Who would have thought five years ago that Wolfenstein would be the new gold standard for first person shooters? Sure it’s the granddad of the genre, but the series’ attempts to keep that pedigree going were generally flat, drab and barely worth a mention. Then, out of nowhere 2014’s “The New Order” changed all that; it married the old school’s fast pace, exploration and large, open areas with the new breed’s penchant for story telling, characterisation and a general sense of focus. Gone was the plot focused on Nazis attempting to harness the occult, in its place an alternate history tale in which the Nazi regime is carried to world domination on the back of cyborgs and giant robot dogs. Series hero BJ Blazkowicz is an unstoppable killing machine built like a brick shithouse, but his inner monologue reveals his true feelings as a weary, poetic human being who just wants all this shit to end, but won’t stop fighting until it does. It was an unexpected gem, all told, and I’ve been greatly anticipating its sequel since it was announced at E3 earlier this year. At this point I will say that in order to adequately discuss both the gameplay and (particularly) the story of “The New Colossus”, I will need to spoil a twist that happens partway through the game. Unfortunately both the marketing material and even the game’s cover art (not seen above) have visually spoiled it already, but if you can go into the game blind then I recommend you do so.
It starts the exact moment The New Order ended: with BJ having killed Deathshead and ordered the Kreisau Circle to nuke his position. Fortunately they come back and rescue him, but after waking up from a five month coma and having had most of his intestines removed he can’t walk under his own power and knows that in his current condition his death is fast approaching, facts he discovers just as the U-Boat the Circle commandeered is besieged by Nazi forces led by Frau Engel, out for BJ’s head after he ruined her face and killed her Boytoy back in TNO. This is where things get spoilery: the story is, in my opinion at least, split into two quite distinctive parts: the first two thirds or so act as an extended epilogue to The New Order. Caroline Becker is dead, BJ is using her Da’at Yichud power armour to move around, he’s staying away from Anya so as to acclimate her to the imminent tragedy of his death, and recruiting resistance and destroying important Nazi installations while he still can. Throughout all this BJ is verging on a psychological break in addition to his inevitable physical one; talking to Caroline in his head, the aforementioned treatment of Anya, as well as flashbacks to his upbringing by a kind, loving mother and almost cartoonishly monstrous father. This all ties into gameplay, too; during these missions BJ has his max health capped at fifty, but his max armour is boosted to two hundred. It actually becomes the sequel “The New Colossus” at that two thirds mark, where BJ is publicly decapitated, his head thankfully rescued by the resistance and attached to a super soldier body Set Roth just happened to have lying around, bringing him back up to his full Nazi-killing strength, as well as returning his max health to one hundred. That’s when he starts wearing the yellow leather jacket and has the gold ring around his neck, as seen on the front cover of the game. It’s here that the game has something of a shift in tone: the opening chunk of the game maintains the grim, sombre tone established by The New Order, made even more so by BJ’s situation, and ends in a way that seems tragically quite fitting given the state of the world. Now don’t get me wrong, BJ having his head cut off and put on a super soldier body isn’t at odds with this series’ tone; it does have a sense of humour, and for all the grim and dark stuff there’s a vein of gung-ho adventure serial running through it, so that isn’t the issue. It just leans into that sense of rip-roaring adventure from that point until the end of the game, which does feel a tad jarring after everything that comes before it. As a result that game really feels like the middle part of a trilogy; tying up loose ends and acting as a definitive conclusion to The New Order whilst putting in place the building blocks that will lead into a third instalment I presume is coming. Not that this is a bad thing, it’s still great and I’d welcome a third game, but in terms of story it does feel like it lacks the singular focus of The New Order.
Gameplay wise, it’s very similar to its predecessor, but that’s by no means a bad thing. It maintains the fast pace and immense firepower but adds new features in the form of upgrades to BJ’s supersoldier body that allow you to reach high vantage points, squeeze into tiny gaps and (the one I picked) shoulder charge through walls. Most important though is the most simple: you can now mix and match dual-wielded weapons. Carry a silenced pistol in one hand and the new tri-barrelled rotary shotgun in the other, for if things go wrong, or maybe an SMG for quick run and gun and the one-handed grenade launcher in the other for the multitude of cyborg soldiers you encounter. My personal favourite was an assault rifle in the right hand and the aforementioned shotgun in the left; with upgrades added through the new system in which you choose what to upgrade rather than finding each add-on in the environment, this combination turned ninety percent of enemies into dog food after a few seconds of continued fire. It was, in a word, brilliant. Stealth is still solid, though often falls through due to how quickly the alert phase spreads through the ranks, though it’s always worth attempting due to how quickly you can and will be gunned down on normal difficulty; even with overcharged health and full armour you won’t last if you don’t keep moving or ensure your firepower is as an all-engulfing blanket of death. Level design is more varied and interesting this time around; the focus on liberating Nazi-controlled America leads BJ to the sinister mixture of Nazism and Americana of Roswell, New Mexico, an eerily beautiful post-nuke Manhattan and a run-down, dilapidated ghetto in New Orleans. Finally it’s not a big addition but I do need to point out how much I appreciate the melee weapon changing from a knife to a hatchet: stabbing Nazis is out, hacking their arms and legs off is in, and it feels so good.
Overall, The New Colossus is very good. Story wise it does lack the singular focus of New Order and feels like the middle instalment of a trilogy, but that does not decrease its impact, and it has enough stand-out moments to smooth over the small issues it has. The gameplay hasn’t changed much, but that’s not an issue; it’s still fun to mow down scores of Nazis with dual automatic shotguns. This current run for the Wolfenstein series stands aside DOOM as this generation’s pinnacle of first person shooters; remembering what made the classics so good while embracing the advantages of modern advances in the medium, and placing an emphasis on character and story at the same time. GET PSYCHED!
By James Lambert
@jameslambert18
The Reviewing Floor 