Wolfenstein II: The brand new Colossus doesn't shy away from the utter brutality of its alternate reality. You better believe that if Nazi Germany won world war ii after unlocking the traditional, advanced technology of a mystical secret society and utilized that to create an unstoppable war machine, the planet could be an unsightly place. This can be a world by which dissenters are massacred and beheaded, a world not only driven by the hateful ideology of the raving narcissist, but additionally through the need to simply see innocent blood spilled. It's a mechanical, atompunk dystopia by which robot dogs spit fire, a world where you'll try looking in the eyes of black-clad Nazi soldiers and it is difficult to tell where man ends and machine begins.
This evil existed in The New Colossus' United States before the Nazis took control of, and William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz wasn't any stranger to it. He sees it through the slats of his mother's closet, in the eyes of the hateful man who is his father, within the eyes assertive who beats his son for befriending a black girl, in the eyes assertive who forces his son to shoot his own dog who was only doing its solemn duty of protecting the family.
It's within this hate-filled landscape that B.J. paints his masterpiece with bullets and Nazi blood. We arrived at understand in The New Colossus that does not only is B.J. fighting for any better future for his family, but he's also fighting to find himself following a traumatic childhood. Killing Nazis is, in ways, B.J.'s version of therapy and, boy, does it feel cathartic-at least, more often than not.
Picking up literally moments after the end of Wolfenstein: The brand new Order, The New Colossus begins in a near-death fever dream as B.J. floats in and out of consciousness. Grenade shrapnel has ripped his body to shreds and he's bleeding out. One moment, his father is spitting racial epithets and beating his mother in 1919, in the next he's on a surgical table in 1961 and the Kreisau Circle is shifting his insides around having a set of metal tongs so that they can save his life while a nuclear blast decimates a Nazi base. The ugly past bleeds into the ugly present, whenever a mushroom cloud backlighting the familiar faces of Anya, Caroline, and Set is oddly the most serene, beautiful sight to behold.
The New Colossus' story never lets on the ugliness presented in the first couple of scenes, but it repeats the same trick that The New Order performed so deftly, which is to provide the blood, gib-filled shootouts a psychological weight. This time developer MachineGames has moved past B.J.'s patriotism towards the deeper roots of his character, sometimes through flashback along with other times through a good old-fashioned farmstead homecoming. Whereas other characters in the past have often overshadowed B.J.'s stoic masculinity, The New Colossus actually causes us to be care as much about our Nazi-slaying, crew-cutted, action-hero protagonist because it does about the world he's fighting to take back. I'd rather not spoil another second from the story for you, but longtime fans of the Wolfenstein series will be particularly shocked by a very early cut-scene, the melancholy of which infuses the emotions from the entire first-half of the game.
The proven fact that in The New Colossus the Nazis took over the United States by nuking Ny and forcing a surrender makes bashing their skulls in with a hatchet all the sweeter. Probably the most effective aspects of The New Colossus is literally the set dressing. Throughout the game, you'll explore Manhattan, New Orleans, and Roswell (among a few other locations I dare not spoil for you), that have all been drastically altered by the Nazi invasion, in a single way or another. Visually and practically, the amount are as imaginative as they are depressing, and they are just like effective at evoking an emotional engagement as the story is. This is a best example of the game's mechanics and thematics combining into one cohesive whole, plus they truly keep you motivated to purge the Nazi infestation.
Just like in The New Order, you'll tackle these locations through extended story missions, after which you'll find themselves in the game's central hub, this time a reclaimed U-boat that a minimum of doubles from the size of The New Order's central hub and it has more to complete, just like a shooting range as well as an obstacle course. It's another example of The New Colossus accumulating in the solid foundation that The New Order laid.
