In 1991 two guys named John Carmack and John Romero partnered up to create id Software, a development studio that allowed them to create the games they wanted to make. Romero was really into story, art, and music; whereas Carmack was really into coding and technology. It was a match made in heaven as over the years the two made many hit titles and id Software today is considered one of the most important developers to have ever existed thanks to their significant contributions to the PC gaming space, game engines, and first-person shooters. But id Software would not have been the household name it is today without a little game called Wolfenstein 3D. Wolfenstein 3D is considered the precursor to the first-person shooter and has enjoyed a long series of sequels and reboots including 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order. Back in 2014 I was on the fence about buying a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console, they were expensive and most of the games were still being released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, so why upgrade right away? Well, Wolfenstein: The New Order was the reason. No longer developed by id Software, The New Order acted as a soft reboot for the series and helmed by Machine Games. The New Order looked to be pushing the new hardware of PS4 and Xbox One to extremes very early on in its lifecycle. It also was a great game, it had excellent gameplay mechanics and a fantastic story to boot which was a surprise to many when it released. Wolfenstein games had never put much effort into story, id famously said that story is to shooters what story is to porn films. It would be wrong if it wasn’t there, but it’s little more than window dressing. But The New Order changed this and gave series protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz one of the best stories ever seen in an FPS up to that point. I loved it! Then in 2017 a sequel titled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was released and due to circumstance, I didn’t get it. It drifted out of my mind until just a few weeks ago, post COVID-19 pandemic when I stumbled across it at a local CEX. So, I picked it up, replayed The New Order and eagerly jumped into The New Colossus. But was it as good as the first?
The New Order ended with Blazkowicz killing his nemesis General Deathshead but in the process seemingly sacrificing himself to destroy the Nazi stronghold Deathshead controlled. The New Colossus picks up at that very moment where instead of the stronghold being destroyed Blazkowicz is saved by the resistance movement he had been helping throughout the game. He is taken back to the resistance base aboard a Nazi submarine. However, when the Nazi’s find the submarine Blazkowicz is not anywhere near healthy enough to battle the seemingly endless foes and as such the resistance begins to crumble, with their leader Caroline being killed by Frau Engel, another Nazi general who Blazkowicz had clashed with in The New Order.
Blazkowicz, with a broken body and mind, accepts that his final mission is to find a new leader for the resistance before he can succumb to his injuries and die. So, the resistance travel to a Nazi occupied USA where rumours of another resistance movement are based. Together the two groups join forces to shoot, stab, and just straight up kill as many Nazi bastards as they can and ignite a people’s revolution against the Reich.
The New Order ended with Blazkowicz killing his nemesis General Deathshead but in the process seemingly sacrificing himself to destroy the Nazi stronghold Deathshead controlled. The New Colossus picks up at that very moment where instead of the stronghold being destroyed Blazkowicz is saved by the resistance movement he had been helping throughout the game. He is taken back to the resistance base aboard a Nazi submarine. However, when the Nazi’s find the submarine Blazkowicz is not anywhere near healthy enough to battle the seemingly endless foes and as such the resistance begins to crumble, with their leader Caroline being killed by Frau Engel, another Nazi general who Blazkowicz had clashed with in The New Order.
Blazkowicz, with a broken body and mind, accepts that his final mission is to find a new leader for the resistance before he can succumb to his injuries and die. So, the resistance travel to a Nazi occupied USA where rumours of another resistance movement are based. Together the two groups join forces to shoot, stab, and just straight up kill as many Nazi bastards as they can and ignite a people’s revolution against the Reich.
I’d read a few reviews of The New Colossus in the lead up to playing it and many of them stated that the game simply was not as good as The New Order, in terms of story and gameplay. So, my expectations were somewhat tempered despite replaying the still fantastic New Order. I can happily say though that The New Colossus was better than The New Order in almost every way. I can understand why some critics may not have been fans of the choices made, but personally I loved almost all of them and found it to be an all-round more enjoyable game.
