He resumes his quest to finish off the Nazi regime by taking them on across Europe, but there’s less pep in his step. Ultimately, it fails, and BJ falls into a coma. When he awakens, the world has been overtaken by Nazis. An exhilarating opening finds BJ part of an international assault on Deathshead’s castle.
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Luckily, the same talent that set a new bar for licensed games with Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and The Darkness came to the cobweb-covered property with more than a few ideas of how to bring the franchise back to life.įew FPSes have as strong of an identity out of the gate as The New Order does. The initial reveal and trailers were met with shrugs and questions about who would actually want to play a new Wolfenstein game in the year 2014. Wolfenstein: The New Order is a game that few people wanted. These sequences drive home the notion that these people are family, with all the tension and genuine love that goes along with that, and ultimately make The New Colossus’s world one worth saving. An expanded hub world lets you spend more time with fellow resistance fighters who didn’t get much opportunity to shine in The New Order, like wise-cracking lothario Bombate and fan-favorite Max Hauss. However, despite all its anger, The New Colossus is at its best when it’s about hope. Powers available mid-game and onward let you turn the tables and absolutely annihilate foes. Segments featuring a weakened BJ as well as a finicky incoming grenade indicator could make for frustrating encounters. Sure, elements of the combat are divisive. Few first-person shooter campaigns have ever been packed with as many wild moments as The New Colossus. Whether you’re fighting massive robots on Venus, settling daddy issues with a hatchet, or blowing up a Nazi parade with an atom bomb, the campaign is always interesting and always has the dial turned up to 11. Set in America in the 1960s, BJ and crew ostensibly mount a new American Revolution to run the Nazis out of the country. If The New Order was a somber tale about a world gone awry, The New Colossus is one about the righteous anger needed to reclaim it. However, the New Colossus proves to be a worthy sequel. If Wolfenstein had ended there, it would have been a satisfying, dignified conclusion that video game series so rarely get.
After failing to stop him the first time, BJ took on his nemesis again, killed him in a satisfying battle, and brought the world a chance at hope in a finale that smacked of a pyrrhic victory. The New Order ended on a tidy note of finality and emotional gravitas. Outside of its building blocks, it doesn't hurt that Return To Castle Wolfenstein remains mostly a fun ride that balances gothic dread with sci-fi camp to great effect.
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Sandwiched between genre-defining FPSes like Half-Life and Halo, RTCW didn’t light the world on fire but laid the foundation for the future of the series.ĭespite confusing marketing and vexing design decisions (BJ’s hair going from blond to brown back to blond, for example), all Wolfenstein games from RTCW to The New Colossus are set in the same universe. The tonal shift of Return to Castle Wolfenstein from 3D's slightly bloody arcade take violence to literal hellish darkness also cast a thematic shadow of gloom over the series that has remained. This is also the entry that introduces the deliciously evil Doctor Deathshead. Wolfenstein 3D (or technically Muse’s Castle Wolfenstein) might have put this train in motion, but Return was the first game to build the lore that Raven Software and MachineGames would use to make the series what it is today. Getting embroiled in firefights with Nazis in the narrow stone corridors of a castle is fun enough, but the added presence of Frankenstein-like monsters and other monstrosities ratchets up the tension (good thing you have a flamethrower). Developed with the id Tech 3 engine (Quake 3, Call of Duty), RTCW was a looker of a game for its time, and even to this day, it has enough dark fantasy elements to make it stand out among its peers. Return to Castle Wolfenstein answered that question in more ways than probably intended. Beyond Doom being a huge success, Wolfenstein's concept and execution of said concept were pretty straight to the point: You're a dude killing Nazis. Gray Matter Interactive’s take on Wolfenstein returned to a world that had been untouched since id Software wrapped up production on 3D’s post-release episode, Spear of Destiny.