Wolfenstein: The New Order Review: Blast Away

I was right. Wolfenstein: The New Order is an incredibly confusing combination of what the series used to be—a stilted Nazi shooter—and what it aspires to be. But I was so incredibly wrong as well; this confounding mishmash works. Not only that, but it works extremely well. With nuanced and intriguing narrative impetus, Wolfenstein: The New Order succeeds at being as fresh as it bows to its roots.

As a direct sequel to 2009’s Wolfenstein), the crux of this follow-up is that B.J. Blazkowicz attempts to take down nutso doctor / lead Nazi scientist Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse and fails, resulting in him failing into a comatose state for a solid 14 years. When he awakens in a Polish asylum, he discovers that through some strange twist, the Nazis have somehow managed to utilize advanced weaponry and handedly won World War II. And Blazkowicz simply won’t stand for that.

It is, however, a rather dire situation out there in this alternate history world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Reich is not a very friendly ruling institution. Blazkowicz wants to save the world, but there may not be much left to save. It feels like saving the frame around a burning picture simply because it was the only thing salvageable. It is bleak.

This is where the strength of the game truly lies. In terms of narrative, The New Order holds nothing back in making sure you feel the urgency and the consequences of what has happened, what is happening, and what you hope to achieve. Given the pedigree of Machine Games—most notably including a good chunk of former Starbreeze Studios devs, the people behind similarly narrative-driven and effective The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness—this isn’t entirely unexpected.

The story manages to focus broadly over the personal cost of war (and, more specifically, war against a victorious and hateful regime) while still being rather pointed and particular. For example, the asylum that Blazkowicz finds himself in post-war is run by a family. And you witness the professional morals give way to personal preservation through no easy dilemma only to devolve into a raw emotional reconciliation of the two. It’s intense and meaningful in ways you wouldn’t expect.

And then it also manages to raise questions it leaves for you to mull over, as if to fill all of the open nooks and crannies untouched from its more discrete narrative developments. The necessity of violence for purpose, conflicted Western racial implications, and the toll of pursuing what you believe to be right all fall under the lens of what The New Order leaves in your hands.

The visual design of the world helps support all of this. While a familiar blend of retro-advanced technology that seems to creep into a lot of more temporally liberal games, it’s all rather consistent in how it presents which aspects both military and civilian life. Tone appears to be a specialty of the game, and so much of it nails the feel it (ostensibly) is going for.

On the flip side, a surprising amount of sound design seems to be rather bland, if not seemingly missing altogether. Things you would expected to have rather overt effects like recharging your laser cutter seem to be entirely missing rather than just too soft or incongruous with the proceedings. It feels strange when you miss that feedback.

But that aside, the narrative juxtaposition of the old school gunplay is strange at first. The story has modern sensibilities brought to harvest by a studio that excels at the act, but so much of what the game offers in the moment-to-moment shooting throws you back to a time when UI was, at best, an animated face at the bottom of the screen.

There’s armor and health overcharge and an absolute arsenal at your disposal, your armaments accumulating over the course of the level rather than choosing which two to carry with you. The only recent consideration that seems obvious is the recharging health, and even then, it only goes up to the nearest multiple of 20. This forces a leveled focus on the player, actively seeking out armor as you simply dump dual assault rifles into the air. The pace takes an unfortunate dip as you manually collect goodies post-battle, but it’s not terrible by any stretch.

Strangely enough, outside of discrete mechanics, stealth makes an appearance. More than that, it is above the haphazardly inserted concession you would expect from most shooters. With a double whammy of a fantastic silenced pistol and automatic, cinematic melee kills thrown on top of fulfilling AI awareness (commander enemies have a literal meter that you must supersede with their death before they call in endless reinforcements).

Then, as you fight, you are also working towards unlocking perks. As you accomplish certain tasks within combat like five stealth kills or sliding kills, you gain abilities and upgrades along the way. These are critical and genuinely affect your effectiveness, so as you progress down the different talent trees (they’re not really trees, but you get it), you realize your full Blazkowicz potential. It certainly contrasts many times with the cerebral story, but most of the time, it works (save for the one-liners).

But then, for a game so centered around the idea of big swings supported by smaller, more personal considerations, it fails to bring anything to the table for the struts to hoist up. Outside of a few exceptions, boss battles are rather disappointing. Whereas the more open arenas of general combat gin up a sensation of rapid, action-oriented puzzle solving (though the solution is generally just better movement and better shooting), these one-off encounters are more like banging your head against a wall.

