The Therapist Gamer

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Wolfenstein 3D was arguably the first "First Person Shooter" game ever created.  You play as a soldier escaping a Nazi castle and Hitler is the final boss.  In 2014 the game looks primitive but it was amazing at the time.  There are a number of games in the Wolfenstein series but none have been particularly noteworthy since 1992s Wolfenstein 3D.  I remember hearing that the Wolfenstein series was going to be rebooted but a lifetime of crappy reboots has made me cynical about them and I forgot all about it.  Well, it turns out that Wolfenstein: The New Order is pretty awesome!

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It's not a perfect game by any means.   Some of the cutscenes are weirdly sloppy, some of the objects in the game seem out of proportion, and the stealth mechanics could have worked a bit better.  But these are pretty small issues - especially compared to all of the things about the game that are exceptional.  I also think it's worth noting, and praising, that the game is a solid, single-player, first-person shooter and does NOT have a multiplayer component.  Modern games really feel the need to include multiplayer so that people won't trade in the game.  Usually the multiplayer is crappy or the single player is neglected in order to make a game that is actually mostly about the multiplayer.  Props to MachineGames and Bethesda for having the guts to focus purely on a single player game!

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The New Order starts out during World War 2 where your character, BJ Blazkowicz, undergoes a traumatic situation wherein he must choose which of his two comrades is killed by the sadistic Nazi General Deathshead.  While escaping, some shrapnel penetrates his head and he spends the next 14 years in a semi-conscious coma in an asylum.  He has some awareness that some kind people are caring for him but has basically no idea what is going on.  He starts to come out of his coma when the Nazi's arrive and say the Asylum is closing.  The proprieters resist and the Nazi's kill them all.  However, just before they kill the kind lady who has been caring for him, Blazkowicz stabs a nazi with a knife from his lunch tray.  He fights through the asylum and seeks safety across the country with the woman.

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Blazkowicz finds out that the Nazis won World War 2 and pretty much the whole world is under their control.  The story moves at a decent pace and there isn't much fluff.  Even though the game doesn't take itself too seriously, the tone of the game is surprisingly serious.  Rather than the caricatures of evil that the Nazis were in Wolfenstein 3D, the Nazis in The New Order are more like what Nazis would actually be like in the 60s had they won WW2.  They continue to have concentration camps where undesirables are stored and worked, and there's an obsession with control and racial purity.  Since your character has white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, there are a few situations where you infiltrate Nazi compounds.  I thought the subject material was actually treated respectfully and it offered relevant commentary on modern issues.

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The gameplay itself is well done.  There are a variety of weapons and you get new equipment at regular intervals.  You can choose to go stealthy or blast your way through enemies, but either way works pretty good.  There are certain Nazi leaders that, if they're alerted, continually call reinforcements unless you kill them.  So while you can play any way you like there is an incentive to play stealthily because you'll probably need to kill fewer enemies if you don't make much noise.

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I was pleased that Wolfenstein has been rebooted in a thoughtful manner because it's now likely that there will be more good Wolfenstein games, and that can only be a good thing!