Some of my favourite games growing up were "corridor shooters" - before first person shooter games discovered large, expansive open worlds, and the sunny outdoors. It was so much fun navigating what were essentially mazes with moving targets and lots of things to destroy.
Wolfenstein : The New Order takes me back to my child hood, albeit it with a poorly optimised PC port of a game that should run magnificently on PC. Sure there's ways to improve the performance, but they're all strange, and reek of classic Bethesda publishing tactics of releasing a game that was not quite finished.
The Wolfenstein series has always taken itself very seriously, but at the same time, has always been self aware of the fact that it is a parody and to some extent, a commentary on the atrocities of World War 2, and the events surrounding this. I won't go into those, most people know history.
Wolfenstein : The New Order instead concerns itself with alternate history, like a Phillip K Dick novel where the axis forces overwhelmed the West, and went on to be the dominant global power.
It is funny then, in a time in history, here in 2023, where many citizens of the US see the nation's crumbling infrastructure, social inequity, and eroding civil liberties, along with protectionism from the "threat" of China; that the US may be just as bad and evil as all the "enemies" it extends its war mongering finger toward.
Thus, Wolfenstein : The New Order takes on a new meaning - it is story telling and fictional propaganda of the good guy wanting to fight the bad, but good is just a simple matter of perspective. This is a pretty ordinary first person shooter, but with extra-ordinary depictions of war-time violence, torture, atrocity, and some slick gunplay, punctuated with stuttering, unexplained frame drops, and some decent puzzles along the way.
It's an old game now, released nine years ago, and like many games in this era, it makes a cardinal sin, and a complaint that I've held for so many years now. Why on Earth are the cut scenes pre-rendered when they look worse than the game footage itself? It probably isn't an issue for the console versions of the game, but for the PC version, it is extremely jarring, annoying, and completely immersion breaking.
Outside of this, plot, optimisation and setting aside; Wolfenstein : The New Order feels like it borrows well from every classic shooter on the market - there's bits of Soldier of Fortune, in the way in which enemies dismember depending on where you shoot them. There's elements of Half Life 2, in the central hideout where you tend to find yourself between missions, and the oppressive regime that surrounds.
Then, too; there's elements of Red Faction, where you must destroy parts of the environment using specific tools in order to proceed forwards. Of course, there's also elements of the original Wolfenstein littered about, with golden collectibles, secret rooms, and even some screenshots of the original game scattered throughout graffitied walls as tiny Easter eggs to long time gamers and fans of the series.
The one thing this game isn't is very long. You can probably finish this in a day, and I was probably expecting something to come in at the 20 hour period, instead of say 9-12. This is a hard hitting game in terms of its themes, gore, and visuals, so make sure that you're in the mood to experience such things before approaching.
At the end of the day, this is a mindless FPS with an alternate history setting, reminscent of the the best FPS of yester-year, with some issues of its own running on modern PC hardware. As a result, it is a very competent game, but one marred by issues that do imapct your enjoyment.
Hopefully, the other games in the series improve upon this, as I know I've got at least another two to play through. I'm glad that I only paid about $10 for this game, as that's what I probably think it is worth. :)
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