POSTED 31/5/14


WOLFENSTEIN: THE NEW ORDER

Bethesda

KISS. Iron Maiden. Wu-Tang Clan. Slayer. Aerosmith. Journey. Mötlëÿ Crüë (we must have nailed the umlauts somewhere there). Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

All bands who have games. Now, finally, Manchester’s greatest join their esteemed company...

Except they don’t, for, of course, Wolfenstein: The New Order has zilcho whatsoever to do with New Order other than reminding us how utterly dodgy their name is. Instead, it’s a now-generation take on what was essentially the originator of first-person shooters as we know them.

After an introductory setty-uppy trundle, TNO camps out in a disturbing alternate 1960s where the Nazis won WWII, and set about Nazifying everything. Resistance? It’s futile, you’ll be locked away, or chucked in an asylum. The latter is where we find 1860s BJ Blazkowicz suffering confusion... briefly. He’s soon plucking weapons from everywhere and getting brutal on Nazi vermin. Via you – and fuck it’s fun!

It’s the eminently killable foes, and touches like dogs being robots – as even real Nazi pooches didn’t have any say in their recruitment, so they scarcely deserved to be pounded with more artillery than Arnie’s ever fired.

Yep, easily flipped-on-the-fly weapons abound. One-handed, two-handed, chuckable, stabby-stabby, ones that deliver shell shock and ones that make earth-shattering kabooms. Bullets and such to insert within them proliferate, especially from corpsed-up Nazis.

You’ll collect more than weapons and power-ups, with various puzzle chunks, newspapers, Easter eggies and such strewn about. These are attached to the most emotionally-engaging story we’ve ever encountered in such a game, to the point where even impatient us welcomed cutscenes for the very human saga that gradually unfolded.

We don’t usually dig the FPS thing, but Wolfenstein: The New Order has changed that. So, suffering a blue Monday? Give in to temptation, run wild, have a fine time on a vicious streak and hurt a procession of low-life Third Reich dickheads until they’re evil dust!

CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!