There was the very real possibility that Allied Forces might have lost World War II. The Axis made crucial mistakes and the Allies made great strategic moves and in the technological race of the time the Allies prevailed. What would have happened though if the German’s with Hitler’s obsession with technology had managed to get our secrets and beat us to the bomb? That is the dark and dramatic tale behind Wolfenstein: The New Order where the world lives under the flag of the Nazi Germany.
Description:
Europe, 1946. World War II rages across Europe. Where once the Allies pressed advantage, the Nazi forces have turned the tide in dramatic fashion behind the technologically advanced war machine of General Wilhelm Strasse — Deathshead. When a final Allied assault on Deathshead’s compound fails, the Allies’ greatest hope falls with it.
Europe, 1960. The war is over. And the Nazis are triumphant victors. Using unrelenting force and brutal intimidation, the Nazis have brought even the most powerful nations to their knees. The Nazi regime now rules the globe with an iron fist.
You are Captain B.J. Blazkowicz, the American War Hero. After emerging into this world of darkness, you must launch an impossible counter-offensive against the monstrous Nazi regime. Only you dare stand up against an unstoppable army of Nazi robots and hulking Super Soldiers. Only you can stop Deathshead. Only you can rewrite history.
Hands On:
I have always loved the Wolfenstein franchise right back to the early 1980s before it was even a FPS. Once it became a first person shooter I really became addicted and played Wolfenstein 3D and it’s sequels for hours and hours and hours on end. Whenever a new one came out I would clear my schedule and play away.
This time the game happened to come out when I always play war games around Memorial Day Weekend AND told an alternate world history which as someone who is a History Channel junkie I can tell you kicks the game up a notch. The game is designed so that if you just care about the FPS aspect you can easily skip this alternate world tale which is primarily told through newspaper clippings found throughout the game. If you really want to get the full effect of the game and the story though you should really dive into every scrap it gives you for a chilling view of what could have been.
Gameplay is first person shooter which is what we have come to expect from the series with occasional cutscenes. The game feels like you are an Inglourious Basterd tearing through the Nazi ranks with glee until suddenly things aren’t going too well for you. That is when you find yourself having to replace your weapons (for the first time but not the last) and get a load of what the goose stepping buggers have been up to. It doesn’t take long before you are back to your old ways of killing stormtroopers and all the techno marvels they have come up with to take human lives.
The storyline plays out great, the gameplay is as hard as you want it from easy to downright crazy and even when you hit a hard spot you want to keep tackling it to see what the game will throw at you next. The graphics look great, the voice acting sounds like the characters are right out of a movie and the game is completely submersive. It is one of the best single player FPS campaigns I have played in recent years and with how many I play that is an extremely bold statement.
The only thing that I found a bummer was the lack of multiplayer action. It’s true that some games of late seem to make multiplayer modes simple add-ons or find that the players will sometimes skip the single player campaign completely. In some cases, games are developed so that there is no true single player – just themed multiplayer events (such as Titanfall). Over time, the multiplayer aspects of the Wolfenstein games have become some of my favorite multiplayer experiences. Let’s face it, you just can’t get enough Nazi killing and this series perfected it. There are always players willing to go to the darkside to give you some challenging Nazis and with this game’s two time periods you could have maps that are just real WWII weapons and maps with the alternate future ones. It’s always better to not have a multiplayer than to have bad multiplayer but in this game it really felt like a missed opportunity.
Last Call:
Wolfenstein: The New Order is a new order of fun for first person shooters. The gameplay is great, the storyline is highly imaginative, the graphics are next level and the weapons kick major ass. You want to push through and beat down the Nazi regime – if the game had multiplayer it would be darn near perfect.
[easyreview title=”Wolfenstein: The New Order Review Score” cat1title=”Overall Score (out of 5)” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″ ]
