Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) [PS4]

Death at the gates again, howling my name.
Can’t greet you today, I’ve a war to win.
-BJ Blazkowicz

For many, each console generation is best remembered, indeed rated by, the games that graced it during its first few months. Yes, these launch games tend to go down in history as either terrible or games that help to push the sales of their new systems. The PlayStation 2 had Timesplitters and Ridge Racer V, the Xbox 360 had Perfect Dark Zero and Condemned: Criminal Origins, and the PlayStation 3 had Motorstorm and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

The consoles this generation (and indeed the gaming scene for PC) have never been closer in regards to games and each machine has fewer exclusives than those of the generations that came before them. Today’s subject was released on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 20th May, 2014, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda.

We are, of course, talking about Wolfenstein: The New Order (I mean come on, the clue’s in the title), a game which many people considered to be something of a return to form for one of the oldest first person shooter franchises going, alongside its demonic stable-mate Doom and even earlier attempts like Maze War and Spasim. First person shooters as a genre became more and more popular since Wolfenstein 3D added a big dose of ultra violence to the recipe back in 1992 and the demon-slaying game Doom added even more blood and guts. It wasn’t long until they were joined by fellow over the top, ultra violent shooter Duke Nukem 3D and, with the help of a highly active shareware and modding scene, these games helped to define the genre.

Yep, that’s exactly what it looks like!

In recent years, especially during the last generation, first person shooters took a different turn, with realistic visuals and military stories and settings taking the fore. 2003’s Medal of Honor: Allied Assault built on the 32-bit entries that came before it and received overwhelmingly positive reviews for it’s highly polished gameplay and (for the time) epic depiction of the American landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day. What followed was over a decade of military based shooters, with newcomer Call of Duty becoming the king of the hill thanks to its tight, set piece filled single player experiences and increasingly popular online competitive space.

Yet something has begun to the change in the last few years. Call of Duty has gone from World War II, into the modern era, then into the stars (then briefly back to World War II) and is currently knocking about in the near future warfare scene, albeit having sacrificed its campaign for a Battle Royale mode. Their main competitor, the Battlefield series, has always been a hard hitter in the online community and even boasts some decent single player stories too. So, in this current predicament, I am going to look at a game of this generation that embraces some old school, golden era first person shooter mechanics whilst also making a few concessions to modernity, attempting to pull off a solid narrative experience, on top of all of that.

Question is, did Wolfenstein: The New Order manage to pull it off?

The 8-Bit Review

 Visuals: 7/10

Wolfenstein: The New Order was released in 2014, a time when developers were only beginning to flex their graphical might on the new consoles – and sadly this is apparent in certain areas of the game. Background details often seem a little flat, as if textures are having trouble loading and, whilst this is by no means a deal breaker, it can occasionally distract from what’s going on around you.

General textures and effects are never going to be able to compete with recent, 4K-ready graphical power houses like Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) or God of War (2018), yet they are definitely good enough to immerse one into BJ Blazkowicz’s story and satiate anyone’s need for doling out violent Nazi deaths across a series of varied locales and situations. Levels have an impressive amount of detail for the most part, with handbills and posters adorning dirty concrete walls, steam vents and huge machines all around and some very shiny Nazi laboratories for gaming’s greatest fascist murderer to tear apart in a hail of bullets. BJ’s journey will take him to castles, prisons, an aeronautical museum, a submarine and even the moon itself and each of these locations, as well as few others in between, look distinct and well designed. Even the colour scheme is memorable, the solid reds and black of the Nazis’ propaganda draped liberally all over the oppressed world.

Alternate 1960, not a holiday destination…

Running this bleak alternate future are the Nazi soldiers themselves and they have some fantastic designs. Regular soldiers have their faces hidden by gas masks and their bodies encased in armoured vests whilst cadets and security guards have to tackle BJ’s onslaught wearing only sharply dressed uniforms. Shooting these foot soldiers can oftimes lead to BJ blowing chunks out of them, sending them to Hell with missing limbs, heads or just a big old hole where their lungs used to be. It’s gross and incredibly cathartic to leave enemies in such a state after a big firefight and it definitely fits the overall grim theme of the title. Other enemies include: armoured dogs (yes, dogs – wearing armour!); Frankenstein’s Monster-esque “Supersoldaten”; whirring drones; and several models of robot, including the terrifying Panzerhund – a robot dog the size of a tank, and just as lethal. All of these enemies look fantastic. I honestly cannot think of a single lazily designed one.