Firstly, the story. I’m going to go into spoilers for basically the whole thing, so just skip to the gameplay paragraph if you’re bothered about having the story ruined. The first half of the game Blazkowicz is a dead man walking. Not only is his body failing him, but he has also given up the will to live. The only thing that keeps him going is to find someone to take over the resistance, so that his girlfriend Anya and their unborn children may live to see a world that is not ruled by the Nazi’s. The way this affects the major secondary characters in the game is really interesting. Anya becomes alienated and desperate to help the love of her life want to continue living. The Jewish scientist Set Roth wants to use Blazkowicz as a test dummy for all his experiments. Plus, Fergus or Wyatt (depending on who you saved in The New Order) become disillusioned and distant with Blazkowics due to his lost will to live and fight the Nazi regime.
Come the midpoint in the story Blazkowics has had multiple recurring dreams of his childhood and a black girl he befriended which angered his father. He returns to his family home only to find his father waiting for him, revealing that his mother (a Polish Jew) died many years ago when his father sold her out to the Nazi’s. On top of that he alerts the Nazi’s to Blazkowicz’s position and they capture him. At this point Blazkowicz is killed by Frau Engel. Now if I didn’t already know that a 3rd game existed I would have assumed that Blazkowicz was well and truly dead but using magical Jewish science he is resurrected. This whole storyline of reflecting on his childhood and how it ties into the current storyline, then to return to his childhood home for a truly impressive series of events just goes to show how much Machine Games cared about the story to The New Colossus and wanted it to go beyond what they achieved with the still impressive New Order.
The second half of the game is less impressive narratively than the first. Of the new characters Grace is the only interesting one, a black woman who has lived for too long under the boot of the regime, who assumes the leadership of the resistance movement. But almost all the others either are undeveloped or are simply the butt of jokes, such as Engel’s daughter Sigrun, who pretty much only exists to be made fun of. The ending feels like it comes out of nowhere but that’s also because the game decides to basically repeat the final act of the first game where you must steal some codes from the Nazi’s and then kill the big bad which in this case is Frau Engel. Engel is a good villain, but almost all her build up comes from the previous game so The New Colossus misses an opportunity to really build on her.
Firstly, the story. I’m going to go into spoilers for basically the whole thing, so just skip to the gameplay paragraph if you’re bothered about having the story ruined. The first half of the game Blazkowicz is a dead man walking. Not only is his body failing him, but he has also given up the will to live. The only thing that keeps him going is to find someone to take over the resistance, so that his girlfriend Anya and their unborn children may live to see a world that is not ruled by the Nazi’s. The way this affects the major secondary characters in the game is really interesting. Anya becomes alienated and desperate to help the love of her life want to continue living. The Jewish scientist Set Roth wants to use Blazkowicz as a test dummy for all his experiments. Plus, Fergus or Wyatt (depending on who you saved in The New Order) become disillusioned and distant with Blazkowics due to his lost will to live and fight the Nazi regime.
Come the midpoint in the story Blazkowics has had multiple recurring dreams of his childhood and a black girl he befriended which angered his father. He returns to his family home only to find his father waiting for him, revealing that his mother (a Polish Jew) died many years ago when his father sold her out to the Nazi’s. On top of that he alerts the Nazi’s to Blazkowicz’s position and they capture him. At this point Blazkowicz is killed by Frau Engel. Now if I didn’t already know that a 3rd game existed I would have assumed that Blazkowicz was well and truly dead but using magical Jewish science he is resurrected. This whole storyline of reflecting on his childhood and how it ties into the current storyline, then to return to his childhood home for a truly impressive series of events just goes to show how much Machine Games cared about the story to The New Colossus and wanted it to go beyond what they achieved with the still impressive New Order.
The second half of the game is less impressive narratively than the first. Of the new characters Grace is the only interesting one, a black woman who has lived for too long under the boot of the regime, who assumes the leadership of the resistance movement. But almost all the others either are undeveloped or are simply the butt of jokes, such as Engel’s daughter Sigrun, who pretty much only exists to be made fun of. The ending feels like it comes out of nowhere but that’s also because the game decides to basically repeat the final act of the first game where you must steal some codes from the Nazi’s and then kill the big bad which in this case is Frau Engel. Engel is a good villain, but almost all her build up comes from the previous game so The New Colossus misses an opportunity to really build on her.
