Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

'Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (2017)' is the sequel to 'Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014)', a franchise revival that took the series back to its roots. This game carries on where the previous left off, introducing extra elements to its gameplay and generally refining things even more than before. However, it is an inferior experience for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, the game doesn't strike a great balance between plot and gameplay, with long cut-scenes constantly interrupting the flow of play. Secondly, it doesn't have a very good tonal balance, which makes the story difficult to become engaged with. Finally, it takes a long time to get fully underway and feels like it's stopped short because of it. The story really is quite silly, told mainly by over-the-top characters spouting long, uninteresting speeches. It isn't compelling in the way you'd expect, especially since its predecessor's narrative really is quite good. Having said all that, the game still is a really fun time when it gets out of its own way. The best aspects of it are actually optional side-tasks that see you returning to previously explored locations in order to assassinate a Nazi official. These segments focus wholly on gameplay and are all the better for it. On the higher difficulty settings, the piece becomes decidedly less enjoyable than it ought to be because you simply aren't afforded the health or ammo to 'run and gun' the way it wants you to. It can be really challenging at times - frustrating, even. Ultimately, though, the game is still an entertaining time. Its shooting is refined and its extra mechanics are typically successful. Its flaws don't prevent you from playing or, even, massively reduce its overall effect. Hopefully, the developers manage to find a balance between the gameplay of this title and the storytelling of its predecessors. 8/10

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus" (2017) is a better game then its predecessors, and those where pretty good. This one has better story and storytelling but hey, you don't play "Wolfenstein" for great storytelling - you do it for shooting and some more shooting. And on that this game is very good. There are plenty of guns, and even more plenty perks for you to unlock them all. But for my taste this franchise is a bit to linear - i prefer more open worlds and exploration.

Overall, "Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus" is a highly solid shooter with cool story and good storytelling. It features great game play and its only downsize is that it was to linear for my taste.

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.

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.

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