When I first heard that Bethesda was commissioning a new Wolfenstein, I was excited. When I found it was not going to have a multiplayer mode, I was even more stoked. Almost a year ago now I was privy to a presentation of the new Wolfenstein at E3 and I felt that Bethesda and MachineGames were taking this in the right direction. Fast forward to this week, and now having been able to play through Wolfenstein: The New Order, I’m pleased to say it’s a solid, old-school-meets-new-school-FPS whose volume of fun outweighs its issues.
The New Order proposes the bleakest of outcomes: the Nazis won WWII. The game begins with Captain B.J. Blazkowicz heading into enemy territory via plane. The year is 1946, and the tide of the war has not yet fully swung in the Nazi’s favor, but it seems inevitable. An assault on shore soon sputters out as Blazkowicz and the remaining members of the strike team are held captive by Deathshead and his Super Soldiers. Deathshead is the face of the Nazi war machine, and a repugnant face it is. A critical juncture in the game occurs at this time, roughly two hours in, where Deathshead forces Blazkowicz to choose which of his fellow soldiers dies. Failure to choose results in everyone dying and the game ends, so, you’re forced to make a decision which alters the direction of the story. You can’t reverse your decision, but you can play both alternatives and track the progress from the main menu. Anyway, after a narrow escape, Blazkowicz finds himself in a paralyzed state, coming to fourteen years later in a world where the war is over, and the Nazi’s reign supreme.
Blazkowicz’s sudden return to form after being unable to move for fourteen years is unrealistic, but, it’s one of many “concessions” you’ll have to make if you’re a stickler for realism in FPS games. Of course, if you’re in that camp, you’re probably not playing Wolfenstein anyway as it’s more akin to Duke Nukem than Call of Duty (not that CoD is realistic either). However, The New Order is not without a lot of modern day FPS elements and it’s the blend of these and the brash, very deliberate old school design that really clicked for me. Yes you can duel-wield every gun in the game, including the enormous automatic shotgun. There are massive turrets you can detach and carry around, armor and health packs lying about, and you can even overload your health up to 300 HP (anything over 100 counts down 1 HP a second). There are no power-ups like Quad Damage from Quake, but there are secret areas with goodies and Perks you unlock as you achieve various feats, like killing five enemies with a grenade, getting x number of headshots with the pistol, and so forth. The Perks are split into four categories: Tactical, Assault, Demolition, and Stealth. Yes, stealth — interestingly, and perhaps very unexpectedly, stealth-play is a huge, yet optional part of Wolfenstein. Being able to use stealth is one of the old-meets-new designs that actually works really well. If your stealth attempt fails, you can still manage to go guns-blazing if you’re good enough, but I found using stealth to be fun and it provided a great seamless balance to the run-and-game gameplay.
Note that the stealth gameplay is not as strict as it is in other games that are centered around it. So for example you cannot pickup and hide bodies, you don’t have to kill in the shadows, and generally speaking the way the enemies are spaced you don’t have to worry too much about one enemy seeing another get dropped anyway. Besides giving the game a different pace and challenge, playing stealth can also save you a lot of trouble when officers are around. The HUD will pop-up a notification of a detected signal whenever a commanding officer is around, and sometimes there are a couple of these in the area. The trouble with officers is that they can constantly bring in reinforcements as long as they are alive. They’re often hidden inside rooms or otherwise not very accessible, which greatly encourages you to holster that assault rifle and break out the knives for a bit. Knives are a major part of the experience as many times Blazkowicz is unarmed to start a mission and the ability to silent takedown foes, not only close-up but by throwing knives, is essential. The knives can be reclaimed from the bodies or surrounding environment as well.
Speaking of missions, or chapters I should say, the fact that they have a distinct start and end point is old school, which is fine. When you have reached the final area of a mission, you move to the final objective area and press Square at the prompt. In the next chapter, your current HP, Armor, and Weapon loadout is set to a predetermined value, which in some cases is a real continuity break but one that is forgiveable. Side note, I do wish they made the exit prompts for the levels ask for confirmation — on a few occasions, I accidentally exited a chapter I didn’t mean to because I was going around pressing Square to collect all of the ammo and things laying about, and the exit marker just kind of blended in there.
The sheer volume of pickups in Wolfenstein easily eclipses anything I have seen in another FPS, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Items that you can pick up pulse with a gold sheen, and these include weapons, ammo packs, a variety of health and armor pickups like dog food (gives you +4 health), and collectibles like Enigma Codes, Gold Objects, and Letters. Collecting all this stuff just requires running over to it and pressing Square as the prompt appears, but again, there’s a ton of stuff laying about. At times, I felt like I was looking at the trees as opposed to the forest — in other words, I spent a lot of time looking down for these objects rather than taking in the whole area. Plus, there are a lot of wooden crates to bust open, and metal crates too which require even (albeit just slightly) more effort to open. I’ll take part of the blame in this source of distraction as I’m compelled to explore environments fully, as that’s just how I play. You know, I’m the type that wants to snag the consumables I can take, and also to find the numerous collectible items too, especially the Gold ones because they look cool. Anyways, I felt like there was just too much stuff laying about and it didn’t help that Square is used to reload and interact with things too. So there were some instances where I was spamming Square to pickup stuff but BJ would start reloading his gun or something ‘off’ like that would occur. Not a big deal mind you, just saying it was a by-product of spamming Square. Anyway, you can break a reload by sprinting (L3), and this can be turned into a nice slide maneuver by pressing Circle. On the whole, the controls, which offer some customization, are intuitive and fine, and I liked being able to use Triangle to switch back and forth between two weapons, great for swapping between ranged and close-up guns, something I did a lot of in the well-designed firefights. The d-pad is used to change modes of fire, as each gun has two, and to also dual-wield. You can even select a different fire mode for each weapon in dual wield. Want to clear a room? Try dual automatic shotguns with one shooting spray and other shooting slugs. Oh, the color of the DS4 changes from Red to Orange to Green depending on how much HP you have. Interestingly, you cannot disable the HUD, which constantly shows you your HP and Armor levels.
