Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

"A very Quentin Tarantino-esque game if ever there was one"

Yes out hero is back, B.J "Big Chin" Blaskowics is back to kick Nazi ass and save the world by winning WWII for the good guys. Oh wait that's not what happens, that's not what happens at all because instead of winning the war the allies lose giving way to a twisted world and an altered vision of 1960. The game starts off as one would expect with an attack on a castle by the OSA (Office of Secret Actions) in a not so secret assault on Deathheads compound. One thing that always got me with the game is how over done the character design for Blaskowics is, the man is built like a tank which is obvious from the start. After waking up from a dream Blaskowics  is sent on two errands around the plane he's in along with also being tasked with defending the plane with the gun turret. So far there was nothing that made the game stand out from a Call of Duty installment other than the main character being called "BJ".

I imagine this was his year book photo

Then however the pilot, one of the best Scotsman in gaming history co-ordinates with another plane to fly side by side and jumps onto the wing of the adjacent plane. You quickly follow and meet the second of the two prominent characters of the opening section who is called Wyatt, a young and inexperienced soldier who is slapped around by "BJ" in an 80s action film sort of way. What gives the player a taste of what the game has in store is when they land on the beach and find two mechanical dogs called "Panzerhunds" that require the player to circle around to a downed planes turret in order to take them down. Not every enemy in The New Order can be taken down with a few bullets as the tougher ones will need to be taken down piece by piece. 

The beginning section ends with the player needing to select which one of his companions survives, Wyatt or Fergus. You would think that this might have a huge affect on how you play the game and how the game progresses but the Cut-scenes and story remain the same but the areas that can be explored do differ. Choosing Wyatt means that  areas requiring lock picks can be accessed and choosing Fergus means that areas requiring keypads to be hot wired can be accessed. This seemed like it was a little thin and not even necessary in the game at all as the player will get the same ending, the same play-through with the difference of being the enter certain rooms. 

Time does jump forward though and we see what our hero does for fourteen years between 1946 to 1960, which is to say nothing other than staring out a window drooling into his lap like a vegetable. From this point on the player is rewarded with enjoyable settings and a little more in terms of unique gameplay you could say. The story however does a good job of showing what a alternate world ruled by Nazis could be like, concentration camps are numerous, troublemakers are locked up without hope of release, people are reported to secret police etc etc and it does try and play on your emotions, with varying success. What sets this apart from previous installments in the series is the absence of any paranormal elements to the story, everything is purely technological. There are mechs, drones, laser guns, sentry bots, security cameras, helicopters and the list goes on. Instead of bringing occult and magic into it the developers brought cold hard science and technology and I feel like that breathes a breathe of fresh air into the series.

This being said however there are times where the seriousness of the game slips away and comical events take place. One such event was Wyatt throwing a grenade to the mechanical dog like it was a bone and the dog goes to catch it above all else. The other was a random decision between BJ and his lover to have sex before going to a mission, after the loud moaning they have a heart to heart when I'm left wondering why no one has heard them. If the comical parts of the game fit or not differ between one gamer to the next but personally I think a few are pretty good whereas others don't belong. This doesn't however affect the tone of the game overall but rather just little spots of it.

"Is now the best time for this ?" He asks between grunts

The gameplay sets this apart from other games as well with additions like a Health and Armour counter instead of a regenerating health system. Now instead of hiding for a few seconds to wait for the screen to go from red to clear the player must stick to cover as much as possible. failing to do so will almost certainly end in death or a flashing red screen that won't go away until you find a health pack. This is hardly new to games but I feel that it's something that has been washed away in the tide of COD clones and Halo copy cats. Adding to the innovative gameplay is the lean function that goes beyond going from left to right but instead allows for full 360 degree movement. This means that almost anything can be used as cover as the player can see under, over or around but can also take deeper cover behind and object as well. Beyond that the gameplay is largely the same as other FPS games, you have collectibles that give you small glimpses into this world, statues to collect that increase your Max HP & Armour and you also kill people. 

The enemies are a mixed bag as well, there is the common foot soldier who can be taken down with a few bullets. The developers have not skipped out on the graphic violence either as one head shot creates a headless corpse that falls to the ground. The affect of a bursting body parts is also given to the arms and legs after they are shot with a shotgun at close range allowing for a red shower to blank out your screen. Shock Troopers are the bigger troopers who are armored to the core and are the size of a truck, shooting doesn't work as mentioned earlier so the player will need to slowly bring them down piece by piece until they expose their face.

Bye Bye Heinrich

Some enemies however could be added for the sole purpose of annoying the player, like the attack dogs. These enemies run and grapple with the player while other enemies shoot at you. There is no way to get them off quickly other than mashing the knife button which takes about 6 presses to get them off. Enemies like this give me the feeling that they were added to slow me down rather than give me a challenge.

Good Doggy, just stay right there and don't come near

The singleplayer focus of this game is also quite refreshing as well, that's right there is no multiplayer. The game has had a considerable development time and all of it was put into the campaign which shows. This isn't some 6 hour campaign with a big multiplayer portion but instead you could take hours playing the campaign and you might even play it through again due to the map design. 

Each level has multiple areas to explore which are easy to overlook, some contain items others help you get the drop on the enemy. As I said before not ll of them are available so a second playthrough may be warranted for those extra trophies if your going for Platinum.

The last point that I would like to touch upon are the characters that are in the game. This isn't a Last of Us sort of game that is rich is character development nor is it a game that has a roster of completely blank characters. The main character is an 80 action hero but he does have his fair share of moments along with his fellow resistance fighters. The antagonists however have to win the trophy of most memorable characters however. 

The guy in the background really scares me

These two to be more specific, Frau Engle and Bubi who you first meet in a night train to Berlin. In a scene that mimics the bar scene from inglorious Basterds Frau Engle calls BJ over to her table (after he makes two disgusting cups of blue coffee) to test him. Using a set of pictures she asks him to choose one of two pictures that she places on the table and his answers will tell her whether he is an Aryan or not. All the while her sycophant boy toy Bubi sits beside her and pulls a smug look as she smiles with a gun in her hand pointed squarely at you. The scene itself is very tense as a intimidating robot stands in the background monitoring the scene playing out, to add to that Frau Engle swaps moods in the blink of an eye. By the end she says that it was just a test and that I could leave with my blue coffee.

What I recently found out is that the gun placed on the table can actually be picked up. This choice leads to a game over obviously but it goes to show that if a scene is interesting enough then you think more about that and don't notice much else. This being said however this is one of the few tense moments in the game because for the rest of it you are heavily armed.

For you tech people out there the above video shows the frame rate of the game running on both PS4 and the XBONE. As you can see the video goes between multiple parts of thew game and the frame rate doesn't move, it doesn't even jutter but stays at 60fps the entire time. What does this mean ?, well it means that regardless what console you buy the game on you are guaranteed a game running at the next gen game rate we were all promised. 

I'll leave you with this notion I first expressed when I saw this game. "I have had enough of shooting Nazis in my time" which was a statement I stood by until I saw a few glimpses of the walkthroughs for The New Order. Then I said "Nazi's ? yep I've played loads of games with them in but Nazi's in space?" of course the obvious response would have been Killzone.    

8.2/10