The villains, however, are quite villainous. In the first act of the game, you will encounter what is perhaps the most unnerving antagonist you’ll find in many recent games. This permeates into later encounters with other bad guys, even drawing a sense of dread in seeing what the grunts are capable of. And once the fan starts chopping the shit, you realize that the dire moments are more than just farming reaction but legitimate occasions of concern for the people you’ve been surrounded with.

I wouldn’t call it surprising, but it is at least somewhat unexpected. After the many demos of the game, I was still unsure of where it would land in its finished form. But given the pedigree of its studio and its developers, Wolfenstein: The New Order‘s story and characterizations shine through, guided by more than capable hands. It carries the gameplay when it falters, but that is a rare occasion as it is. Wolfenstein: The New Order is more than worth your time.

+ Fantastic, nuanced characterizations of former one-dimensional archetypes
+ Genuinely intimidating villains and unsettling atmosphere
+ Gunplay that supports both old school, bombastic shooting and slower, deliberate play
+ Convincing setting and alternate history setup
– Boss fights that end up making you want to take an angry nap

Final Score: 8 out of 10

Game Review: Wolfenstein: The New Order
Release: May 20, 2014
Genre: First-person shooter
Developer: MachineGames
Available Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC
Players: Singleplayer
MSRP: $59.99
Website: http://www.wolfenstein.com/

Trailer Roundup: Transistor, Wolfenstein, and More

Whoa, where did all these trailers come from? Last week was surprisingly busy in the three-to-five-minute-video-game-videos arena, so I’ll be doing more pruning than usual, but there are some winners up in this piece. Also, totally unrelated, but I held a baby raccoon today. That is all. Here are the trailers!

Transistor

Given that Bastion is one of my all-time favorite games, it seems only fair to be excited about Transistor, the next project from Supergiant Games. Actually, make that imminent, nearly completed project as it is set to release next week on May 20, 2014. I love the art style, the music is thus far amazing, and I’m just excited. I don’t necessarily have expectations; just that I’m anxious to find out what it’s all about.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

I’m still vacillating super hard between looking forward to Wolfenstein: The New Order and thinking what I’ve played and seen so far is incredibly skippable. The demos have touched on so many interesting ideas of necessary violence, psychological sustainability, and other complex personal bits of introspection, but it’s wrapped in a 90s B movie blanket of one-liners and explosions. It also comes out this week on May 20, 2014, so I guess we’ll find out soon where it ends up falling.

Bombshell

So here’s the gist of this exceedingly inscrutable trailer: Interceptor Entertainment, the studio behind the surprisingly fun Rise of the Triad reboot last year, is teaming up with 3D Realms to create an isometric action RPG called Bombshell, which features Shelley “Bombshell” Harrison, a former bomb tech turned mercenary.

There are some serious flavors of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but it’s actually built on the ruins of that Duke Nukem lawsuit from earlier this year between 3D Realms and Gearbox Entertainment. This incarnation of the project is aiming for Q1 of 2015, which seems somewhat aggressive, but those Interceptor guys sure know how to crank out a game crazy quick.

SpyParty

SpyParty is really cool. It’s made for getting in and out of another person’s head while trying to guard your own. I’m sure you’ve heard of it before, but this trailer explains rather succinctly what the actual gameplay is like in terms of mechanics, but it fails to capture how much sweating is involved in panicking to make a decision. This feature on the Omegathon from PAX Prime last year captures pretty well the anxiety involved in playing SpyParty.

Nuclear Throne

Rebranded from Wasteland Kings (I personally like the sound of that a bit better), Nuclear Throne was pretty fun back when I played it and looks like it’s still plenty fun. You might recognize the name from Vlambeer’s idea to livestream development to usurp game clones.

Fantasia: Music Evolved

While certainly less bombastic than its announcement trailer, this video shows a bit more accurately what it’s like to play Fantasia: Music Evolved from Harmonix. Rather than irresponsibly gesture about in some abstract space, you’ll be pseudo-conducting in your living room. And it still looks fun. Expected to release this fall.

Microsoft Drops Kinect Requirements

Not really a trailer, but it is pretty big news. Microsoft has dropped the Kinect requirements for the Xbox One. This video adequately conveys that bit (and the lowered $399 price tag for the lack of the peripheral), but it more interestingly makes it very apparent that the company is only doing it begrudgingly. It’s the closest you’re likely to get to a flustered sigh coming out of Yusuf Mehdi. I would have preferred that they stuck to their guns. It also seems terribly unfortunate for the aforementioned Fantasia: Music Evolved.