Knowing where to go or what to do is rarely if ever a problem, which is mostly a good thing. Objectives are clearly laid out and you can consult a map by pressing Down at anytime; the level of detail of the map is dependent on if you found the actual map to the area in the game. At almost every turn, you’ll have the voice of the resistance in your ear, be it Caroline, the old war vet leader of the resistance or Anya, BJ’s love interest. Sometimes they’re a little too talkative, even if they are trying to be helpful. For example, you will get to a place and there might be the slightest of caveats like needing to press switch B before switch A and before you even get a chance to figure that out, you’re being told what to do in your ear. I understand that MachineGames was probably just trying to keep anything from breaking the pace — be it full-on action or smooth stealth — from being interrupted, but you almost wish BJ would be able to say “Guys — I got this.” You do actually hear BJ’s thoughts often, and these are placed well and are, for the most part, really cool. Hearing the ‘whisper’ of BJ’s thoughts as he processes what he sees or what he feels he needs to do next does a lot to build his character. Anything to help develop BJ’s character is a good thing, given how generic he is by definition — basically a Duke Nukem without the attitude or the sunglasses.
Level design is mostly linear, but there are times where it at least looks like you have an alternate path to take, such as on the bridge level. Most alternate routes either lead to a secret area with some extra pickups or they just dead end with locked doors or hallways that end or other such terminations. Obviously, I would have loved a slightly more fleshed out world to explore where the dead-ends didn’t come up so quickly, but, I could see how that would clash with the other design goals of the game. It is worth pointing out though that there are some occasions where you are just exploring an area to find, oh I don’t know, a welder that was dropped in the water by another member of the resistance. These exploration sequences are kinda cool, and one in particular involves using a vehicle to explore some underground waterways. You also get to use the laser cutter to zap some chains holding objects or to cut through metal grates or fencing. The inclusion of these ‘peaceful’ exploration scenes and the vehicles further bolsters the gameplay as a whole beyond just FPS action and the aforementioned stealth. On a related point, I thought a few too many objectives resulted in getting from A to B only to pull a lever or press a button once you got to B. That kind of game design is certainly the norm, but as always, it works to undermine the value of the experience, or journey. Pluses in the level design include the use of vertical space and the mixture of tight corridors and vantage points. Destructible cover, including pillars and shielded guard rails for example, adds to the intensity of the firefights, that are in themselves well-designed thanks to the variety of enemies, the way they’re layered, and the numbers of them you face at one time.
Before I get to the summary, I have several other points taken from my notes that are sort of the ‘grab-bag’ of things that I have yet to mention. First, the Resistance HQ reminded me a lot of Metro 2033; lots of NPCs, a relatively large area, plenty of nice detail including newspaper clippings to read and other things to look at, it’s nicely done. Load times are quick, I don’t think I ever had one that took much more than fifteen seconds. There are a few points where continuity breaks; I mentioned the weapon loadout changes in between missions before, but there are other times where you can awkwardly delay the prompting of an NPC — Nazi or friendly — should you choose too. The conversation on the train is one such case; I’ll try to avoid spoiling it, but when the conversation ends, you’re prompted, both on screen and in the context of the conversation to get up and move on. However, you can elect to just sit there, and watch the NPCs go through a looped animations, and they never acknowledge you or the awkwardness again. This type of thing pops up from time to time and it’s partially funny and also a design flaw, although admittedly of the nit-picky variety.
Last few items I wanted to mention include the AI. For the most part, they’re alright, although it’s quantity and force over quality, unsurprisingly. I’ve seen them take cover, run from grenades, and even go prone, however, there are several cases where they stand perfectly still just waiting for a headshot to ruin their day. They’re also pretty impatient, electing to jump out of cover or run straight towards you when it’s, well, less than wise to do so. I also experienced a few — literally three or four, so nothing crazy — graphical glitches. In one instance, I could see in between a crevice of a wall, and the image was just this blue expanse, completely unrelated to the context of the game, so obviously a glitch. Another case saw a weapon from a fallen enemy suspended in air, and a third issue on the bridge level actually got me stuck (I had to reload the checkpoint and avoid going that same route). These graphical glitches are minor and patchable, but I figured worth mentioning.
With that, let’s get to the summary…