Yet what would a first person shooter be without a strong lineup of firearms, things that explode and other things that can dice up baddies? A bad selection of weapons can really damage an FPS game so thankfully Wolfenstein: The New Order’s collection holds up pretty darned well. Whilst I will dip more into the mechanics of these weapons later, I can tell you now that each weapon has been very well designed, even the Thompson submachine gun that BJ only gets to use in the opening chapter is dripping with detail. Each weapon looks different to the last and has a real feeling of weight and heft to it thanks to how they’re animated, yet the auspicious award for “Bangiest Gun of the Game” goes to the assault rifle. A friend of mine always attested to the fact that the best weapon in any FPS has to be the assault rifle and, if it feels lacklustre, it can negatively affect the game. If this theory were indeed the case then he’d love Wolfenstein: The New Order as he would a baby! Also worth a mention here is BJ’s rather nasty looking dagger, which is capable of delivering some truly grisly takedown animations dripping with claret and rage.

The assault rifle is a real beast…

So having discussed the bad guys and what we kill them with, let’s take a look at the good guys. Whilst protagonist BJ Blazkowicz may at first look like your typical action hero lunkhead (think Duke Nukem meets Channing Tatum), one quickly came to enjoy the character and his story through his scripting and some brilliant voice work. His facial visuals are good too – it’s easy to see the pain and rage (there are other emotions but BJ is one angry man) on his mug during cutscenes and it certainly helped me to invest in his emotions as the story played out. Joining him in the resistance against the Nazis are the Kreisau Circle, a ragtag band of characters who all have distinct characteristics and looks. Max Hass is a (usually) gentle giant whose design and animation really shows how childlike he is whilst also showing off his massive strength. Klaus Kreutz, an ex-Nazi himself, looks very punk visually whilst resistance leader Caroline Becker moves around their hideout in a wheelchair (though she does receive an upgrade later), the scars of battle plain to see on her face. Then there’s Anya, BJ’s love interest, an ex-nurse-cum-resistance fighter who undergoes a visual transformation throughout the game, mirroring her increasing reliance on violence against the Nazis.

Whilst there are a couple of minor drawbacks graphically, Wolfenstein: The New Order managed to do enough on release to keep this game very much still playable today.

Audio: 9/10

Quite fittingly for a game about a very angry man stuck in a world ruled by evil Nazis, the soundtrack for this game is satisfyingly hard rocking, often starting gently and building up to a heavy metal thrash fest dynamically as battles intensify. Whilst it lacks a memorable hook, the soundtrack remains competent throughout and certainly encouraged me to go in guns blazing, like Eddie posing for an Iron Maiden album cover.

One area in which Wolfenstein: New Order surprised me was the quality of its voice work. Each major character, both good and evil, is expertly cast and performed. Special kudos go out to Brian Bloom as BJ Blazkowicz and Dwight Schultz as the chillingly evil General Wilhelm ‘Deathshead’ Strasse. Bloom in particular does a solid job of adding some humanity to what has always been a pretty one dimensional character in earlier entries. He does this not only by providing excellent acting during cutscenes but also with BJ’s inner monologue during gameplay itself. Whilst it may not sound like much on paper, Bloom’s gravelly whispers really help to flesh out BJ’s character, be it the protagonist making his disgust for the Nazis apparent or him listing virtually-impossible-to-achieve objectives as if he were reciting a shopping list.

You can’t get more vile a bad guy than this fruitcake…

Playing opposite Bloom is Schultz’s Deathshead, who comes across as something between Hugo Weaving’s portrayal of the Red Skull and the mad scientist from The Human Centipede. Whilst the game doesn’t shove the character in your face often, every time you do run into him is memorable due to his utterly sinister nature. Fellow antagonist Frau Engel and her accomplice Bubi are also very well acted, with one scene in a railcar being an absolute showcase of Nina Franoszek’s voice over skills, making Engel really pop as a vile, patronising Aryan woman who is capable of huge acts of evil on a whim.

The evil Frau Engel, she’s not fine at all…

A fun feature in Frankenstein: The New Order is the inclusion of vinyl records that be collected during gameplay and feature alternative versions of famous songs from the 1960s. The Third Reich winning the war has led to some very different versions of popular records such as “The House of the Rising Sun”. There is even a version of the Beatles that have a song called “Das Blaue U-Boot” to be found. These tracks are a fun little extra and it’s great that MachineGames went to the trouble to create this little extra slice of world building for their game.

