When you think of Wolfenstein, you think of a shooter set in Germany where you play as an American shooting his way through cartoonishly goofy waves of Nazis like an unusually violent 1940's propaganda.
Oh, I've just described Wolfenstein: The New Order as well. But it's actually more complicated then that.
'id' - the company behind both this franchise and Doom - are always described as 'engine guys' responsible for excellent graphics engines...but I've never seen this. Doom 3, like all Nvidia based games from the early 2000's, plays like arse on modern systems. Rage required two discs to play a eight hour game, and The New Order sucks on anything that isn't a large hadron collider.
Even on the lowest settings, the amount of textures popping in almost offended me, and nothing about the game screamed: "this totally deserves to be a sodding 50GB download that took a whole sodding day to sodding install." Whilst Doom 3 looked and played amazing for the time, the engine is clunky, inefficient, and extremely buggy now. Meanwhile, Wolfenstein: The New Order is already inefficient, so I can't wait to see how buggy and clunky it gets over the years.
Fortunately, I can overlook the technical issues because I had great fun playing this game. In fact, the only reason why I'm speculating about how this game would play in several years time is because I'll likely play this again soon. I don't think I'll play it to death like Team Fortress 2 or Mount and Blade: Warband, but I definitely see myself reinstalling and replaying it on a whim like I do with BioShock Infinite and Star Wars Battlefront 2.
Plot-wise, it's standard. You play as a grizzly macho hero the size of a modestly proportioned Star Destroyer called BJ. The difference between The New Order and all the other games in this historic and occasionally good franchise is that we're going back to the future. Specifically: to an alternate history where the Nazis won the war...somehow.
Bizzarely, this is a sequel to Wolfenstein. Not the original Wolfenstein 3D, but the Wolfenstein reboot from 2009 - a game so dull I only played it for the first hour before falling asleep and dreaming of a much better experience. I thought the whole reason why The New Order changed setting was because no-one liked the previous game and the developers were tring to distance themselves from it. Yet the same villan returns along with a handful of plot-elements and other characters just to make you scratch your head. Not playing the previous games means that there are a handfull of plotholes such as: "how did the Nazis suddenly develop this advanced technology that enabled them to win the war?" and "what the hell are those magic artefacts that show up before immediately dissapearing."
But what made Wolfenstein 2009 so dull were the terrible characters. Bland dialogue. No personality. Awful voice acting. They were nothing but polygons placed in the world to either spout exposition or be shot at. Here: the opposite is true. BJ is still blander than a lorry with a frowny-face drawn on it, but everyone else is well-rounded, excellently voiced, and just fascinating. They pull you into the world and are a rare example of characterisation in games that're on par with books and film.
Right at the start of the game, you're given a choice to let one of two characters die. Aside from changing the lockpicking puzzle, this option doesn't affect gameplay at all, yet it's still one of the hardest descisions I've had to make in gaming. Either way, a character that feels like a living breathing person will be horrifically butchered. I only knew the guy for one level, and I already felt more of a connection to him than anyone in Mass Effect. The gameplay doesn't change, but the whole feel of the game itself does.
Even a minor character warmed my heart. He was an elderly polish man who clearly despised the Nazis yet could do nothing but quietly leave them to their victory. You can feel his excitement and jubilation as he drives BJ to a checkpoint, hands him a gun and says "You: shoot ze Nazis! Shoot all ze Nazis!" I never thought such a sentence could warm my heart, but seeing this mass of pixels finally being able to rebel against a force that's crushed him all his life touched me. Yes. Yes I will shoot the Nazis.
Aside from the connections to the previous game and the ending (which we'll get to) the only part of the story I dislike is the romance. They share time for about two minuites before deciding that they are both destined for each other. I'm glad to see feminism has paid off...
The gameplay is solid. In fact, it's really fun. It alternates between stealth and action, and whilst the stealth is token it's effective for the most part. There isn't really a clear indication of if you're visible or not, and once you're spotted you can't dive back into cover. There are a handful of sections where you're clearly supposed to use stealth, but there are even more sections where you're supposed to use combat - and the combat is really the main focus here.
All I'll say about the gunplay is that you can dual-wield weapons. This means you can fire two machine guns or two shotguns or two laser-guns at the same time. It's just as fun as it sounds.
Whilst there aren't any roleplaying elements, there are upgrades which are unlocked by completing taks such as 'backstab 20 people whilst overcharged' and 'kill 3 people whilst sliding.' These encourage experimentation. I wouldn't have bothered using the tricky throwing knives if the game hadn't rewarded me for doing so - and by doing this I came to discover that the throwing knives are probably your most useful tool available. Additionally, you come across a weapon with the best name ever: DER LASERKRAFTWERK!! This begins as a highly contextual cutting tool but as you collect upgrades it soon transforms into the most deadly weapon in the game.
I'm beginning to grow fond of games that merge health bars and regeneration. I appreciate regenerating health in games like Spec Ops: The Line where you're thrust into a warzone and having health-packs lying around would completely break the flow - but at the same time whilst medkits break flow, they actually make things tense. If you're low on health then you have to find cover and crawl around searching for something to nourish you. Do you make a break for that stack of bandages over there, knowing that one stray blast could end your journey here? Or do you hunker down and try to take the enemy by surprise.
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| Yes, you get to go on the moon. It's as cool as it sounds. |
Speaking of pandering to the newer, dumber age of FPS's; the game abuses what we academics are gradually calling: 'the slow-time event.' This is where the game is awaiting a single input from you to progress. It's sort of like a quicktime event in that everyone is waiting for you to duck under a vent or press a button or jump down from somewhere. Right at the start of the game, you're attacked by a mechanical dog who you can't kill. The only way to evade it is to do a complicated sprint-slide move. Of course, the game doesn't tell you that you can do a sprint-slide move unless you're in the 'easy' or 'hard' modes. Stuff like this really makes me pine for the days of actual tutorials instead of button-prompts and the game stopping every five seconds to do a quick theory test before throwing you into the open to fail at the practical test.
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| Well this looks like a fun place... |
The absolute worst part of the game is the ending - because there is no ending. The game just stops without resolving anything. BJ kind of gets some closure, but all these wonderfully built-up characters get nothing. The whole things screams 'sequel-bait,' which for me felt like a slap to the face considering how tight the narrative had been up until that point.
But it's the fun gameplay and surprisingly absorbing story that'll keep me coming back to this game. The crushing weight of a seemingly futile rebellion, the characters who drag you into their world, and the shooting Nazis with lasers on the moon. Yup. This game has it all.
