Review

Alternate history has always been a popular in modern fiction and the biggest “what if” of them all is “what if the Nazi's had won World War II?” This is the starting point for the latest entry in the Wolfenstein series. It begins in 1946 with the war still raging and after a fairly lengthy prologue mission it jumps to 1960 where the Nazi's have, as one character puts it “taken over the world”. This has allowed the game to completely ignore real world events and concentrate on making the game as entertaining as possible.

Let's face it, you don't come to a Wolfenstein game for its plot, you come to shoot Nazi's and fortunately that's just as much fun here as it's always been. During play, The New Order actually feels more like a sequel to Raven's Return to Castle Wolfenstein that Raven's own Wolfenstein from 2009, and that's the highest compliment I can think of for what MachineGames have achieved.

You shouldn't take the fact that nobody calls the game's protagonist, William Blazkowicz, “B.J.” anymore as a sign that the series has matured. This is still as gloriously far-fetched as previous Wolfenstein games with mad, hissable villains, robot dogs and a seemingly indestructible hero. However, all the silliness occasionally lets down the attempts at more serious and emotional story beats. Early in the story you are forced to make a seemingly impossible decision which will then split the game into one of two timelines, although there's not a huge difference between the two.

In a genre that's fast becoming stale, this game stands out by doing things the old-fashioned way. There's no inventory juggling - every weapon can be carried at once, any extra ammo that's dropped by enemies must be collected manually, the game doesn't hold you hand with constant waypoints so you're free to explore each area and tackle the levels as you see fit. Best of all though, is the fact that you don't even have to look down the sights at all, you'll have just as much success shooting from the hip and there's no greater joy than strafe-shooting a hoard of enemies at once with twin-wielded machine guns.

Once again the id Tech 5 engine has produced a fantastic looking game, with believable characters and some truly spectacular environments. Having seen the Xbox One version as well, I can honestly say this looks just as good, bar the higher frame rate the extra power brings, obviously. The game also comes on four disks with a fairly hefty install the first time you load – it took 25 minutes before I could play – but thankfully you only have to swap discs twice during the whole campaign.

This is the best FPS I've played in a long time, easily more fun than Battlefield or Call Of Duty, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute it took to complete. I can't however, see myself going back and playing through the additional difficulty options or storyline. If this isn't in my top 5 games of year come December I'll be very surprised.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer

MachineGames

Publisher

Bethesda Softworks

Released

20th May 2014