A Story About My Uncle

Weird title, indecipherable premise, cool gameplay. From what I’ve read and seen, A Story About My Uncle about a boy who tries to find his uncle and instead ends up in a strange world full of floating rocks, potential aliens, and the ability to swing from stuff like Spider-Man. It comes out May 28, 2014.

Never Alone

If they kill that dog, I swear I will burn Utica to the ground. I can’t take any more animal best friend deaths in video games. Or even close calls. I still never fully recovered from Shadow of the Colossus. But Never Alone seems pretty interesting. It’s being developed in association with Alaska Native communities, drawing directly from cultural fables and the people’s rich heritage. Come this fall.

Trailer Roundup: Nintendo, Call of Duty, H1Z1, and More

Yeah, I moved Trailer Roundup from Fridays to Mondays. It just seemed to make sense considering Fridays are actually quite the popular day for new trailers to come out. Also, I’d much rather waste away the beginning of a week watching videos on the Internet than the end. (But honestly I like to spend both and everything in between doing just that.) Anyways, here we go!

Fearless Fantasy

Umm…so I guess there’s, uh. Well, if you look at it this way, it could be—oh who am I kidding. This trailer is a solid 60 seconds of nonsense.

Self-described as “the weirdest RPG you’ll play this year” by the same guys that made the fantastic SpeedRunners, Fearless Fantasy is a turn-based game where combat is determined by gestures with the mouse. From its press kit, the game’s features include “a full-on story” and “RPG stuff.” Count me in. I think.

Nintendo’s E3 Plans

Sometimes I wonder just how much free time Reggie Fils-Aime has. It seems like either he’s got a lot of that or he’s just super self-aware how much people like watching him do things. It’s a toss-up, really. Produced by Mega64, this video actually coincides with one of the bigger pieces of news from last week, albeit not one of the bigger surprises.

Just like last year, Nintendo will not be hosting a traditional E3 press conference like Sony and Nintendo. Instead, they’ll be holding a tournament in the Nokia Theater for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. But they will be bringing back the ability for those not at E3 to play their unreleased games at Best Buys all around America. Also, no new console?

H1Z1

It makes sense. People like playing online with their friends and they like playing around in giant open worlds but they don’t like lots of emptiness in between. So what is relatively easy to implement that can fill those large gaps?

Zombies! Simply directed AI and vast expanses of terrifying openness. Hence State of Decay, DayZ, and now H1Z1. It’s free-to-play and there are zombies and, well, you get it, right?

Watch Dogs Season Pass

The trailer itself isn’t doing much for me, but its contents are, like, really weird. It’s boasting an additional single-player campaign with a character named T-Bone, a character we’re not at all familiar with, let alone the game he resides in. And you can dress Aiden like Eliot Ness and also fight techno zombies? This is some super strange stuff, guys.

Outlast Whistleblower DLC

Nooooope. Nope nope nope nope nope.

Nidhogg

If you haven’t played Nidhogg yet on PC, fear not because now it’s coming to the PlayStation 4. It looks simple, but it’s actually quite an impressively deep game of one-on-one sword dueling that, honestly, I can’t get enough of. If I had more friends with commensurate time to waste, I’d be playing it basically nonstop.

Axiom Verge

Looks essentially like a class 2D Metroid game but with entirely modern sensibilities. I don’t just mean that very obviously has side-scrolling trappings that you would see from today in its gameplay, but that its atmosphere feels very present. Axiom Verge‘s trailer’s ability to create a foreboding sense of narrative impetus and its purposefully electronic tunes makes me want to believe that this game is going to be the real deal.

And come on, Sony. “Announce” trailer? I thought we were done with that. Not just as an industry but as a people.

Apotheon

I’m so in love with the art style of this game, not to mention its combat system is all up in my wheelhouse of fighting mechanics: brutal, swift, and deliberate. Not that I’m always particularly good at those types of games, but I appreciate it when their systems are made to be quick and decisive, like it appears to be in Apotheon.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Listen, I’ve played a lot of demos of Wolfenstein: The New Order. I can tell you that the tactile route is totally viable. It’s also totally boring. And when you go in guns blazing, a lot of your time is actually spent trying to find enough ammo to keep the bloodbath raining. Of course, things could have and probably have changed, but that’s just what I know. There’s a reason why it cuts between the “cool” parts.

