Wolfenstein: The New Order

'Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014)' revives its pioneering series and attempts to kick the first-person shooter genre back to its roots. The game really only has one thing in its mind: shooting Nazis. Thankfully, then, this aspect of its design is highly satisfying, thanks to the piece's refined controls and large arsenal of weapons. It's gory, over-the-top and a lot of fun. This does sort of clash with the thing's story, as the narrative attempts to be somewhat serious with just a dash of satire here and there. Ultimately, though, it maintains a tonal balance and works as a kind of schlocky, 'what-if?' science-fiction. A lot of time is spent on delivering the plot, which isn't an issue since it's so well-written and enjoyable. The game's level design is almost labyrinthine at times, allowing you to explore at your own pace and search for secrets if you so wish. This makes it rather replayable, as each mission feels distinct and the few hub locations you visit have a variety of rooms to explore. Here, you can interact further with the game's rag-tag cast of characters, cementing them within the world-space. Overall, this is one of the more enjoyable FPS games of the 2010s, principally because it focuses on its shooting mechanics and doesn't encumber the player with a weapon limit or a slow movement speed. It's great fun. 8/10

This is an excellent game. I feel that it is one of those games that will stick with me, not though the gameplay itself is extremely innovative, but that every aspect of this game is engaging, entertaining, and has excellent production values in the best sense.

The gameplay is very solid and just downright fun. But what makes the whole thing work so well (beyond the gameplay), is the story, the actors, the music, and the CGI acting.

This is the most downright poignant and engrossing story I've seen in an FPS possibly ever. And yes, I'm comparing to Bioshock, Mass Effect trilogy, and System Shock 2. But it's not because of any mindblowing twists, or epic plot structure... It's because the characters are so well-drawn (and I'm not talking literally, although the nuances that are conveyed are incredibly well done, in spite of lacking COD: AW or LA Noire tech), and the voice acting is absolutely top notch. That's not too say that the characters are extremely fleshed out, but the back-stories are in their faces and voices; in other words, they have character and soul that are completely missing in the majority of games in the genre.

This is just a superb game. Anyone who enjoys the genre owe it to themselves to play this. Everyone involved in this game should be proud of their accomplishment.

It's just really, really, good.

Coming from a market where thoughtless shooters and pay-to-play online games are dominant, I found that Wolfenstein: The New Order was a wonderful breath of fresh air. The writing in the game is excellent, giving a compelling narrative that distinguishes this game from others on the market today, and allows you to understand more about the B.J. Blazkowicz that we've come to know and love over the decades. The ethical dilemmas presented in the game add a dimension not seen in previous incarnations, and help enormously with the replay value. The graphics were decent (probably look better on next-gen systems) and game play is smooth. The only drawback I found was the somewhat tedious task of stockpiling ammo, armor, and health packs, but this hearkens back to the earlier games, so some may find it more charming. Overall, I would highly recommend this game for purchase and look forward to many hours of replay.

This game was selling it self as an old school shooter in modern times, never did I imagine that it had a great story too. It has been a long time since I had such a great all round FPS game experience.

Story: The game is set in an alternate timeline where the Nazis have won WWII and now rule over the world and we are part of a rebellion to take them down. This setting alone is great enough for me, but the game gives you much more than that. IT has a pretty well developed set of characters, including our hero, and there is a hefty amount of cut-scenes to really get you into the story, something I was completely surprised to see. You actually care for the characters and what happens to them etc, I loved that. This was helped a lot by great voice acting. The game had a RPG feel to it as far as story goes and that's a good thing as RPGs usually have good stories. I loved reading news articles that showed how different things happened after the Nazis won.

The ending did felt a bit rushed to me though, would have loved it if it was prolonged or something. Also, there was this mysterious secret story part too, which I won't spoil, BUT it was underutilized. Wish they expanded more on it.

Gameplay: Since the game is like an old school shooter, it has many of those elements. Stuff like ability to carry all your weapons arsenal at once, no health/armor regen, leaning etc. And you know what, it was refreshing to play a shooter like this, took me away from all the modern shooters and felt like a refreshing experience. The shooting was fluid, gory and plain fun. Killing Nazis was a pure blast.

The game also has a stealth element in it, which was pretty simple, but effective. I found myself many times trying to stealth kill enemies. The only thing I didn't like was the weapon wheel, but that's more of a personal complaint considering I'm so used to modern shooters, changing weapons via a wheel felt odd and distracting.

Graphics: The game looked good for the most part, nice gun models, decent facial animations and such. It used the same ID 5 tech that was used in Rage, and along with it had the same problems. While many of the surroundings, open areas and such looked great, textures were really muddy or low res indoors, and very oftenly too. Took me back to the PS2 era, that bad. I mean it wasn't all row res, but you would often see switches, beams and other stuff having lame textures and they would really stick out.

Sound: Game boasted a robust and awesome soundtrack. The tracks varied from heavy rock to calm peaceful pieces. During action, most of the time you would hear rock music or such and it would make you pumped up. But during emotional scenes, or low down time, the track changes dramatically, and I loved that.

Another thing I was really impressed with was the gun sounds, they sounded so punchier and powerful, something modern shooters lack. I loved firing every weapon.

Overall: A great shooter, the best I have played in a long while now. Awesome all round experience and I'm already getting a craving to play it again. Highly recommended.

9/10

Wolfenstein: The New Order shows that we can trust that Bethesda and Machine Games can handle the franchise. The review is coming from a person, who played Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein. Now, let's list the pluses in W:TNO.

1)Nice graphics.

2)Good voice acting.

3)Better story.

4)Awesome gameplay, that mixes regenerating health and the need of health packs.

5)Plenty of guns.

6)Great level design.

7)Section where you can choose to use stealth or to go guns and blazing.

8)Various animations when you kill an enemy with knife. They don't get old.

9)Various enemies.

10)Great concept.

11)Collectables are fum to find.

12)Bits of the soundtrack.

13)Interesting characters.

14)Levels are fun to replay.

15)Game is replayable with 4 different mods.

16)The setting.

17)Newspaper articles in the game, like this is a real world.

18)Nice voice acting.

19)Finally Nazis speak German.

20)Dialogue, not only in English, but in German and (not 100% sure) Polish.

21)Great villains.

I may have missed some pluses, but now I'm going to talk about the minuses.

1)The two different timelines, that you choose which to follow, don't affect the story much.

2)When replaying the levels, I wish you could skip the non-action parts. I wanted to skip them.

3)Loading times when you die are kinda too long.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a fun first-person shooter. From BAD 1 to EXCELLENT 6 I give it EXCELLENT 5.50 - it's better than a VERY GOOD game, but not a truly EXCELLENT game. I hope that the new Doom will be better, or at least as good as this game.