9/10
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus shows that a game can have an absurdly fun plot while having relatable characters. Throughout the experience, I found myself rooting for the protagonist and his band of misfits. The game has a lot of character — throughout my playthrough, I was smiling and engaged.
Combat is also a strong point of the game, giving the player a decent arsenal to tackle challenges by either stealth or head-on. Just keep in mind that depending on the difficulty level you set; you can either get your nazi killing-spree power fantasy or get your ass handed to you. The game has excellent graphics and surprisingly smooth performance. You can be sure that decapitating, disintegrating, or exploding nazi heads will be a treat.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus would have been a perfect FPS action-exploration game; however, I cant look past the technical issues experienced. At the very least, this is playable compared to its predecessor: Wolfenstein: The New Order.
HEAR! HEAR!
Unexpectedly for an FPS game, this will make you care about its characters and their story. It touched serious topics, but never to the point of depressing, unlike other games that must make their stories dark and grim to make a point. To lighten the mood, they interject with sprinkles of well-placed jokes. So well that I savored the story it has to tell. Smiling whenever Grace’s badassery shows, cheers for B.J.’s nonchalant attitude of getting ridiculous things done, sympathize with Anya as she opens her heart, fills me with rage with Irene’s “assholery,” and laugh out loud when the band interacts together; “Hear! Hear!”
The actors’ performances are commendable here, together with well-done animations. Animations are not stiff, while the voices were superb. Some notable performances were from Grace Walker, Irene Engel, and William Blazkowicz, respectively voiced by Debra Wilson, Nina Franoszek, and Brian Bloom. Bravo for bringing these characters to life.
POWEEEEERRRRRRRR!
The game is set in 1906’s America, where the Nazis won the war — following the previous game’s story. You play as William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz. A nazi-hating American who has a knack for doing what the plot tells him to. I know what you are thinking; “That sounds so generic and bland.” But hear me out, when B.J. gets assigned with something ridiculous, my reaction was always, “Hell Yeah! B.J. can that do that!” I didn’t nor wanted to question how he could do that. Instead, I was cheering him on with excitement about what new level I will get to play on and bust some nazis. The more ridiculous the plot gets, the more excited I get.
The game has a way of telling this story where I just accepted the absurd and wanted more of it. The embrace for their success despite absurdity may either because I passionately hated the antagonist or because I liked the protagonists in the first place. Whatever the reason is, they made and told a fantastic story here. I was giddy with every act and cutscene. The game never took itself seriously; this wasn’t a political piece or a story that will make you question yourself and reality. It’s an absurdly founded story told right; it just works.
RIP AND TEAR… JUST SET IT UP
Fantasy nazi killing-spree is what I was expecting before buying this game. But asides from the fantastic story, I later understood that this fantasy is dependent on the difficulty I set — I should have figured. I’m sad that I never got that power fantasy because I’m a sucker for setting games in their most challenging setting. I will not fault the game on that. I could replay it with the easiest difficulty, but it will never be the same as the first time, and I want to move on to the next game.
Maybe I’ll play it again in the future and write an essay about the satisfaction in killing these objectively evil enemies.
If you want to fulfill your power fantasy of killing nazis, don’t set the difficulty too high. I tried “Do or Die”(4th), then halfway-through, finished the game with “I am death incarnate”(6th — hardest initially available). The two difficulties I tried still made me squishy. The game can give you the experience you want — just set the difficulty right.
Once you set your desired difficulty, the game will introduce and grow your appropriately-sized arsenal to tackle challenges. You can either tackle the challenges by stealth or gung ho. The level designs, especially at the latter half of the game, have good verticality. You can approach the problem in a few different ways. They designed these encounters well.
As for the arsenal, you have your standard weapons; pistol, rifle, submachine gun, shotgun, and grenade launcher. What made these special is due to their upgrades. I like the rifle best because it’s the most versatile, and depending on your upgrade, you can make it hit hard from long range. You can take the suppression upgrade for the submachinegun for stealth-focused builds, so it doesn’t alarm guards when fired. Just make sure to kill them immediately before they shout and shoot to alarm others. But my favorite of all is the Laserkraftwerk. This laser-firing shotgun can one-shot infantry and handle bigger enemies easily.
