Wolfenstein: The New Order Reviews
Wolfenstein: The New Order is made up of some interesting parts, but is decidedly unspectacular as a whole.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is not the most sophisticated of games and it's certainly not perfect, but it wears its silly plot and over-the-top action like a badge of honor, and for that we applaud it.
A decent, but confused, shooter.
Wolfenstein: The New Order has all sorts of war stories it wants to share with you and it knows how it wants you to feel, but it's not convincing. Its stories are more sensational than poignant. It's a decent shooter with a good few impressive moments, but it can be buggy and it doesn't offer much you can't find elsewhere, with little to tempt you back when it's over. Where it most tries to stand out, in its narrative and setting, it often comes off as juvenile. Overall, it's built on an impressive world but it doesn't do enough with it, and as a result it's curious, but hardly compelling.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is big, dumb, fun no matter how much MachineGames might have tried to force it to be otherwise. The alternative history explored here is fascinating, if a little under-explored, but it's the boom and the blast that'll keep FPS fans coming back. A respectably lengthy game with modern looks but buckets of old-school spirit, The New Order is a silly, inconsistent, overblown treat. But give it a couple of weeks.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is a blast from the past that many will surely see as a breath of fresh air. While some archaic design choices and patience-testing difficulty spikes will attempt to compromise your enjoyment on occasion, the moments to follow generally smooth over any past transgressions.
Wolfenstein: The New Order isn't groundbreaking by any means, but it's a solid installment to the franchise that Wolfenstein fans will certainly appreciate.
Ignore the discordance within its narrative and get your way past the incredibly dull opening stretch: Wolfenstein is a brawny, gratifying shooter experience – the likes of which you probably haven't played in some time. Consider it a history lesson.
Wolfenstein: The New Order doesn't transcend either of its genres. It's another first-person shooter that's also just another victorious Nazi alternate timeline. It's proficient enough at both action and world-building to merit attention, though. It may not be a world I want to hang out in that often, but I'll at least try to save it once.
We love the latest Wolfenstein for the respect it pays to iD's original, and for the ways it tries to take the series somewhere new. We're not so keen on some elements of the gameplay, and it must be said that not all its loftier ambitions quite pan out. What we're left with is a solid FPS that's always interesting - and one with an identity all its own - even if it can't make it up there with the best-in-class.
A solid and surprising well-written shooter that should easily please fans of the genre. It doesn't do too much more than that, but that's not really a complaint.
Wolfenstein: The New Order doesn't make the most of a highly promising premise, but it provides the baseline of gun-toting freedom fighting that fans expect.
The New Order is unlikely to feature in many Game of the Year lists and it does have a few areas where perhaps it could have benefitted from a little more polish. Shooter fans, and especially those who remember the halcyon days of id's seminal shotgun-and-chainsaw, blood-soaked titans, shouldn't let that put them off. It's clearly not perfect but it is a very enjoyable and respectably lengthy shooter that embraces its heritage while successfully striving to evolve its core gameplay in a new and interesting direction.
Wolfenstein: The New Order suffers from minor inconsistencies in nearly every aspect of the game from its storytelling to its action, but the good news is the game never feels consistently bad. Things are at least kind of interesting even when the pace lags or the story and gameplay don't quite line up. And from minute to minute you're engaged in meaty, challenging combat that rewards smart, tactical play that results in plenty of dead Nazis -- even if there are a few kinks.
The New Order took me about 16 hours to beat on its normal difficulty setting, and I could see myself revisiting it in the future on a harder setting for a fun challenge -- but probably not for a while. It was a fun and bloody ride while it lasted, but it lacks anything special in terms of gameplay to make me want to dive right back in.
In many ways, Wolfenstein: The New Order is "First-Person Shooters: The Game," but it gets most of the important details right. It's still weird to me seeing Wolf games developed over and over by new devs, but MachineGames did a great job adapting the franchise in its own way. With a few tweaks, the next iteration could be something truly special.
While shooting fascists in video games will likely always be fun, The New Order falters when it's trying to decide how you should feel about it. Its options and ridiculously sized weapons provide a lot of enjoyment, but the story tries so hard to be serious that it forgets that this is a game that includes Moon Nazis.
Wolfenstein: The New Order's emphasis on storytelling and characters make it a shooter worth playing.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is easily some of the most fun I've had with a shooter in recent memory and shows that you can easily mix old and modern shooter mechanics together into something that's a total blast to play.
In the end, I ended up having a blast revisiting the franchise that originally got me interested in the first person shooter genre of games. While the gameplay has a few bumps, 'Wolfenstein: The New Order' is a fresh spin on the game, especially the focus on the Nazi's technological advancement rather than obscure references to the occult. It's significantly better than Activision's attempt to revitalize the series during 2009. If you are a fan of the original games or simply are looking for a solid shooter to jump into, you certainly can't go wrong with 'Wolfenstein: The New Order.'