Wolfenstein: The New Order Reviews

Review for Wolfenstein 3D: Here.
Review for Spear of Destiny: Here.
Review for Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Here.

***Note: This review contains mild spoilers for Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, as it is a prequel to The New Order. If you have not played that title, it is suggested that you do so before you continue reading. Consider this your fair warning.

After five long years since the last installment, Bethesda Softworks and Machine Games shocked the world when they revealed Wolfenstein: The New Order. The franchise, though beloved and adored by multi-generations of gamers, seemed to be on its last legs, with sporadically released games and publishing rights left up in the air after Ravensoft, a part of Activision, no longer held them.

Wolfenstein: The New Order takes place initially in 1946, three years after the events of Wolfenstein 2009, where the Black Sun Portal was destroyed and the Nazi forces developed the use of advanced machine technology. Picking up just a short while after the end events of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, after recovering the information that leads main protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz and his companion Fergus Reid to Deathshead's compound, they soon find themselves back in the depths of the X-Labs; a damning and devious place, where Deathshead conducts all kinds of gruesome experiments on captured soldiers and the mentally unstable. After making a gut-wrenching decision early on, Blazkowicz finds himself to be a human vegetable for 14 years, and being cared for in an asylum in Poland, only to eventually snap out of it and realize the year is now 1960.

Some old personalities return, including Caroline Becker, but for the most part this title consists of brand new entities. The entire cast have decently thought-out backgrounds that are revealed throughout the 16 mission campaign, and the overall character development is grade A stuff; it's also worth noting that the voice acting is just as impressive, if not more so. Blazkowicz has more lines than ever before, allowing players to get to know him a bit more personally, and his personality and traits are well fleshed out; he's a good 'ol southern boy, with a heart of gold and muscles of titanium. On the flip-side, the villains are as repulsive and cold as one would expect Nazi leaders to be, and even many of the generic, no-name SS enemies as well.

For a game from 2014, Wolfenstein: The New Order has outstandingly advanced graphics, and it runs on the id Tech 5 engine, the same one as The Evil Within, and the predecessor to id Tech 6 that runs Doom 2016 and the soon-to-be Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Every texture is incredibly sleek, and each model is astonishingly well crafted; especially when it comes to the weapons. The gameplay is smooth and most transitions are completely seamless, with the exception of going from gameplay to cutscenes, framerates drop from a solid 60 to a jarring 30. However, there is a major problem here concerning crashing that may or may not prevent the player from progressing through the campaign. I personally experienced this twice, both instances much later in the story, where I was forced to restart an entire level because reaching a certain checkpoint or cutscene rendered the game unable to continue. I was fortunate enough to be able to continue, but some people have not been.

Other than that, fast and furious gun play can be both expected and enjoyed in this action-adventure based FPS; shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, they're all here, they can all be duel-wielded, and they all come with alternative fire modes. There are many moments of stealth as well, and a few missions do not have any fighting at all, rather they are levels that help build up the story arc, as well as the overall suspense. If you go in expecting a full-on non-stop combat game, then Wolfenstein: The New Order will inevitably disappoint you. However, if you're looking for an FPS with well thought out characters and a great story, then you're going to have a lot of fun for the next 10-20 hours. There's also a lot of room for replayability, since there are two timelines to follow that depend on what choice is made during the beginning sequence. There's also a brand new perk system, where upon meeting certain criteria, the player can unlock new upgrades for Blazkowicz. It's definitely worth working towards, and some of the goals can be quite challenging. Of course, there are also treasure, enigma, and letter collectibles to locate as well.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Wolfenstein: The New Order is an amazing FPS with solid gameplay, astonishing graphics, and a smooth engine. One might even say it's the best game in the franchise, and the first one that really details the personality and history of B.J. Blazkowicz. Unfortunately, the awe-inspiring properties of this title are overshadowed by flaws that it has housed since its initial release. Although I maintained a consistent 60 FPS throughout my time with the game, at one key point I saw an nonfluctuating 4 FPS; of course, this was one of the areas that tends to crash on people, but my result was unplayable framerates and still I was forced to restart my progress in the mission. For reference, I have an i7 6700k/GTX 1080 rig, and this behavior is completely unacceptable. That being said, it's still a game that's highly worth playing, if you grab it on sale.