Luckily, there's enough within the gameplay to back up The New Colossus' fantastic story and locations. Once more, you can either choose to move stealthily through each level, quietly taking out Nazis with a variety of hatchet tosses, close-quarter takedowns, and silenced headshots, or you can use guns blazing and shoot the hell from everything and everyone in sight. Dual-wielding weapons is back, and it is just like necessary for most firefights because it was in The New Order. However, this time you can mix and match guns. You'll need a sub-machine gun in a single hand along with a grenade launcher in the other? Go for it. Or you convey more classic tastes and want to simply dual-wield pistols? Not the neatest combo, however it still looks cool. Or you desire to be in a position to kill everything as efficiently as possible? Then do things i did for most of the game and put a shotgun with ricochet rounds in a single hand as well as an armor-piercing assault rifle within the other hand and proceed to mow through both man and machine very quickly.
The way weapon upgrades work in The New Colossus is functionally similar to The New Order's weapons alternative modes, however this time the mods you can affect each weapon appear to have a much bigger and much more permanent impact on the way they perform the remaining game. You can upgrade and mod weapons by finding weapon kits throughout each level. The majority of the weapons in the game have three different pieces that may be upgraded, such as an alternate firing mode that can be switched on and off at any time.
There are small changes which make this system more satisfying than The New Order's. For just one, the secondary modes fully feel like secondary extensions of every weapon. Instead of using a rocket launcher using its own separate type of ammo as your secondary firing way of your assault rifle, this time around you can flip open a scope and switch your assault rifle right into a semi-automatic DMR. In addition, you are able to upgrade your ammo to armor-piercing rounds (which I highlyrecommend, because it will make dispatching robotic and armored enemies much more manageable), and it'll just stay that way throughout the sport. Likewise for the triple-barrel automatic shotgun, that takes the secondary-fire ricochet rounds from The New Order and just makes that the permanent upgrade. Instead, your secondary firing mode would be to fire-off all three barrels at once, giving your gun a significant punch having a slower delivery.
The catch here's that these consumable upgrades are hidden around each level and it's quite possible there are either insufficient to upgrade every weapon, or I just missed some. But rather than being a hindrance, this actually offered me a a lot more rewarding and private connection to the choices I was making. Besides, you'll find most of the upgrade kits fairly easily, and they will cover most of the upgrades, and who needs a silenced pistol inside a Wolfenstein game when you can dual-wield anything anyway?
Just as with The New Order, however, The New Colossus' gameplay has a few nagging faults. As satisfying because it is one moment, it may just like quickly turn on you the next. You'll be tricked into thinking The New Colossus is the closest friend (just how can a game title that turns Nazis into giblets so beautifully and joyously not become your best friend?), and then the next minute it is literally stabbing you within the back with a Nazi soldier or robot who's apparently the god of flanking maneuvers, while you swore you just cleared out that last room. If you're not focusing, you'll drop fast, and even if you're focusing you will possibly not realize how much damage you are taking, because the hit indicators don't fully accomplish their task of indicating when and how badly you're getting hit.
If this occurs to you, take solace within the fact that it's only partially your fault. You most likely got lulled into a false feeling of security from that point when the AI all charged around a large part in a single-file line, allowing you to take them out one by one and ending inside a pile of corpses at your feet. Next, why would you expect these to suddenly become expert military strategists who are able to flank you against angles you didn't know existed?
The AI isn't the only inconsistent thing about The New Colossus. Actually, the entire first and second halves of the game feel pretty different from each other. Or, maybe better, the first half of The New Colossus almost feels like a long, five-hour prologue towards the actual game-New Order 1.5as in opposition to a full-on Wolfenstein II. The 2 newest inclusions in the sport, the Contraptions and Oberkommander Missions, both arrive following the game experiences a figurative and literal resurrection halfway through. The sport introduces the Contraptions, that provide B.J. some cool new abilities, just early enough to be able to learn how to use them although not late enough that you never fully feel comfortable enough tinkering with them.
