So I’ve Been Playing... Wolfenstein: The New Order
Shooters are the genre I play the most, one of the first PC games I ever played was DOOM 2 and I have been hooked ever since. Be it trying one of the classics like Blood or something a little more recent like Postal Brain Damaged I will play them all but there is one franchise I always come back to, Wolfenstein.
Wolfenstein 3D captivated me when I was a kid even if I had games like Quake to play I would always gravitate to Wolfenstein, something was amazing about the early 3D to me so was the way the game managed to tell its story with no words just get up, kill some nazis and escape against unspeakable odds. Growing up I was always excited when a new game would come out the 2009 "remake" got me so excited I would watch the trailer almost daily hoping to one day get my hands on it. But those games aren't what we are talking about, I want to talk about the 2014 reboot Wolfenstein: The New Order.
Wolfenstein: The New Order was developed by MachineGames and is a soft reboot of the franchise. Unlike previous instalments focuses entirely on a single-player experience with no multiplayer component. Because of this the story needed to be top notch and man does it deliver.
(spoilers ahead)
The story begins in 1846 with our protagonist captain William "B.J." Blazkowicz flying into Deathshead's compound to put an end to the mad scientist who is creating not only super soldiers and advanced weaponry but also mechanical monsters prolonging the war and leading towards a Nazi victory. BJ is joined but two notable soldiers. Commander Fergus Reid BJ's right-hand man and a very headstrong, capable and overall brilliant tactician and private Probst Wyatt III, who unlike Fergus is overwhelmed by the horrors of the war that he is forced to witness at the young age of 18. After fighting your way up the shore, scaling the walls of the compound and losing countless men in the prosses you gain entry to Deathshead's lab only to be ambushed.
This moment is when I fell in love with this game. You are forced to make a choice, who will die Wyatt or Fergus? This choice breaks me every single time I play this game, the weight of this choice is so hard to put into words. By the time you get to this choice which is only about an hour into the game, you have spent so much time around these two people that you love them both. Do you save the kid who barely had a chance to live his life before war changed it forever or do you save BJ's best friend?
No matter who you save you escape but are wounded leaving a chunk of metal in BJ's brain. Luckily you are found by a polish doctor who along with his wife and daughter Anya care for you for fourteen years until asylum is shut down, everyone inside is executed by the hand of the Nazis and Anya is taken. After fighting your way out, saving Anya and stealing a car you flee to a safe place. Your mission is to find the resistance and to finish what you started 14 years ago, Kill Deathshead and put an end to Nazi reign.
Okay, enough story I don't wait to spoil all of it for you. So how does the game play? Its a modern take on a classic shooter, nearly every room you walk into in MOST missions is full of enemies for you to blast your way through however you see fit maybe, you want to hide behind cover and take them out one at a time, maybe you want to charge forward with a fully automatic shotgun in both hands or (and here is how I played most of the game) you sneak through prioritising which enemies you take out first, who can raise the alarm? who is strongest? if I get seen can I recover? will I survive? However you choose to play you will have an arsenal to back you up everything from the previously mentioned fully automatic shotguns, to assault rifles even a bulky metal monstrosity that can take down most enemies in one hit. You can also unlock different perks by completing challenges which is where I have an issue. The perks are extremely useful in this game letting you hold more ammo or grenades healing on stealth takedowns things along those lines. However unlocking these can be a nightmare. At the start of most missions, you lose all of your weapons leaving you with your laser gun and a knife sometimes a pistol if you are lucky, plus there are no guarantees you will get the gun you need to unlock that perk you so desperately want making the unlocks harder than they need to be.
During the later stages of the game as the locations and battles get more and more insane some of the enemies become way too hard to kill, and yes it makes sense in the context of the game but fighting them becomes less exciting and more of a chore or hell sometimes its straight up unfair. starting a level with next to no ammo and having to fight two heavily armoured shotgun-wielding nazis is a terrible experience that I honestly never want to slog through again. However, the story really is when this game shines the most, every location and character this game shows you is perfect they all show you how war affects different people. Wyatt or Fergus resent the fact they are alive and the war has cost them a life they never got to live, BJ is desperately holding on to a dream of the future with the woman he loves where he can one day be happy. Max learns that he needs to fight after the death of his father. Even Deathshead shows his own goals and has his reasons to keep fighting, there were moments in this game that crushed me making me feel like fighting this war is pointless, like I have no reason to carry on and there were others where I felt I had to fight to save the character I love so much or to crush the oppressive force that took someone from me pushing me forward to end this seemingly endless fight.
Does Wolfenstein: The New Order have its issues? yes, Is it a perfect game? no. There are a few minor things I didn't mention here like constantly taking fall damage or needing to be super precise while cutting paths leading to pointless deaths, but would I recommend you play this game? absolutely. I haven't been this quickly attached to characters in a long time. There are moments this game makes you feel you are fighting a battle you can't possibly win but you need to keep fighting, you need to be the bastion of hope.
Anyway, I gotta go I think I need to rest before a new colossus shows up.











