Wolfenstein is Better Than it Needs to Be

MetalSoup

MetalSoup

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Wolfenstein: The New Order is better than it has any right to be. It could have been a pile of tired gameplay and schlocky plot, and the defense would have been, "Hey, it's just a game about shooting Nazis based on a game from 1992. What did you expect?" The devs could have phoned it in. But the team at Machine Games wasn't content with giving us an unending corridor of Bad Guys to mow down so they could ride the Wolfenstein name to the middle of the sales charts. I don't know if anyone has ever expected anything particularly remarkable from this franchise. You're expected to have Nazis, guns, and a few different ways to combine them for cheap, guilt-free visceral thrills. But instead they tried to make something special.

The game isn't perfect or anything. But even the flaws are interesting in their novelty. This isn't a modern military shooter where someone did a find & replace of "Terrorists" to "Nazis". In fact, you're basically a terrorist in this game. You don't target civilians or anything, but there are parts of the game where you're attacking non-military locations. Whatever complaints I might have about it, at least Wolfenstein: The New Order has the guts to make its own mistakes instead of just copying what everyone else is doing.

This is not a game that revels in death. This is a game that sees war and destruction as a necessary evil, if only because this Nazi society is so casual about its horrors. Lots of games have this "war is hell message" that runs directly counter to its "war is actually pretty fun" gameplay, and Wolfenstein is the first one in years that manages to pull it off. The fact that they manage to combine "Nazi prison camp" with "mecha suit combat" in the same game and get away with it is nothing short of amazing.

Last week Robert Rath had a great column on the thematic and story ideas at play in the game. It's pretty interesting stuff, and not the kind of grim examination of war that you'd expect from a game bearing the Wolfenstein name. While Rath looked at the story and themes, I thought I'd look at the mechanics and art design.

And to make this more fun for me, I'll use this brief moment of positivity as an excuse to complain about a bunch of other games. Here are all the common mistakes that TNO didn't make.
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Pretty good column, read the rest here.
 
I loved every second of it. I was completely convinced that it was going to be another failure until I saw Jesse Cox start a "Let's Play" on YouTube. After the 3rd episode I rode down to my closest BT Games and picked it up.

20 hours of gameplay later I've got 100% completion. Just need to finish the game on Uber difficulty and I'm done.
 
I've enjoyed every moment playing Wolfenstein as well. I agree 100% with the comments in the article. It's surprising how so many reviews from reputable websites failed to mentioned any of the above points. In fact, there were some reviews I read that scored the game negatively because it's "not pushing the genre forward" or is a "modern shooter". Personally, I think this has been my favourite FPS game is a very long time.
 
Toxin said:
I loved every second of it. I was completely convinced that it was going to be another failure until I saw Jesse Cox start a "Let's Play" on YouTube. After the 3rd episode I rode down to my closest BT Games and picked it up.

20 hours of gameplay later I've got 100% completion. Just need to finish the game on Uber difficulty and I'm done.
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FrankieOn1080P did it for me. This game was insanely well done in my eye's. Even the first decision that you make, makes me feel like crap for making.

But dam those well armoured shotgun guys are not cool. When I kill one I seriously teabag them.
 
Can someone tell me how similar the mechanics are to Doom 1/2. Around things like, when you finish a level, do you start the next level with the same health and ammo you finished with on the previous level? Is ammo even an issue?
 
Grievous said:
Can someone tell me how similar the mechanics are to Doom 1/2. Around things like, when you finish a level, do you start the next level with the same health and ammo you finished with on the previous level? Is ammo even an issue?
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I haven't noticed ammo being an issue, especially since you can carry all your available weapons at the same time. Weapons and ammo don't carry over between chapters, but each chapter is fairly long, and you'll pick up all the available weapons fairly quickly.
 
Grievous said:
Can someone tell me how similar the mechanics are to Doom 1/2. Around things like, when you finish a level, do you start the next level with the same health and ammo you finished with on the previous level? Is ammo even an issue?
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The mechanics is indeed very old-school, but not to 100% Doom 1/2 standards. You start each level with full health and ammo. I also didn't find ammo to be that much of a problem as the NPC's does drop a lot of ammo. You also get guns very quickly and keep them. I'm pretty sure that the higher the difficulty, the more of an issue ammo will be, but the amount of guns makes up for that.

