It's 1960, and the Nazis have taken over the world.
Once-beautiful cities like Berlin and London have been transformed into
oppressive urban landscapes. Propaganda posters are plastered over miles
of depressing concrete, while loudspeakers echo the doctrine of the
Nazis' totalitarian regime and the punishments that follow for breaking
it. The streets are patrolled by technological terrors--Nazi mechs and
robotic guard dogs, whose imposing grey forms against the drab grey
concrete are broken only by the deep red of Nazi banners. This is the
world of Wolfenstein: The New Order,
a world where resistance seems futile. But there is one man who is up
to the task: William "BJ" Blazkowicz--the same Blazkowicz who escaped
Castle Wolfenstein, shot a lot of Nazis, and took down Mecha Hitler in
1992's Wolfenstein 3D.
But
what is Wolfenstein's place today? The series spawned the first-person
shooter genre, but like The New Order's alternate-history setting
itself, times have changed. Can a Wolfenstein game in 2014 marry the
bombastic action and narrative drive of today's shooters with the
series' own simple pleasure of shooting Nazis in the face? With this
fresh and interesting setting, powerful and satisfying weapons, and a
new, robotics-focused take on the Nazi war machine, developer
MachineGames, formed by ex-Starbreeze veterans, has figured out how to
answer these questions.
The first few hours
of The New Order take place in 1946. Despite the Fuhrer's demise, the
Allies are losing. Blazkowicz spearheads a last-ditch assault on the
new, heavily fortified headquarters of the Third Reich. The operation
goes awry, and Blazkowicz takes a piece of shrapnel in the head. He
spends the next 14 years in a vegetative state, recovering in a Polish
mental institution.
This isn't just a convenient plot device to bring the majority of the
game's action into the Nazi-controlled world of 1960. You see, the
Blazkowicz that emerges into this strange new world is still the same
Blazkowicz of Wolfenstein 3D: a blunt instrument. He isn't tormented by a
dark past like BioShock Infinite's Booker DeWitt; he does not suffer a deep-seated sense of loss like The Last Of Us' Joel; and he has no trouble reconciling his nature as a killing machine like Spec Ops: The Line's
Martin Walker. He is a man who, as a side character excitedly exclaims,
"was born to kill Nazis." Though Blazkowicz emerges from his vegetative
state fully functional, he still doesn't know how to view the world
unless it's down the twin barrels of assault rifles akimbo. If a switch
needs a gentle press, Blazkowicz punches it. If a door needs opening,
Blazkowicz kicks it down. For as much as The New Order's plot is about
Blazkowicz rebelling against the Nazis' iron grip on the entire planet,
it's also about the friction created when the original first-person
shooter protagonist drops into a first-person shooter designed for 2014.
As Blazkowicz escapes the institution and contacts the
resistance, its members give him highly technical objectives--patch this
module into the control tower so we can hijack this helicopter--as he
stares back at them, dumbfounded. Blazkowicz's inner monologue upon
completing such an objective offers cogent insight into his thought
process: "Nazis dead. Nazi robot dead. Broke all your shit. Helicopter
secured." Friendly side characters describe him as "ape-like" and "the
crazy American." A Nazi who attempts to subdue Blazkowicz with what he
describes as "enough tranquiliser to put an elephant to sleep" exclaims
in shock, "There must be something wrong with your cerebral cortex," as
Blazkowicz simply walks it off.
But there is nothing
wrong with Blazkowicz's brain. He simply says and does things a shooter
protagonist from 1992 would say and do were complete motion capture and
voice acting available at the time--most of which is shooting Nazis.
Blazkowicz is positioned as a lens through which you see how the nature
of first-person shooters has changed since his first appearance.
Tonally, the result is an overarching sense that the world has left
Blazkowicz, and his intentional lack of nuance, behind.
