Monday, February 23, 2015

Wolfenstein: The New Order - review revisited


Last year I talked a bit about why I gave up on Wolfenstein: The New Order on the PS4. The rationalization (and tell me you haven't done this before) was that I was a bit tired of the game, it's alt-history Nazi theme and the fact that it seemed to be coasting on the borders of reality in a genre that flagrantly violates such borders in weird ways, anyway.

Actually, it turns out I was just stuck. I was in that horrid prison level (level 4) and couldn't get out of there. Cut forward about eight months and I've played a metric ton of Destiny, a great deal of it at high end heroic/epic levels. Now Wolfenstein feels like a piece of cake....I cut through the trouble level and everything after it yesterday. All done. Even that jackass Deathshead and his unstoppable flaming walker of doom.

Oh yeah, spoilers ahead.

Anyway, I played and finished Wolfenstein on the "Fergus" reality and quite enjoyed it. There's a problem with the game worth mentioning: it uses static save points, and those sometimes are spaced just far enough apart that it really feels like they are deliberately forcing you to restart certain key sections and suffer through a lot of repetition to get to the point where you died before...only to die again. I think it took me 2 hours at the end to get through about 20 minutes of content, to be honest (oh, thanks GameFAQs and all your contributors for existing!)

I sincerely hope we have a sequel in which you finally
get your just desserts, Evil Nazi Lady From Hell
So, some post-game observations:

I still think they needed an explanation on how Blaskzowski retained his physique while he was semi-comatose for fourteen years in Berlin. 

I really wish they had alluded to something which suggested or explained the alternate reality of Wolfenstein in the context of prior games. They had the mad woman resistance fighter with her mathematical obsession of probabilities....and she briefly tantalized us with the possibility someone might imply that there is in fact something horribly wrong with the "future present" of the New Order, but any chance of a revelation is apparently going to rest in the future of the franchise.

Did the Nazis really invent artificial gravity for their Moon bases? 

Did I just play a game in which an ancient cabal of Jewish super scientists over the milennia effectively created the first suit of Mjolnir Spartan Armor? Speaking of which, kudos to the devs for not falling to temptation and letting Blaskzowski wear the suit.

Outside of that, the game was almost fatalistically determined to craft one of the best "Nazis win" crapsack worlds ever, one where you might actually imagine a zombie apocalypse world would be less depressing. Kudos on that....I really am looking forward to a sequel now.

Wolfenstein: where our Nazis are 200% more evil than the next game's




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