Environmental sounds are of a high standard throughout also. The industrial nature of Wolfenstein: The New Order’s alternate past creates a rich soundscape of machinery and bustle, overlaid with German voices echoing over tannoys, delivering propaganda and orders to the populace. Robot enemies whir and clunk intimidatingly and the sound of incoming boots during a gunfight alerts you to more Nazi grunts entering the fight. Dogs bark and whine as BJ puts them down and the cacophony of gunfire all around places one firmly into the boots of a man fighting off an entire army by himself.

The guns themselves sound, for the most part, satisfyingly loud and violent. When added to the general look and feel, the overall package elevates Wolfenstein: The New Order’s weaponry to one of the best arsenals in first person shooter history. The assault rifle in particular sounds simply awesome, making it my go to weapon for Nazi killing any day.

Despite the soundtrack lacking a memorable hook, I would say that Wolfenstein: The New Order’s audio is a very strong experience, delivering in all areas and helping to further immerse the player into its dystopian world.

Gameplay: 9/10

Wolfenstein: The New Order had a difficult task set before it from the beginning: to reboot a franchise kicked off in the early 90’s by one of the fathers of the FPS genre. To that end it had to not only appeal to the current generation of first-person shooter players but also lure back those golden age players that had led the vanguard of murdering demons and making Nazi foot soldiers shout “Mein Leben!” a lot. Needless to say that this would be no easy task to fulfil – uniting players across a gap of more than two decades is no easy feat.

So how did they do?

Let’s answer this question by looking at how the game plays. Like a lot of shooters, each level is broken down into battle arenas and paths that lead to them. Each arena in the game is well set out and populated to guarantee a good gunfight, with open spaces and choke points alike set up specifically to create tense and tactical shootouts. The areas connecting these arenas are usually used to deliver narrative, hide collectables and show off some of the more impressive areas of each level (for instance, an excellent view of the Moon’s surface from inside that most classic of locations, a literal Nazi Moon Base). Whilst this sounds very cut-and-paste, like building a map out of Duplo, it flows a lot more organically in practice. MachineGames have done a good job in keeping most of the levels feeling natural and like real structures.

But even the best designed level is nothing without taking advantage of good first person shooter action within it. Let’s think back to that intended fan base for a moment here: fans of modern shooters and fans of golden age shooters alike. To achieve this, MachineGames actually combined three different styles of shooter into one, turning BJ into a versatile powerhouse of Nazi killing. For fans of the modern shooter (and indeed my personal favourite style) we have the single weapon style. This implements such current era luxuries as aiming down the weapon’s sights for an accuracy boost and automatically ducking from behind cover whilst doing so. This makes for a more defensive, tactical play style that works in most situations. If you want to go all out against the evil forces of the Third Reich, in traditional FPS style, then one can choose to dual wield weapons (though sadly dual wielding two separate weapons at once only comes into play in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, this game’s sequel). Dual wielding does double the amount of ammunition you expend but it also doubles the damage that you can do. Two shotguns can tear a crowd of Nazis to pieces like particularly bloody confetti and is very cathartic.

Amazing what damage a little handgun can do…

The third option slows the game down to a crawl and, in my personal opinion, is only really any fun or rewarding at the start of most shootouts. This is forcing poor BJ to rely on stealth. Using a silenced pistol and a collection of throwing knives, it’s possible to take down any regular infantry enemy without ever being detected. Anything apart from a Supersoldaten can be dispatched this way, but it takes time and patience to do so. Besides which, Wolfenstein is at its best when the shooting is frenetic and BJ is under fire from many, many morally dubious bad guys. Stealth simply doesn’t fit in with the style and speed of this game. That said, it’s never compulsory. The best application for it’s simply to cut down the amount of reinforcements the enemy can throw at you once the fight starts. In order to do this, BJ must locate and assassinate one or more officers in each arena. They’re lightly armed and armoured and one can locate them either on the map or using a proximity gauge that appears on the HUD. Killing these enemies without anyone noticing stops the arrival of any extra enemies happening during battle, tipping the odds in the player’s favour.

BJ tries to shoot my trophy notification….

