clear within the first five minutes that the war did not go the way it should have. In the first level alone, I saw armored attack dogs, the aforementioned machine (called a "Monitor"), advanced Nazi fighter planes, and hulking monstrosities comprised of both metal and flesh. It created an unbelievable, yet familiar aesthetic for me. My submachine gun was clearly a Thompson that was given a few extra years to be modified and improved, just as the Nazi assault rifles I was happily dual-wielding were some derivation of the MP-44.
The assault on the compound fails, leaving the protagonist, B.J. Blazkowicz in a sort of coma, and the antagonist, Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse very much alive. B.J. spends 14 years in an asylum, watching helplessly as the Nazis come and take the "sub-human" patients away in small groups to become test subjects for Strasse's experiments. He also is very much aware of the young woman that cares for him, Anya. When the Nazi's come to shut the asylum down and begin executing everyone, it shakes B.J. out of his catatonic state, and after watching a Nazi execute several helpless people, I gleefully pressed the appropriate button to execute him with the knife I had grabbed from my nearby dining cart a few seconds earlier. I grabbed the fallen Nazi's gun, some form of futuristic Luger, and set off to escape from the Asylum and rescue Anya, who had been dragged away by the troopers. They escape to the home of Anya's grandparents, where they explain that the Nazi's won the war, and rebuilt the world in their image.
And that was just the first hour and a half.
First, let's examine the gameplay. Every weapon feels great, and dual wielding weapons feels suitably heavier and more powerful. I played much of the game with an assault rifle in each hand. Bullets tear into enemies, leaving them broken and bloody on the ground, and the LaserKraftWerk (my new favorite word to say) causes most enemies to simply explode. Something that all of the Wolfenstein games has contained is plenty of Nazi cannon fodder that don't require an entire magazine of ammo to dispatch, which makes it all the more difficult when the big guys show up. Stealth combat is also present, and is not some half baked gameplay mechanic thrown in for the sake of variety. In most situations, and stealth and the balls to the wall approaches are equally viable, especially with the game's perk system. The player unlocks perks as they complete certain tasks tying into their play style. So, after getting five knife kills, I unlocked the ability to throw knives, making me a more efficient stealth killer. There are three full perk branches. Health is regained through pickups, which include medical kits, meals on tables, and yes, dog food. Armor is present as well. Health can be overcharged for a limited time. All of the weapons can be carried simultaneously. In other words, Wolfenstein utilizes many of the old school gameplay mechanics that I grew up with in first person shooters, while modernizing it simultaneously with the perk system, the presence of viable stealth combat, and weapon upgrades. The levels are varied and well designed, providing multiple paths with which to approach most situations. This, once again ties into the varied combat options, and provides quite a bit of variety in the gameplay, and has thus far prevented fatigue from setting in, even as I was replaying levels to find collectables I had missed.
Killing Officers Quietly Prevents Them From Calling Reinforcements.
The visuals are, for the most part, gorgeous. Id Tech 5 is still a new engine, and has some room to grow, but it is definitely powerful. I had some minor performance issues until I downloaded updated drivers for my GTX 660, and there was visible texture pop-in whenever I turned too quickly. Beyond that, the characters, weapons, and environments are all varied, and extremely detailed. After the prologue, the war-torn European aesthetic is left behind, replacing it with the monitored, almost sterile look that a Nazi world in the 1960's would possess. Huge buildings draped with swastikas, security cameras on every street corner, checkpoints with armed troops (and mechanical guard dogs), and a massive prison right in the middle of downtown Berlin, all help to establish that the Nazi's are indeed in control.
The characters are quite a rogue's gallery. Each character has a real presence, and the dialogue is extremely well written. B.J. is still the stoic Nazi killing maniac, but there's much more to him in this game. His inner monologue especially paints a much larger portrait of who this man really is. I felt a supreme sense of loss, hatred, and pain in everything he said.
"Such raw sorrow. Can't partake. Mine would flood oceans. I would drown...if I let it out," he thinks during one particularly emotional scene. The other characters are all just as extreme, and feel right at home. Anya, B.J.'s savior and love interest seems fragile at first, but ends up being stronger than I could have imagined. Caroline Becker, who somehow survived being shot by Hans Grosse in 2009's Wolfenstein, is wheelchair bound, but still an excellent resistance fighter in her own right. Fergus, the sarcastic Scot with a foul mouth. Wyatt, the young soldier that looks up to B.J. Frau Engle, the Nazi officer that loves to play games, especially when other people's lives are at stake. Deathshead, the sick man that likes to dissect still-living humans and is responsible for crafting the war machines that stomped the world into submission. They all come together to paint a story that, if you pay attention, is more emotional and thought-provoking than anything I've seen in an FPS since Half-Life 2. Yup, I said it.
I beat my first playthrough of Wolfenstein in about 15 hours. I played on the second to hardest difficulty (I Am Death Incarnate), and did not manage to find all of the collectables. I have just started my second playthrough in order to find the rest of the collectables. There is also a fairly large decision to be made in the prologue that affects the rest of the game in several ways, and I am enjoying seeing the other side of that. I was not bothered at all by Wolfenstein's lack of multiplayer, as I'm up to almost 18 hours of game time, and I feel as though I am getting my money's worth, and then some. Some of the collectables I still need to find include Health/Armor upgrades, records of 1960's German music (which often imitate real tunes from that time period), enigma code pieces that unlock extra game modes, and of course, pieces of gold that serve no real purpose whatsoever. In other words, there's plenty to do if you take the time to look for it. One of the extra game modes I've unlocked is 999 mode, which starts the player with 999 health, gives them unlimited ammo, and sets the game's difficulty to Uber, which is the most difficult.
I'd like to make a special mention of the song "I Believe" which can be heard during the end credits and is sung by Melissa Hollick. I won't give anything way, but it really helps to convey the emotion found in Wolfenstein: The New Order and was an excellent addition to the game.
In closing, Wolfenstein: The New Order is an excellent shooter with a heart and a soul. It also provides plenty of ham-fisted Nazi slaughtering that we've come to expect from the Wolfenstein franchise. In many ways, it is a return to the roots of first person shooters. At the same, it takes a step forward to the future, adding depth and emotion to a genre that is often seen as stale and lifeless.
Verdict: Play it. Now. Just do it.
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