Rating: 4.0/5.0 - Excellent, highly worth playing.
The Horror Network
Steam Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork
Steam Curator: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork#curation

Much as Wolfenstein 3D set the stage for DOOM, Wolfenstein: The New Order set the stage for… DOOM (the 2016 version).

This isn’t a bad thing… but it also means that if you play DOOM before you play this game, this game will seem inferior by comparison in many ways.

You play as William Blazkowicz, a brick of a soldier, sent out to kill some Nazis. After suffering some head trauma, you awake in a world where the Nazis have won, and you, along with a small number of resistance fighters (but really, just you) must win the world back from the Nazis.

The game is broken up into 16 stages of various lengths. Some of these stages (particularly the first one) are pretty long, while others are extremely short, taking less than ten minutes to complete if you don’t bother exploring much. The stages theoretically take place in a variety of locations (though one location actually repeats itself four times, and three of the stages involve very little combat at all – though all of these are extremely short stages), from a Nazi science compound/castle to a concentration camp to… another Nazi science compound, actually, but this time ON THE MOON.

The game is full of Nazi iconography, due to the Nazis having conquered the world, and takes on a generally dark and somber tone – the Nazis have taken over the world and are horrible people. So the solution is to dual wield assault rifles and take them all down.

If this sounds a little bit jarring, it is because it is; the game is at times at odds with itself. You spend a lot of time sneaking around, and indeed, are rewarded for being stealthy (getting stealth kills on commanders not only stops them from spawning infinite reinforcements, but also reveals secrets on the map)… and yet, when you fight, you can dual wield pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, and even sniper rifles. The game is full of ridiculous elements, like Nazi robots, and a base ON THE MOON, and yet the game tries to take itself seriously, with horrible things going on all the time, and the plot as a whole being very somber.

The result is a great deal of tonal dissonance. DOOM solved this problem by making you a ridiculous killing machine who doesn’t care about the plot IN CHARACTER. Wolfenstein… doesn’t solve this problem at all, which sort of undermines itself.

And this is hardly the only way in which it does so.

The game is full of collectibles, and you also unlock “perks” by accomplishing specific tasks in game, such as killing 80 nazis with assault rifles from cover, or killing 20 enemies stealthily with throwing knives, or blowing up multiple enemies at once with a grenade. Some of these are pretty easily done, but others require more doing, and some of the collectibles and all of the perks give you benefits for doing them – which creates a problem.

The thing is, the game really wants you to keep on moving. But the collectibles encourage you to spend a bunch of time searching around, while the perks often encourage somewhat unnatural behavior to unlock them. Both of these mess up the gameplay flow of the game.

The worst of it is, this is probably deliberate; while the game has 16 stages, as previously noted, a number of them are very short. As a result, beating all of the stages can be done within 18 hours or so even if you do look for collectibles… but the game is probably half that long if you just go through without really exploring. The thing is, the exploration in most of the levels doesn’t really give you a whole lot of bang for your buck, and as noted, the tonal dissonance of the darkness of the story and its more ridiculous elements undermines your ability to take the story seriously. It is a grimdark world, and like most grimdark worlds, it verges on being a parody of itself, and it isn’t really clear if it knows how ridiculous it is being.

I may sound down on it, but honestly, there were a number of moments in the game where I had fun. The thing is, the game kept feeling like it was pushing back on its own fun, and it didn’t feel like it quite made up its mind.

In the end, Wolfenstein is a power fantasy that periodically disempowers its protagonist, only for him to overcome it and start murdering Nazis again. It’s fun killing Nazis, but nothing here is as much fun as killing the demons in DOOM.

My personal advice? This is an okay game, and if you haven’t played DOOM yet, you’ll probably find it decent.

But honestly, I’d just recommend playing DOOM instead. You’ll probably have more fun with it, and it knows what it wants to be.