Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Wolfenstein 2 is the only game like it on the market. It tackles the sickest, ugliest aspects of tyranny while laughing at how stupid tyrants actually are and the pointless, rippling horrors just a few men's insanity metastasizes like a cancer on humanity. The characters and themes may not be for you if you're looking for a more standard CoD soldier plot, but if you love over-the-top characters, alternate history, fresh representation of social movements, and vicious gunplay, then this game is for you. And if you just love killing nazis and watching genocidal tyrants miss pissing in buckets and cry out for their mothers, this game is also for you.

The gameplay builds upon and polishes that found in The New Order. It's pretty Doom-like in its fast pace, satisfyingly huge guns, and heaps of ammo, yet still contains stealth and cover mechanics that work well. You're almost always given the option on how to approach an encounter, and on the higher difficulties, skillful cover and memorization of level design are rewarded. The gunplay feels slick and AAA, with variety between combat sections, a few vehicle-ish moments, and a steady trickle of new guns and perks to unlock based on your playstyle.

But the plot is where Wolfenstein shines. There are a few places where the pacing feels fast or off (flashback sequences especially), but everything else is dripping with style. Some may not enjoy how quickly it shifts from serious to comedic, but the way in which it does so, with movie-level camerawork, acting, and music, was like candy to me. The situations characters find themselves in push the bar of insanity, with invariably brutal payoffs.

The heart of Wolfenstein is still BJ & Anya's story, though, with Anya now a kickass pregnant resistance leader whose lover is still dealing with the events at the end of The New Order. You ache to see BJ survive not only because he's just an endearing character, but a soon-to-be-dad and great partner who has overcome a tragic upbringing. He won't have his kids growing up in a Nazi world, so every stab, headshot, and mindless kill feels personal and righteous.

An example of how the plot gets variety right is BJ's birthday party. After several levels of desperate fighting, tensions get relieved via a drunken submaritime bash that leaves Fergus with a missing arm and everyone with hilarious regrets.

The characters, although a bit heavy handed at times, offer more variety and fresh takes than I've seen in any game short of, say, GTA5. All nationalities, mental capacities, and body types are celebrated, but not in a preachy sjw way. You're the last bastion of beautiful humanity that the nazis want to crush, so it makes sense that so many types of people would wind up in one place. Watching them form a family is gratifying.

The score is fantastic as well, and seamlessly switches from grindy electric battle music (again similar to Doom) to period-appropriate rock and roll with a grungy futuristic twist. Throughout the levels are tons of collectibles, including funny records that imagine what bands like The Beatles would have made under an oppressive fascist regime.

So if you're a fan of great single player stories and polished FPS gameplay, Wolfenstein 2 might be just what you're looking for.

This game takes everything that worked well in the first one, redesigned everything that didn't work that well in the first one, added a way more emotional and character-driven story (as well as A LOT of crazy happenings that will make your jaw drop or you tears run from laughter) and mixed it all into one helluva great game. Slaughtering Nazis have never ever felt this good before!

Thanks to a very good map design and a lot of interesting collectibles (as well as many "readable" newspapers, diaries, letters etc which gives you insight not only into the life of the nazi soldiers but also into the life's of the normal Americans and recently arrived Germans) It took me just about 20 hours from start to end on medium difficulty. The map design and all the collectibles as well as the opportunity to sneak around all enemies to try and take out the officers first (only the officers can raise the alarm and call for reinforcements) makes you actually wanting to find out what happened in the very different cities you're visiting.

All in all, this game was a blast! Great gun play with the possibility to upgrade almost every weapon, great level design, very graphically improved from the last game along with new shades and lightning, great character-driven story and a lot of crazy moments that will make you remember this game for a long time makes for an extremely well crafted old school fps in a world filled with multiplayer games and loot boxes. Kudos Machine Games!

Wolfenstein II is a game about executing Nazis with a hatchet and talking to yourself after performing literally any action. It has great gameplay, graphic / character design, story writing, and (usually) gameplay. It does however suffer from relatively bland gameplay at times, (I thought the first level being played entirely in a slow wheelchair was a stupid idea) and a playtime shorter than that of an indie RPG. Cutscenes drag on for a loooooooong time and skipping them could leave you confused. The humor also feels a bit off and writing isn't always the best. The worst thing though is probably the repetition of the level design, with it basically always boiling down to "find commander, execute, kill soldiers, move to next area, repeat" which usually leaves you wondering when the game's gonna end.

TL;DR game good, suffers from short runtime and bland gameplay

I only just discovered you can review games here! I actually played this one about a year ago.

The story in this is really incredible. It's almost like an interactive movie at times. I don't ever remember caring about the game characters as much.

I wish it didn't have the venus scene. Everything hung together pretty well until it was suddenly revealed the Nazis have UFOs and can get to Venus in mere hours. What were they thinking? This idea clashes VERY BADLY with the other technology in the game.

The gameplay sometimes is boring, a little too predictable. Step A tends to follow Step B. It doesn't take long to learn whatever sequence is required to beat a tough scenario. And a lot of the scenarios just aren't that tough. Unfortunately just running from room to room shooting guards wears pretty thin.

The exception, and one of the game highlights is the jury room scene, I felt like I could play that over and over, and it was really challenging.

The positives: bad ass story, great acting and music, dual wielded weapons still feel amazing.

Negatives: bad level design, bare bones stealth mechanics which game constantly pushes you to use, AI is lazy and unfair.

To survive any decent difficulty you have to be constantly on the move but absence of auto pickup makes you stop every time you need to stop and pixel hunt for pickup icon to get any ammo, armor or health.

Aiming is quite rubbish. Many levels have terrible flow, most of the time every NPC will gang up on you in the first two rooms and then you run around empty rooms.