The New Colossus improves the gameplay formula in all the right ways from The New Order. Firstly, everything moves at a much faster pace. What was impressive about The New Order back in 2014 was that it combined modern FPS sensibilities with retro elements. This then got a bigger shift in the retro direction with 2016’s DOOM reboot and The New Colossus seems to have followed suit with that. Movement speed has been greatly increased, heath and armour pickups are significantly more frequent but that comes at the cost of greater enemy presence. Dual wielding has been simplified to require simply one button press rather than selecting a dual wield option from the weapon wheel. Plus, the arsenal feels slightly more varied this time round than before. In The New Order I often felt as though I was relying on the assault rifle all the time outside of stealth sections. In The New Colossus I found myself experimenting far more, sure I still relied on the assault rifle a lot, but I recognised that certain enemy types worked best with certain weapon combinations much earlier on in the game than I did with The New Order. The game is also significantly more difficult. The first half of the game you have to rely on a reduced health pool because Blazkowicz is not at his peak physical performance. Then come the second half of the game you face much heavier enemy resistance than you ever did in The New Order so the increased health won’t do you much good.
Upgrades have also been improved in the sequel. Character upgrades work similarly to how they did in The New Order but are stackable this time, so you are able to improve your stats multiple times and not just the once. And new this time round is weapon upgrades which allow you to tweak your favourite weapons to get cool benefits like increased damage, faster reload times, or larger magazines. It’s all stuff that goes into making The New Colossus a generally more entertaining experience all round than The New Order.
Finally, we come to the presentation of the game and The New Colossus sets a pretty high bar. The New Order may have shown what a next gen shooter was really capable of in 2014, but The New Colossus shows what can be done after a few years of getting to know the architecture. Environments and character models are richly detailed. Lighting is beyond anything I’ve seen in a shooter before with some incredible effects shown. Bits of armour will fly off enemies with realistic physics when you shoot them. On top of this you get some mighty fantastic blood and gore. But the real star of the show goes to the superbly animated cutscenes that punctuate the gameplay. Not only do these cutscenes look fantastic but they have a better grasp of cinematography than most video game cutscenes could ever hope to come close to. Foreground & background have been clearly thought about, clever editing techniques have been executed perfectly, and the sound editing during these sections is superb. I’d happily let Machine Games produce a feature length Wolfenstein film if it came out looking anywhere near this good!
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is everything a sequel to The New Order should have been. Whilst the second half of the story certainly feels a little underwhelming in comparison to the incredible first half, overall it’s a very worthy continuation to Wolfenstein’s ‘New’ saga. That mixed with the improved gameplay mechanics and spurb presentation quality leave me to only say bravo Machine Games!
Upgrades have also been improved in the sequel. Character upgrades work similarly to how they did in The New Order but are stackable this time, so you are able to improve your stats multiple times and not just the once. And new this time round is weapon upgrades which allow you to tweak your favourite weapons to get cool benefits like increased damage, faster reload times, or larger magazines. It’s all stuff that goes into making The New Colossus a generally more entertaining experience all round than The New Order.
Finally, we come to the presentation of the game and The New Colossus sets a pretty high bar. The New Order may have shown what a next gen shooter was really capable of in 2014, but The New Colossus shows what can be done after a few years of getting to know the architecture. Environments and character models are richly detailed. Lighting is beyond anything I’ve seen in a shooter before with some incredible effects shown. Bits of armour will fly off enemies with realistic physics when you shoot them. On top of this you get some mighty fantastic blood and gore. But the real star of the show goes to the superbly animated cutscenes that punctuate the gameplay. Not only do these cutscenes look fantastic but they have a better grasp of cinematography than most video game cutscenes could ever hope to come close to. Foreground & background have been clearly thought about, clever editing techniques have been executed perfectly, and the sound editing during these sections is superb. I’d happily let Machine Games produce a feature length Wolfenstein film if it came out looking anywhere near this good!
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is everything a sequel to The New Order should have been. Whilst the second half of the story certainly feels a little underwhelming in comparison to the incredible first half, overall it’s a very worthy continuation to Wolfenstein’s ‘New’ saga. That mixed with the improved gameplay mechanics and spurb presentation quality leave me to only say bravo Machine Games!
STORY: 8/10
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
PRESENTATION: 9/10
LIFESPAN: 7/10
SCORE: 8/10
An extremely enjoyable Nazi murder spree for the whole family…or maybe just the adults.