Wolfenstein: New Order – Completed!
Being of a certain age I remember the original Wolfenstein being released, albeit I was too young to own a copy. By the time we got our first family PC Wolfenstein would have been 3/4 years old and the must have game to have was the original Doom. As such I never got to play Wolfenstein, apart from the bonus levels from Doom 2 until the remake came out in early 2000. Roll onto present day and the game was on offer within Steam so I thought I would give it a go.
Story: The general story of this instalment was that the Allied forces were losing WW2, the Nazi’s seemed to have a technological edge over its opposition to which they couldn’t compete on an even keel. This was pushing the allies further and further back making them ever more desperate. Enter William Blazkowicz into the foray. He was on a desperate mission to stop General Deathshead or General Strasse as he is formally known. Strasse is responsible helping keeping the Nazi’s ahead of the Allies with new evil creations to help them have an advantage upon the battlefield. With that said the game doesn’t explain where he actually gets his knowledge from directly it infers their are deposits around the world holding key knowledge which hasn’t been discovered yet but apart from that it’s pretty much inferred they were clever enough to make these monstrosity’s. After the prologue you’re thrown into trying to undermine the Nazi empire with a resistance group found right within Berlin itself.
Gameplay: I do like my shooting games and especially good FPS games. Wolfenstein is definitely one of the most tightest shooting games I’ve seen in a long time. By tightest I mean the shooting, the accuracy and mouse movements is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time in a game. The shooting doesn’t feel loose like Farcry3 does and that annoyed me about that game, it was annoying trying to shoot anyone on that game. Wolfenstein is the opposite, the weapons are easy to use and highly accurate. For me personally I’ve never found a game as easy as this to snipe your enemies on. Everything just does feel fluid about the combat system. My only gripe is about the game gameplay-wise, is the actual weapon selection, the weapons sometimes just feels like there are “too many” to choose from. This is more prevalent when you’re in a heated firefight and want to change to more effective weapon. You’ll find yourself looking through the weapon selection for ages trying to find the ideal one or you’ll use the mouse scroll-wheel (which moves too fast for the selection) and end up not happy with your choice and then end up getting killed. A slight niggle but something you have to be consciously concentrating about so then you ensure you don’t mess up.
Conclusion: I really enjoyed Wolfenstein: New Order. The game is a solid well put together game. The controls and gameplay mechanics compliement one another. I would recommend giving this game a go if you see it cheap, you definitely can’t go wrong. With that said I would recommend playing this game on a high-end PC. Taking advantage of a gaming rig will do this game a greater justice than what you could do if you was playing this on a console and in addition that the power constraints of a console, you’ll be able to get the accuracy control you would expect to get with a mouse & keyboard.