Call of Duty and VICE

I like a lot of what VICE does. They make some good videos of investigative journalism. This one, no doubt, could be also quite good if it wasn’t a three-minute prologue to another Call of Duty game. But the weird thing about this one is that it’s trying to play that we’ve never gone through this before.

True, Americans and the world at large don’t know much about the actual operations and risks and legality of private military corporations, or PMCs, but gamers are quite familiar with the philosophical intricacies of it all via Metal Gear Solid. And every other modern military FPS, really. A little late to the part, COD.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Granted, I’m pretty much over anything modern military shooters have to offer (I mean, how many times can you be impressed with blowing up a national landmark?), but that doesn’t mean that genre as a whole doesn’t make some damn good trailers. This one especially is worthwhile due to Kevin Spacey being Kevin Spacey and talking politics, filling a void in my life since I finished season 2 of House of Cards.

Super Time Force

In total, I’ve spent about 15 to 20 minutes with Super Time Force, and I love it already. This trailer exemplifies every reason why.

QuakeCon 2013 Hands-on with Wolfenstein: The New Order

B.J. Blazkowicz is confused. Recently suffering some rather traumatic injuries involving his brain, some shrapnel, and falling something like 20 stories off a cliffside stronghold and into the ocean to float around for who knows how long, our favorite Nazi-killing hero of games with the word “Wolfenstein” in them is now in an asylum, trying to physically and mentally recover. It’s understandable given the things he’s been through.

The problem is that I’m confused, too. Or rather, I’m confused about what the game wants to be. After spending an hour with a new demo build of Wolfenstein: The New Order at this year’s QuakeCon in Dallas, Texas, I definitely have a better idea of what sort of game this sequel is going to be, but I’m not entirely convinced that it knows what it wants to be. Allow me to explain.

It opens with a cutscene of Blazkowicz and his squad preparing to storm the massive expanse between them and the wall of an enemy base. This is where we get a glimpse that our protagonist is not what we remember from days of old. There’s another soldier kind of freaking, so Blazkowicz walks over and helps him calm down with a little trick. “Inhale. Count to four. Exhale. Count to four.” And then they’re off, running the gauntlet of bullets and space where bullets soon shall be.

Once they get to the wall, the gruff leader of the squad spits some knowledge: some of them will go headlong into the fray while the others will climb this wall with their grappling hook guns and find a way to open the gate in front of them. As they hook up to the ropes they’ve just fired up, we get playing control and begin to ascend. At a dying snail stuck in molasses’ pace, we climb the wall, moving forward and side to side and shooting dudes as they pop out of the windows. It reminds me of Whac-a-Mole, except with a lot more blood.

Our other two wall-bound comrades die before we reach the top (a plane also crashes at some point, forcing you to dodge a large piece of debris), but I never even really caught their names. I pop up into the top window, pick a direction, and start running. At first I discover a Secret Area which doesn’t really do much except show me different-looking doors, but back on the main path I find a lever. I pull it and drop into the holes created by the gate weights.

And then we progress through some standard fare shooting stuff. There is some stealth in the game, but it wasn’t really working for me, nor did it seem like a consistent option. It wasn’t like you could sneak past an entire encounter (or at least from what I saw and tried), but you could at least get behind a couple of dudes and slice their throats. At least in theory, anyways, because I always ended up slashing him in the back first before trying again and then finally kicking off the stealth kill animation. It was weird and after several attempts at the matter, I don’t think I was entirely to blame for not succeeding at it.

Two wrinkles came up, though, that were pretty interesting. You can hold down the left bumper on the controller and use the left stick to lean around corners. And if you tap RB, you switch between dual and single wield of whatever weapon you have out. Those two controls help facilitate two things that will keep you alive. Blazkowicz, for as space marine-ish as he looks, is rather frail, so leaning in and out of cover is vital, and when you really get in a jam, quickly and easily busting out two machine guns is clutch (not to mention super fun).

Eventually we come across a strange room full of people(?) strung up by the skin of their backs. The squad tries to escape but only succeeds in setting off an incinerator process, so instead of becoming charred-up soldiers, they try to escape, which culminates in me going over to a stand, pressing X to grab a key, then pressing X to insert the key into a lock. We make it out and enter the next room, but this mechanized, humanoid brute explodes out of a chamber in the ground in this small, cramped, square room and starts attacking us. It kills a squad member, but I unlock everything I’ve got and he goes down.

