MachineGames’ Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus’ strengths do not lie within its gameplay. In a post-Doom (2016) world, Wolfenstein II feels clunky when played a balls to the wall action game. As for the stealthy routes? They felt serviceable and only rewarding in the sense that I managed to avoid another drawn out firefight. Wolfenstein II will not be remembered for its gun-toting but instead for its palpable world building and ridiculous cutscenes and story beats.
Delving deeper and further into the alternate timeline laid out in Wolfenstein: The New Order produced a world where the Nazis won. America surrendered after a nuke was dropped in New York and the land of the free was no more. I’ve caught glimpses of this popular thought experiment before but I never explored any of them in great detail.
I found MachineGames’ depictions of this Nazi America to be detailed and surprisingly nuanced. There’s the obvious shock factor of seeing hooded white supremists roaming the streets alongside Nazis but the additional layer of discovering how the occupying regime saw this extremist group was unexpected. In fact, similar revelatory nuggets presented themselves in written communiques and new articles throughout the world. These little details gave the world a “lived in” feeling that worked in tandem with the visuals.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus looks better than it runs on my PC. I am running the Windows Store version of the game so there may be some wonkiness due to that. I am hoping it’s that because my GeForce GTX 1070 shouldn’t be struggling like to keep pace like this.
I struggled to keep any semblance of momentum through Wolfenstein II. I would start it, play it for an hour, stop for a few days, and repeat. It took me such a long time to wade through. Part of it was other games drawing me away but it’s also one of the easier games to just stop playing because of the natural lulls of exploring home base. Exploration yielded minor rewards in the form of story tidbits and collectibles but I generally didn’t find the submarine very interesting beyond the first couple of visits.
The perks system returned with rewards actions such as silent assassinations and grenade kills. I didn’t grind out completions like I did with The New Order though. Part of it was the lack of time/space to do it all. The other? I was trying to incorporate those newfound abilities introduced at the halfway mark into the game. They felt clunky and ridiculous which made it tough to mesh with it.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus can be summed up by those new additions. The ideas were there but the execution left me wanting. I never got into the groove of things gameplay wise but I can tell you all about the ridiculous cutscenes and set pieces. I don’t know if that’s a mark of a great game but it’s one of a memorable time.
Verdict:
It was okay
Leave a Reply