All three of these styles are backed up by progression trees, with extra perks becoming unlocked as one completes various tasks (for example, killing so many Nazis with explosions unlocks increased explosion strength, so many dual wield deaths unlocks reduced enemy ammo usage by 50%, and many others). This means that constantly using your favourite style rewards you in the long run – though, if like me, you cycle through all three then you should pretty much max them out by the end of the game.

Guns are, for the most part, fairly standard shooter fayre, though extra fire modes do become available throughout the story. Expect to find pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles and hand grenades and, once picked up in the story, rocket launcher attachments for the assault rifle and ricocheting shells for the shotgun. Also worth a mention is the massively powerful laser rifle you pick up during the Moon base level – if only BJ could have taken it home with him!

It’s not all about shooting things, however. The aforementioned hidden items are many, including Nazi Gold trophies, letters and enigma codes strewn liberally across each map, as well as the alternate universe songs on vinyl records. These hidden items unlock things like concept art and 3D character models that one can browse on the menu screen, giving collectable hunting a little incentive and reward and adding an extra side challenge to the game.

The main game itself is a story driven, single player campaign that took me several hours to complete and throws many combat challenges at the player. There are several difficulty modes, ranging from Can I Play, Daddy? (look at BJ’s cute little bonnet!) to the frankly ridiculous Uber, in which the odds are very much not in your favour and death will be your closest companion, loading screens and all. I played this game on the normal setting and found that it was plenty challenging enough whilst also allowing BJ to feel like the Ultimate Badass that he is. What I mean by this is that I was able to send a ton of enemies to Hell but, every now and again, I would be outgunned and dispatched myself.

Interestingly, this title has no multiplayer option. In an interview with CVG, Bethesda’s Pete Hines shed some light on why this is the case. He quite fairly stated that developer MachineGames’ strength lay in the production of solid, narrative driven shooters and that any online element would seem tacked on and superfluous. This is a statement I completely agree with – dividing the developer’s attention between the single player experience and an arbitrary online mode would take time and resources away from what they do best. Besides, with Call of Duty and Battlefield owning the online space at that time, very few other online games ever got the chance to shine.

One more thing worth mentioning here is a special weapon that BJ gets toward the beginning of the game, the Laserkraftwerk. Whilst this weapon is excellent against robot enemies, this is not its main function, for it’s also used to solve puzzles. Occasionally, BJ might happen upon a chain that needs to be cut or a hole needs to be burned through a fence, and naturally the Laserkraftwerk is always up for the job. These little mental challenges are never too difficult, yet it’s always a welcome change of pace when you encounter one.

Class 1 laser, do not shine into eyes, do not point at aircraft…

So Wolfenstein: The New Order is very much a single player experience, one with tight gunplay, scope to experiment with different tactics and a ton of varied enemy types to wipe out using a decent arsenal of weaponry. Oh, and you fight Nazis on the Moon. The Moon!

They’re Nazis on the moon, they hunt with a harpoon…

Narrative: 9/10

The last time a Wolfenstein game tried to tell any real story was 2009’s entry, simply called Wolfenstein. That game focused more on Nazi forces playing around with the occult and paranormal, gaining access to something called the “Black Sun Dimension”. Whilst this game had some characters in common with Wolfenstein: The New Order, it was otherwise completely unconnected.

Wolfenstein: The New Order rebooted the universe from scratch, envisioning an alternate Second World War where a Nazi scientist, series regular Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse, has discovered mysterious new technologies that have propelled the Third Reich far ahead of their enemies. The year is 1946 and the western allies are on their knees, throwing everything they have left into one last mission: an airborne assault on Strasse’s recently discovered headquarters, a huge medieval castle. We’re introduced to series protagonist William “BJ” Blazkowicz immediately, when the bomber on which he’s a passenger comes under fire from the castle’s defences.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmZM7QN9oX4&w=729&h=410]

After a fraught sequence in the air, the surviving Allied soldiers – including a plucky Scotsman called Fergus and a courageous rookie named Wyatt – begin their assault, BJ becoming separated from them for awhile, before meeting up in Strasse’s personal laboratory. After battling a couple of experimental “Supersoldaten”, BJ, Fergus and Wyatt are captured. Strasse himself appears and forces BJ to make a decision: let him remove the brain of Fergus or Wyatt, else he kills them all.

