nightm4re Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

A bit late to the party, I decided to give The New Order a try during holiday season '25. With Fascism on the rise worldwide, and bad people making bad decisions to destroy our planet, I think the narrative at the heart of the Wolfenstein games is now more relevant than in over seventy years. But how does it hold up as a game? Story: 10/10 You'd be surprised how much heart the story of this game shows. The manifold characters have deep backgrounds and make you care for them - for better or worse! While the resistance has a lovable roster of loyal and complex characters, the N4zis at display are devilishly evil, loathable creatures whose guts you want to extract. With all of that presented in well written and produced cutscenes, The New Order is a very narrative-focused experience. You get to make a heavy choice at the beginning that affects the rest of the story and presents you with two different timelines that provide replayability for the campaign that's about ten hours long. The writing is top notch and at times even more melancholic than you'd expect in a game of this caliber. B.J. Blazkowicz is not just a silent one-man army like the doom guy, but offers deep introspection and commentary for the cruelty of the N4zi regime. It's worth mentioning that this is not a light-hearted game. From concentration camps to genocide to disgusting human experiments: the portrayal of a "what if" post-WWII world in which the N4zis have won will make you angry, sad and desperate. But that is exactly why the game is such a timeless pledge against fascism, and why the revenge story feels so personal and engaging. The optional dialogues and activities in the resistance base between missions help build a living, breathing world and let you immerse deeply in it. Setting: 7/10 In terms of environmental variety, The New Order lacks a bit at times: A handful of levels offer stunning architecture and environments (The Assault on Castle Wolfenstein, for example, feels unforgettable), but the majority of the time you will run and gun through grey concrete jungles or sewers - and then some levels are even reused throughout the game. This makes sense from a story perspective, but the game could've shaken up the routine a bit more here. However, all of the places you visit feel real: NPCs having dialogues, newspaper articles that outline the post-war fate of the world, propaganda posters and speakers and many more details make the world believable and immersive. Gameplay: 8/10 The New Order displays a unique and engaging mix of mechanics that oscillates between unavoidable large-scale confrontations with guns blazing, and intimate stealth infiltration sections that work surprisingly well. The weapons have weight to them and it feels satisfying to see N4zis explode in gory streams of blood and viscera. The movement is snappy and you have full control over everything, but in general the game plays a lot slower than e.g. Doom: Cover is essential and you die with only a few hits. This is, at least in part, due to the fact that Wolfenstein is a HARD game - especially on the highest two difficulty levels. But even then, it never becomes unfair: the levels are mostly linear and everything is deterministic, so you can perfect your routes and approach every time you die, memorizing enemy spawns and routes and boss movement patterns. Throughout the game, you improve your skillset and arsenal passively, and you can feel yourself becoming more and more powerful before the final confrontation. And yet, a bit more variety in the weapon arsenal would have been nice: essentially, there are six types of weapons, each of which is complemented with an akimbo variant. Except for stealth segments, the pistols and knives were never really a viable option, so as your enemies grow stronger you will find yourself using the same weapons most of the time. Graphics 8/10 Wolfenstein: The New Order has aged incredibly well! Even after more than ten years, textures and animations are crisp, character designs are unique, and the bombastic fights in destructible environments look and feel jaw-dropping. As mentioned before, some environments lack variety and color, but all in all this is still a great looking game! Sound: 9/10 As soon as you start up the game, the heavy riffs of Mick Gordon's impactful metal score blast your ears, and it's such a joy! When you shred through hordes of bad guys with Gordon's distinct music in the background, you reach a sort of tunnel vision hard to escape from. Additionally, the weapons blast convincingly, the levels crumble under fire, and the N4zi machinery of war sounds terrifying. The main characters' speakers mostly deliver great performances in cutscenes and ingame dialog, and the N4zi NPCs have plenty of one-liners in German. This is also my only point of criticism here: some N4zi speakers clearly don't speak German as their mother tongue, making their German dialog uncanny and awkward at times. Total: 8.4 / 10 Wolfenstein: The New Order is a timeless classic that tells a heartfelt story with an almost perfect audiovisual presentation. Its only shortcomings pertain to a lack of variety in settings and armory, but the gunplay and stealth sections are immaculate and the game's message is universally clear: DEATH. ALL. FASCISTS.