You also have the option to pick up and use heavy weapons. These will make you slow but has a lot of ammo and is the best way to handle big enemies or mow down swarms of little ones. My favorite here Lasergewehr, which is a continuously firing laser gun.
If you go the gung ho route, you will find yourself using all of these weapons. Though I used the rifle most, I still found myself using all of these for specific occasions. I think that’s no accident because of how they designed the levels. For example, there is this one level that I was doing stealth first, so I used the submachine gun, and melee kills to get in. But once the jig is up, I used all of my weapons as enemies come. I first used the shotgun on tight corridors, used the rifle to snipe far enemies, used the grenade launcher to blindside the big guys, and used the Laserkraftwerk to kill those pesky robotic animals quickly.
The story in this game is impressive, and the same can be said for its combat. Constant action and challenging levels. It’s hard to get comfortable with each new level because you can always get flanked if you are not alert. The set pieces are great also.
Hey, killing hypothetical nazis wherein there’s an excuse to fuck their shit up is all the premise I need, and they implemented it here nicely. No gray area bullshit, but just good old mow down. You can expect the graphics to support this, body parts exploding, disintegrating, and decapitating when doing your thing. Melee kills will always be gratifying.
My only nit-pick about the combat, especially at harder difficulties, is for a game that advertises you to mow down nazis; it gives you little incentive to go in guns blazing. I realized this during the first parts of the game when I was trying to be flashy and melee-killing enemies. But I always died because when making a melee-kill, enemies can still shoot at the player. Also, due to the enemy numbers, expect to get flanked when going in willy-nilly. And when they are successful, game over as the player will go down with only a few bullets.
One example of this is when I was tasked to defend a small square floor to cover my comrades getting out. The number of times I died because I forgot to look at my blind spot, melee-killed, or just tried going in are disappointingly many. Enemies are running up the stairs to my right, climbing up the cage to my front, enemies flanking me to the left, and flying drones trying to snipe me from above. But the moment I realized that I needed to hold back for a bit and control the situation rather than taking the initiative and become Doom Guy. I managed to finish that gruesome level.
BUT AS WITH MY EXPERIENCE WITH MACHINEGAMES…
This game had two technical issues; one is experience breaking. The first one, which is minor, is audio not working with one of my speakers. I have two small speakers in my place: music and gaming (bass heavy), and every day (clarity). Usually, when I game, I put on my wireless earbuds — I will talk about this later — but in this case, I needed to play on speakers — on wired audio. Plugging-in the clarity-speaker works fine. But when I use the bass-heavy speaker, the gunshots are not heard at all. I will criticize the game for this, as this was not the case for other games.
But the issue I cant overlook with a heavy heart is not being able to use my Bluetooth earbuds. This issue is weird but inexcusable for this game. I have played many pc games in 2020, many older ones, and this is the first time I have experienced this in a game. When initially paired, it works well, but when I die and respawn, the Bluetooth earbuds will suddenly go into “calling mode.” Then I will not be receiving audio from the game. Somehow the game can do that to my earbuds. I need to restart the game to work around the issue. Inexcusable, considering I expect to die a lot in this game.
I’m deducting points from these issues because I haven’t experienced this in other games. With games from Ubisoft, Irrational Games, Respawn, Crystal Dynamics, and many more, I can use my Bluetooth earbuds no problem. I love the badass soundtrack in this game. It’s the fucking lick. I’m currently listening to this game’s soundtrack as I’m writing this review. Just sad that I was not able to fully experience the soundtrack during gameplay. I can still hear it, but I can’t blast it all out because my neighbors will be disturbed.
VERDICT
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a fantastic game. It told a story that is serious and fun, never dipping its toes in the depressing. I ludicrously embraced its absurdity, and it didn’t disappoint. The combat is fun and challenging. A few technical difficulties hinder this game from being perfect. I bought this game at 64%-off from a steam sale, and, as of writing, it is running at an 80% discount. For that price, this is a recommended game to buy and experience.