Fergus Reid or, as I call him, Scottish Hugh Laurie…

This moment in the game was unpleasant to play, as it was no doubt intended to be. MachineGames wanted players to see Strasse as a heartless monster worthy of his reputation and they use this early decision to illustrate just how vile he can be. After the player has decided who must die (and actually watch a whirry blade machine dig out their brain), Strasse and his minions leave, flooding the room with flames to kill the survivors anyway. BJ and Fergus (or Wyatt, but I shall stick with whom I saved) escape through a window as the room explodes behind them, but BJ takes a piece of metal to the skull, knocking him out as he falls from the tower into the ocean below.

In his vegetative state, BJ is rescued and taken to a mental hospital, where he spends 20 years as a prisoner in his own body, watching his nurse, Anya, and her parents go about their business, along with the other patients. Every now and again, Nazis show up and take away some of the patients until, one day, Anya’s father stands up to them and is killed, along with Anya’s mother. Such is Blazkowicz’s rage that he overcomes his vegetative state, grabs a scalpel and goes to town on the nearest Nazi, setting out to save Anya and get to safety.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jde8GBiJmE&w=729&h=410]

Once free, BJ and Anya link up with the Kreisau Circle – a Berlin based underground movement still fighting the Reich – and, together, they set out to put down Wilhelm Strasse for once and for all, ending the Nazis’ ability to produce next generation weapons. Along the way, BJ will rescue his old war buddy Fergus from a maximum security prison, free a brilliant scientist from a concentration camp and uncover the secret behind the Nazis’ power.

One of Wolfenstein: The New Order’s greatest strength is its characters. As I mentioned above, BJ himself is very well written. He’s a big lunkhead who knows how to kill Nazis and not a lot else and the game is constantly acknowledging this fact. The member of the Kriesau Circle do, on several occasions, straight up mock him for being a one dimensional killer of Nazis and he tends to just go along with it. If only, then, they could hear his innermost thoughts as he’s out on missions, like the player can. BJ comes out with all sorts, from waxing poetic about the state of the world to telling the Moon to eff itself for having a Nazi base on it.

The other members of the Kriesau Circle are equally as well written and memorable. Depending on whether you spare Fergus or Wyatt during the opening chapter, BJ will be joined at the Circle’s HQ by either Tekla, a kooky and lethal young woman, or J, who’s something of a tribute to Jimi Hendrix and even plays some rock music in one memorable cutscene.

J is one cool dude…

Exploring the HQ, the game’s hub area, often provides one with additional snippets of story. As characters converse, articles can be found detailing how the Nazis conquered the world and there’s even a way to have BJ dream about being in a strangely familiar, 90s-looking location, shooting at strangely 2D Nazis…

Wolfenstein: The New Order’s strongest narrative moments often come unexpectedly, however, from a fraught experience on a train in which BJ is unarmed and surrounded by unaware enemies, to an entire level set in a concentration camp where the player is undercover as a prisoner attempting to stage a rescue.

Whilst Wolfenstein: The New Order is, first and foremost, a bombastic shooter, a celebration of its trend setting 90s forebears, it’s also capable of tempering its fast pace and relentless violence with slower, more story rich sections that both act as a nice break from the killing and fill the player in on some background details of this universe. Having a lively hub area and some great characters, both good and evil, certainly doesn’t take away from this.

Replayability: 6/10

Wolfenstein: The New Order is no 40+ hour epic, but it’s certainly not a short affair either. If one was to blast through the game on easy, ignoring all of the optional treasure pickups then it would probably fall in with the single player Call of Duty or Battlefield games in terms of time spent playing from beginning to end.

That being said, there are certainly a few reasons to go back for another slice of this particularly violent cake after the end credits have rolled. The most obvious of which being the difficulty modes. I have completed this game on both normal and the next difficulty level up and the jump in challenge was pretty noticeable. Indeed, some battles drove me insane toward the end of the story and the final boss was a real killer, taking me a long time to beat.

The other factor to consider when talking replayability is the different timelines depending on whether you choose to save Fergus or Wyatt during the opening chapter. As previously stated, the only real changes this makes throughout the rest of the game is whether BJ can pick locks or hotwire consoles, which essentially boils down to opening one set of rooms full of ammunition or another and accessing a couple of different paths through levels. It also governs whether he’ll meet J or Tekla at the Kriesau Circle hideout and obviously unlocks different conversations between BJ and Fergus or Wyatt. The timeline idea was, in my opinion, a huge waste of potential ultimately, a great idea introduced well but, in the end, simply under utilized as the game progresses.