On the other hand, this isn't Prey; The New Colossus isn't necessarily thinking about letting the player get experimental using the tools that it provides them, and also the Contraptions appear to be a symbol of this attitude. They're cool as an idea, however in practice they work less like superpowers and much more just like a permanent key employed for unlocking arbitrary doors. When the Contraptions are introduced, you'll initially choose from one of three available. When you start a higher level, the first thing you have to do is find a way to infiltrate an area using one of them. At first I thought this was The New Colossus' sloppy, poorly disguised attempt at a tutorial and that i was sure you could do cool stuff with these new powers at some point. And that i was right, like, twice. I chose the Contraption that basically turns B.J. into an accordion, letting him slip through smaller vents and underneath objects no human should physically be under. It was designed to offer some stealth opportunities and it did-twice. The rest of the time you're mostly just repeating the lessons from that aforementioned, halfway-through-the-game-is-a-great-time-for-this tutorial, that is how to find the part of the map where you can make use of your Contraption to advance.
That being said, the Contraptions are a great idea. I just wish these were better implemented. Considering there's most definitely likely to be another chapter to this particular Wolfenstein saga, given the way the story ends and how much Bethesda's marketing department is leaning on this franchise, I'm really hoping that MachineGames takes the idea of the Contraptions one stage further and, instead of trying to shoehorn them in to the game for the newness factor, actually designs the entire game around them and ways they can be found in firefights.
The game also introduces Oberkommander missions in the other half from the game, but the implementation here at least is pretty successful. These side missions task you with returning to the various stages of every main place to hunt down and assassinate a top commander within the Third Reich. Once they're unlocked, accessing these missions becomes a three-part process. First, you must beat the main story pursuit to unlock the place where each high commander is hiding. Second, you have to pick up the Enigma Codes that normal commanders drop throughout the main campaign missions. Third, you must play a short but fun mini-game that permits you to “read” the Engima Codes, which will then reveal the Oberkommander's locations on a map located in the game's central hub.
While most of these side-missions are fairly short, the locations change sufficient to ensure that they're interesting. The first time you visit Roswell, the city is bustling with a daytime parade and celebration of all things Nazi. When you return there for that Oberkommander mission, night has fallen and the streets are empty except for Nazi soldiers, Ku Klux Klan members, as well as an enormous robot patrolling the streets. These missions could be completed while you are still in the middle of the primary campaign or after the credits roll. This simple option prevents the superb pacing of the main campaign from slowing down, since you don't feel the pressure to accomplish all of the side-missions before finishing the sport. It is also a cheeky way for the developer to extend the game's playtime a few hours, that the main campaign ran about ten hours the first time through.
There are several other small inconsistencies in some places which i feel like I ought to mention. For one, there was a weird visual thing happening with in-game, first-person cut-scenes where certain characters' eyelids would constantly twitch. That was pretty distracting. Also, MachineGames really needs to drop the “press a control button to choose stuff up” shtick. The very last thing I wish to do when I'm getting shot at by a number of dozen Nazis is stop to get health. It wouldn't be also that bad with the exception that it requires the most precise cursor placement, which probably didn't appear to be a big deal for individuals playing on PC, but on console it is a small headache.
Finally, it seemed like the stealth mechanics completely changed in the second half from the game. Suddenly, when I was getting spotted by enemies, the experience would decelerate a la Metal Gear Solid V, giving me sufficient time for you to turn around and pop off a headshot before they might enhance the alarm. This mechanic, so far as I could tell, was nowhere to be found in the very first half of the game. It kind of is sensible from a thematic perspective why B.J. would be more “with it” throughout the second half of the game, however it was still pretty distracting and compounded the concept I was playing two different games in the same series.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is fun in all the right ways and difficult in certain from the wrong ways, but it's driven by a superb narrative filled with a tragic pathos and interspersed with a campy feeling of action-hero glory and Eighties cinema-style gore. It is a ten-hour adrenaline-filled experience that provides a respectable amount of replayability because of an earlier decision you have to make (fans of The New Order ought to be familiar), and also the new Oberkommander Missions. And despite some small frustrations throughout, is a a lot more than fitting follow-up to the predecessor
