This could easily be the plot of a 1990s first-person shooter-and I'm OK with that! I'm down with ridiculous. Deep in the castle's bowels, Deathshead performs human experiments in an attempt to create a kind of mechanical supersoldier. The castle's walls are protected by robot dogs and giant mechanical gun platforms.
The castle Blazkowicz is infiltrating is the fortress of a Nazi general named Deathshead, a scenery-chewing cartoon villain, if the name didn't already give that away. There are multiple perk trees that feed multiple play styles, with new abilities earned by simply continuing to play in aggressive or stealthy fashions.īut the plot of The New Order isn't abstract, so I do think we're supposed to go along with it. The more knives you throw, the more you can carry. The more silent takedowns you perform with a knife, the closer you get to unlocking the ability to throw a knife. It's old-school in the way that early first-person shooters were abstract enough that such questions never felt pertinent. I don't think we're supposed to ask where Blazkowicz keeps all his guns and grenades (probably tucked away in his new, massive neck). I don't think we're supposed to look at this stuff too closely. If Wolfenstein 3D's Blazkowicz was a bloodsucking cannibal, The New Order paints him as a maniac.īJ Blazkowicz, the protagonist of Wolfenstein: The New Order, runs around killing dogs, wearing dog armour, and eating dog food. Let's recap: BJ Blazkowicz, the protagonist of Wolfenstein: The New Order, runs around killing dogs, wearing dog armour, and eating dog food. And if you come across their bowls of dog food in the castle, you can eat the food to restore your health. This time, they're wearing body armour, which you can pick up and wear after you kill them. Remember them from Wolfenstein 3D-the German shepherds that did their best to bite your face off? Those loveable little hounds are back. It's a simple, satisfying flow: kill enemies, take their stuff, live longer.Įven the enemy dogs help out here.
Every time you peek around a corner to shoot a Nazi, his helmet falls off, and you can pick up that helmet to restore your own armour. Compared to shooters with completely regenerating health, this fundamentally changes the way you approach combat. You'll need to use this lean mechanic often, because Blazkowicz's health regenerates only a small portion, so you'll be relying on health and armour pickups to stay alive. After a couple of minutes, using this leaning mechanic becomes second nature, and offers enhanced situational awareness and protection without the need for sticky cover. Not only does The New Order allow you to automatically peek around or over cover by aiming down the sights, but it lets you manually lean in any direction: sideways, upwards, diagonally, and even down. You need to be smart, think about your positioning, and lean as much as possible. Cover is important you cannot expect to pop up and absorb some incoming fire as you take down Nazis in a one-man war of attrition. Now Playing: How Wolfenstein: The New Order is Keeping It Old-Schoolīlazkowicz returns as the other end of your gun arm in The New Order, and he still isn't the kind of bullet sponge other modern shooter protagonists feel like.
Sure, you eventually found that giant gun from the front of the box, but the sense of tension that persisted as every bright blue door creaked open stemmed from your inherent vulnerability.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's If you were very low on health, you could even drink human blood off the floor to feel a bit better. You were a prisoner of war, escaping from a castle's cell with nothing but a knife, and subsisting on leftover chicken drumsticks and bowls of dog food. The image misrepresented the actual experience. BJ Blazkowicz featured as the barrel-chested hero on the front of the box, shooting a giant gun at the roof (for some reason) and kicking a Nazi in the face. Wolfenstein 3D was far more challenging than today's over-the-top shooters. Developer MachineGames isn't just making an old-school shooter here it's making an old-school Wolfenstein game. In the game's prologue, which runs for just over an hour, you'll gun down Nazis in a grey stone castle, find a secret room behind a portrait on the wall, and plunder Nazi treasure for extra points. Wolfenstein: The New Order doesn't forget this. If Doom means two things, cocking shotguns and shooting demons, it follows that Wolfenstein, the father of the first-person shooter and Doom's own daddy, can be boiled down to two core elements as well: shooting Nazis, and taking their secret Nazi gold.