Still, it’s a third factor that keeps me coming back to this game every now and again. It has a fantastic story and features some truly brilliant level design and battles. Even without the gimmicks and difficulty challenges, this game is always worth revisiting periodically.

Challenge: 10/10

A high score, I know, but allow me to explain a little bit more about the way this game deals with challenges and difficulty modes.

As I mentioned earlier on in this review, Wolfenstein: The New Order’s MO was always to cater all walks of FPS fans (apart from the online brigade, of course). Growing up in the 90’s I remember playing games like Duke Nukem 3D and Doom on my ramshackle home PC and even, unbeknownst to our educators, on school machines at lunch times. My main take from Doom, back then, was that it was hard as nails, especially as you got past the first few levels and further into the blood and guts of Hell. I have spoken to a few of my friends whom I grew up with and they all had similar experience with Doom and its ilk, confirming it me as a challenging 90’s experience on par with listening to a Steps album.

Wolfenstein: The New Order hoped to bring some classic Wolfenstein and Doom fans back into the mix by offering them not only the feel of classic shooters (which it manages admirably) but also that difficulty level, and they managed this with the Uber mode. Playing this game on Uber is an exercise in futility. Indeed, poor Blazkowicz was being torn apart from all angles when I attempted it and, I must confess, dear reader, I struggled to get very far at all. Every scrap of armour and every tiny bit of health will be as valuable as gold dust to anyone playing on this mode and it most definitely calls for a more cautious, defensive play style which many not be ideal for many old school fans of the genre.

That said, there are four other levels of challenge that can selected, which definitely helps to tailor a player’s experience. The lowest difficulty is ideal for those just wanting to enjoy the story and murder Nazis without too much challenge, whilst the mid-range levels adjust enemy strength in subtle increments.

Wolfenstein: The New Order can be hard. Very hard. But only if you want it to be.

Uniqueness: 5/10

A truly unique first person shooter is a very hard thing to craft, in this day and age. Certainly over the last 20 odd years things have evolved and new systems and gimmicks have appeared in our shooters, such as automatically recovering health, vehicle sections and dynamic use of cover. Then there are the even bigger, more out-there additions, such as Valve’s portal and gravity guns from Portal and Half Life 2 respectively. A common complaint of the shooter genre over the last couple of generations is that they have become stagnant, a morass of brown and grey military shooters that all follow the same pattern.

Wolfenstein: The New Order doesn’t really have anything groundbreakingly new to throw into the ring. In fact, it revels in bringing back some very old fashioned systems from the history of the genre and making them front and centre once again (something that we would see repeated to great fanfare in 2016’s Doom). The rest of the game’s genetic makeup is a mix and match of many different styles and elements picked from the rest of the genre. We have Call of Duty’s aiming down the sights, the Laserkraftwerk is essentially a weapon used to solve puzzles, Valve style, and the game also features stealth sections, some limited vehicle usage and a strong overall narrative to glue it all together. Indeed, some of the level locations and aesthetics are truly memorable for just how out-there they are.

This game is not really very unique then, but it does feel different for bringing back a few classic systems from the hazy days of MS DOS gaming as well as cherry-picking the more beloved elements of modern shooters, creating something that can perhaps stand apart from all of the Call of Duty clones.

My Personal Grade: 8/10

Wolfenstein: The New Order appealed to me from the very beginning, boasting an interesting story set in an alternate, dystopian world, plenty of dynamic and visceral gunplay, cool looking baddies to shoot and an interesting reimagining of BJ Blazkowicz and his arch nemesis, Wilhelm Strasse.

I was also drawn in by the developers themselves, for MachineGames’ founding members were originally members of Starbreeze Studios, creators of other story driven shooters like The Darkness (2007) and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (2009).

Thankfully for me, the developers were able to deliver on the promise. Fans of shooters from Wolfenstein 3D up to Half Life 2 will most certainly find something to remind them of those long gone, golden days here. Even fans of modern shooters might be able to find some fun, as it does make concessions in gameplay for them also.

Tread softly, and carry a big gun…

If you want a gaming experience that delivers a strong narrative, interesting characters and the chance to shoot lots and lots of Nazis with a good arsenal of guns, you can’t go far wrong with Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Now get out there and get shooting!

Aggregated Score: 7.9

Winst0lf is a blogger, reviewer and podcaster who began his internet journey thanks to the lovely people on this site. You can find his blog here, and his podcast, Shart Select, here. Every time you read one of his articles, he lets out a little cheer!