And though I’m not going to delve into that plot, because I think it is one of the biggest joys of the game to experience firsthand and you meet many memorable and complex characters through a slew of cutscenes, I will say that it is as satisfying as it is ludicrous. At its worst, however, it doesn’t exactly slog – the game isn’t long enough for that – but it becomes a very pat slit a few throats, hose down a few rooms, and activate the next cut scene activity that I think a better AI might have avoided.įor those who are looking for a capsule review, those with short attention spans, think of W:TNO as Halflife with more bullets or Serious Sam or Bulletstorm with way more plot. At its best moments, it calls to mind some of the most memorable scenes from Halflife and Portal and Bioshock, games that draw you so deeply into their story that you actually care about the people you’re trying to save and want righteous vengeance against thine enemies. Over those lo and many years FPS games have come a long way, and Wolfenstein: The New Order takes a lot of those advancements and integrates them very successfully, pulling together stealth elements and bullet blasting without really cheaping out on either one.

I was a freshman in frigging high school when Castle Wolfenstein was released, and I’m not referring to Wolfenstein 3D which was an FPS that came out a decade later and is probably the first Wolfenstein most of you have ever heard of, but the top down stealthish game from Muse Software in 1981 (extra credit: do a little math and figure out how old I am, and I’ll thank you very much to get the hell off my lawn). This is going to be one of those reviews where I reveal that I’m old as dirt. The Bad: Wrapped around a pretty run of the mill FPS.

Wolfenstein the new order armor upgrade