What can be considered "old-school" about the mechanics is the fact that you can carry as much guns as the game can give you, plus all of the ammo; you don't regen health like the normal shooter as well, you have to pick up health packs, and you can even overcharge your health over 200.

But the best mechanic in the game is the duel weapons. I think each type of gun can be duel wielded, with each side's trigger mapped to the left and right mouse buttons. It takes getting used to at first, but is super fun once you get the hang of it. There is nothing more satisfying than gunning down a battalion of Nazis with duel wielded assault shotguns...:cool:
 
DieGrootHammer said:
But the best mechanic in the game is the duel weapons. I think each type of gun can be duel wielded, with each side's trigger mapped to the left and right mouse buttons. It takes getting used to at first, but is super fun once you get the hang of it. There is nothing more satisfying than gunning down a battalion of Nazis with duel wielded assault shotguns...:cool:
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure the only weapons you can't dual wield are the LaserKraftwerk and the mounted weapons. You can even dual wield knifes :D
 
This game is probably one of the biggest surprises for me in a long time. This column sums it up very accurately. It could really have been a pile of shit, but it turned out to be one of the most fun FPS games in years. For myself, it's right up there with the obscure Singularity that most people probably didn't play.

This game is hard as f**k on Uber Difficulty though. I hardly use the duel wield because ammo is a BIG problem on Uber difficulty. There are times when you expend your entire ammo cache in a single fight with a bunch of hardcore cyborg nazis. But damn, it's rewarding on Uber! :P Almost each enemy you kill is an achievement on its own. Haha :D

I can say this is definitely a must play for all FPS and even old school FPS fans. I'm just really glad that they put in some effort in making this game a bit different from the standard copy-and-paste games whilst using the Wolfenstein licence. I can see how this could have been a real waste of money and time, but big-ups to these guys for making a decent game. This is the type of shit I don't mind supporting.
 
Another thing that really struck me was the cinematography of the game's cut-scenes. The whole time I thought to myself "this looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie". There are a lot of cut-scenes in-game, but I looked forward to each one of them, and they convey the story incredibly well.
 
DieGrootHammer said:
Another thing that really struck me was the cinematography of the game's cut-scenes. The whole time I thought to myself "this looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie". There are a lot of cut-scenes in-game, but I looked forward to each one of them, and they convey the story incredibly well.
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Or at least better than you'd expect :D. It is quite a pretty looking game I have to say.
 
DieGrootHammer said:
Another thing that really struck me was the cinematography of the game's cut-scenes. The whole time I thought to myself "this looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie". There are a lot of cut-scenes in-game, but I looked forward to each one of them, and they convey the story incredibly well.
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Also little details, like if your character's hand is on a door at the end of a cutscene, it would still be on the door when you start playing.
 
to0kenZA said:
Or at least better than you'd expect :D. It is quite a pretty looking game I have to say.
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Very pretty indeed. Now and then I did find some low-res textures, even though I played it on ultra-awesome-extreme-high, but nothing that would make a big difference while bullets are flying over your head

Eugene said:
Also little details, like if your character's hand is on a door at the end of a cutscene, it would still be on the door when you start playing.
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Now that you mention it, yes I did notice that. Everything flowed so well from cut-scene to game play.
 
ArchieChoke said:
SIS non of you mention the moment you get into close face to face combat, for me thats always cool as hell.
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Haha, yup, the stealth kills are fun as shit :D. I love going into a stabbing contest with nazi soldiers! "Let's see who can stab each other to death first, GO!" xD
 
Awesome, pretty excited to play it. Got it on the summer sale for 50% off, just have a long wait while I download the 40 gigs.
 
Thanks chaps, I'll think I'll look at picking this up on PC.

Also considering Shadow Warrior at the moment, on special till end of the day.
 
Deceptor said:
Busy playing it on my PS4, and it's got a ton of awesomeness :D. Definitely one of the best FPS in years.
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This game reminds me a lot of Singularity, Bulletstorm and a little bit of Dishonoured as well. Always love these underrated games that turn out to be better than the games that get all the attention.
 
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