Wolfenstein:
The New Order has been made with love. This might not be obvious to you
when you are giving a Nazi both barrels as the world around you
collapses in a shower of bone and blood and concrete. It might not seem
like the most pertinent observation to make as you hammer the middle
mouse button to stab a cyberdog to death. I would forgive you for
missing all this evident care and attention to detail when you wrench
your first Nazi lasergun from its fixed emplacement and use it to mulch a
charging column of Third Reich roboguys.
But it is there if you go looking for it. This alt-history vision of
Nazi-dominated 1960s Europe has been constructed with extraordinary
style. Every environment expresses a distinct identity through its
colour pallette, architecture, and use of light. The interfaces,
technology, even the typography of this speculative other-Earth feel
correct and cohesive. The New Order is Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds
by way of Moonbase Alpha—an x-rated episode of Captain Scarlet starring
the world's most heavily militarised jacket potato.
B. J. Blazkowicz returns during a last-ditch Allied assault on a Nazi
compound in 1946. This game is technically a sequel to Raven's 2009
Wolfenstein, but all you really need to know is that the Nazis have
somehow figured out how to graft a gigantic staple remover onto a dog's
face. Extraordinary technological advances like this one have given them
the edge, and B. J. is left in a fourteen year coma when that
war-ending final assault goes south. He wakes up in a world entirely
controlled by the Third Reich and becomes the cornerstone of a
resistance movement committed to righting historical wrongs.
The game is a violent revenge fantasy, and history is treated like a
toybox when it comes to providing you with evils to revolt against. The
New Order's basic thesis is that this is okay: that concentration camps,
secret police and brutal eugenics have entered into our pop cultural
consciousness to the extent that they can be used as motivators for
violent entertainment. Whether or not you find the game offensive will
depend on how far you can truck with that sentiment. If these ideas make
you uncomfortable, or if you are otherwise disturbed by body horror,
scalpels or surgery, it might be best to stay away.
For all that brutality, though, this is a far more thoughtfully
written and well-acted game than it has any right to be. B. J.'s
folksy-poetic musings on the nature of war can be laugh-out-loud funny
when juxtaposed with a Nazi trooper getting lifted off his feet by a
pair of thundering megashotguns, but there's a glimmer in the game's eye
when it presents you with this tonal contradiction. It's never
explicitly ironic—that would get tiresome—but its characters are
intelligent and larger-than-life and invested in the world around them.
You'll periodically return to the resistance headquarters for some short
non-combat missions, and characterful ambient conversations and
well-written backmatter make this space well worth exploring. This is
also a game where somebody says "I'm coming for you, you fucking Nazi
spaceman", so there's that.
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