In combat, Blazkowicz even functions like a 1992 shooter protagonist--he
needs health and armour pickups to stay alive, and he can carry all of
his guns at the same time. This immediately allows for a wider range of
options in any particular combat situation than a shooter with a weapon
carry limit would offer. Those guns are big, loud, and satisfying to
shoot. Most weapons can be dual-wielded, which works well because you
don't lose any accuracy by not aiming down the sights, a tweak that
lends the combat a sense of finesse despite its fast pace. Individual
enemy AI isn't particularly complex, but it works in the context of this
kind of shooter. Instead, larger enemies like Nazi robots add variety
to combat through their increased threat and the fact that different
tactics are required to take them down, such as using Tesla grenades to
stun them, or shooting off specific pieces of armour. All the while the
combat feedback is dialled to 11, with effects like near-comedic
squelching sounds as stick grenades shatter Nazis into tiny giblets.
Levels flow back and forth between tight corridors and wide, open
arenas. A lunar museum sees Blazkowicz running through backstage
passageways and around large, spacious exhibits. A level set on a
massive, destroyed bridge requires Blazkowicz to squeeze through train
carriages precariously dangling over the edge, whilst crossing back and
forth over the larger, open structure of the bridge itself. Though enemy
numbers never reach those of the Doom or Serious Sam-like
hordes, there is enough variety in the combat spaces, and the enemy
combinations within, that The New Order's levels feel well paced, and
combat feels tense without being unmanageable or overwhelming.
Some rudimentary yet functional stealth mechanics allow The New Order to
craft entire levels where Blazkowicz is armed with nothing but a knife.
These are interesting because they add variety to the game's pacing,
providing quiet, tense moments in which you are required to pay
attention to enemy patrols and lines of sight, but which don't end in a
"game over" screen if you get spotted. Nazi commanders, who can call in
reinforcements if they detect you, create a hierarchy of high-value
targets in a single room. When those commanders are present, the
interface shows your distance to them, but not their exact location.
It's rewarding to feel like you're stealthily stalking them, taking them
out silently, and then are free to pull out the big guns to clear an
area in the most efficient manner possible. With these mechanics, along
with some interesting mission locations and stellar environmental
design, The New Order offers a wide variety of combat experiences.
In an effort to further allow for play style personalisation, a perks
system lets Blazkowicz gradually unlock both stealth and combat
abilities. However, the tasks required to unlock individual perks--such
as stealth-killing a certain number of Nazis--are mostly actions that
you perform naturally over the course of the game. Combine that with the
fact that the majority of the perks themselves have only subtle
effects, such as slightly extra ammo, and you'd be forgiven for
forgetting the system exists at all. Outside of the perks system, weapon
upgrades can be found throughout the game's levels and permanently
attached to your guns. Assault rifles can be upgraded to fire underslung
rockets, and shotguns can be made to fire shells that bounce off walls,
effectively turning them into Unreal Tournament's flak cannon. The upgrades are useful, opening up new avenues for tactical approaches to taking down the tougher Nazi foes.
The New Order also requires Blazkowicz to make regular use of a laser
cutter. It is both a weapon and a utility that can manipulate the
environment. However, its use is mostly relegated to cutting
Blazkowicz-sized holes in the only pieces of metal grating that are
blocking forward progress in the first place. There are a few panels
which hide secret areas containing health and ammo pickups, but although
you can cut any shape you like, unless it's a square you won't fit
through it.
Both the laser cutter and the perks system feel like missed
opportunities at worst, because even aside from them, The New Order's
combat intensity and variety have granted the Wolfenstein series a
breath of fresh air, whilst still managing to hit the nostalgic highs
that I expect from the series. It has injected some substance into the
primal pleasure of shooting Nazis by way of an interesting tone that
addresses the changing roles of first-person shooter protagonists.
Through this, the game is both a celebration of the Wolfenstein series
and what feels like a fitting send-off for it. The New Order could be
the last hurrah of William "BJ" Blazkowicz, an outing which, for all its
excess and bombast, is far from mindless.
Source: gamespot.com
Rating: 8