All the while, however, Blazkowicz and some of his teammates are spouting off one-liners, but they’re somewhat extended one-liners and some of them kind of delve into some deep shi—err, stuff. It’s more distracting than anything; it feels like they used to be really cheesy Duke Nukem catchphrases but replaced with the writing of someone having a dark, emotional day.

Anyways, with the brute down, we try to escape this room, too, since they’d rather deal with dead, mutilated bodies instead of live, angry, well-armed ones, but the door is shut and there’s a guy standing in the little door window doing his best Slender Man/G-Man/asshole impression. He triggers something and causes the walls to close and slowly Star Wars-style crush us, but instead we fade to black and wake up to us on the floor of the incinerator room.

Slender G Hole is talking to us. Apparently he likes to collect eyes, which is bad news for the one of the other three surviving members of the team because he was already one eye down. The other two, however, lay in front of you and the doctor general dude asks us to make a choice: look at the one you want to die, or everyone gets their throats slit. It’s an empty threat, however, as nothing happened as I lingered on the screen for a while. Eventually I picked the guy on the left because they both were basically facing the floor and I couldn’t tell who was who (nor could I remember any of them. I think I had a captain?).

As it turns out, I saved the captain. We zoom in on a well-rendered, super emotional Blazkowicz, telling himself to inhale, count to four, exhale, count to four. It’s a nice callback, albeit borderline overwrought. But anyways, everyone else except us and one brute leave, so the captain kicks over a pipe and begins to attack our warden. I once again press X to pick up the pipe and press it again to stab it into the oversized guard’s side. We then smash all of the incinerator outlets with the pipe, free ourselves, and hotwire a window open. It involves controlling the left wire with the left stick and the right wire with the right stick and slowly moving them together and holding them so they spark for a few moments. We then take a running leap out of the window into the ocean below, but not before our head gets really intimate with shrapnel flying towards the back of Blazkowicz’s head.

We float around a bit while late credits come in and out until we wake up in some mental hospital. Everything is a bit hazy and we go into an extended cutscene of Blazkowicz watching the world pass him by as he is basically brain damaged to the point of being a vegetable. This part of the game goes really dramatic and, for the most part, succeeds. We are introduced to a family running the asylum, the entirety of which is upstanding. The father is the doctor and regularly fights back from the Reich abducting patients and genuinely tries to help people. The mother is a pharmacist of sorts and the daughter, Anya, just helps with everyone’s recovery. She feeds Blazkowicz, talks to him, and passes time with him. Time speeds up and slows down as the family celebrates birthdays and mourns losses. And all our square-jawed, ultra masculine soldier can do is think, trapped in his own head and in this ward. It’s dark and really interesting.

But then some soldiers come in, saying the doctor’s work is concluded. Some unsanctioned shooting goes on (namely the father and mother), so they take Anya to determine her fate with the captain while the remaining soldier’s execute the patients. When the guy gets to us, though, Blazkowicz slices his throat with a steak knife and picks up his gun. We show him stumbling (“legs like jelly…fingers numb”), but then he’s pretty much back to full strength save for the occasional fuzzy vision.

We blast our way through the hospital and out into the courtyard where we see them trying to take Anya away. We stop them the only way we know how (read: bullets) and trundle over to her. She’s still breathing, so we pick her up, put her in a nearby car, and start to drive away, which was kind of nice. I thought the entire game was going to be a whole “damsel in distress” thing—which could have been cool if a bit too trope-ish but still would have made another war story into something much more personal—but based on the E3 demo, it seems like we’ll be escorting her to various locations throughout the game instead.

I just really have no idea what kind of game Wolfenstein: The New Order wants to be, and I don’t think it really knows either. The shooting is very decisive, forcing you to move deliberately but also quickly lest you get surrounded and pinned. But then moments like when a robot dog inexplicably pops up out of a wall in a very Resident Evil-y moment and when you are gently coerced into sneaking around, it feels like it at some point wanted to be a horror game. And when you fight the brute, it becomes much more old school Wolfenstein where you just dump ammo and overcharge your health and go “fuck yeah.” And the timing and phrasing of some of the things Blazkowicz and your crew say feels like vestiges of a much more lighthearted game, but then it was replaced with a super self-serious title, one that deals with loss of identity in the asylum and friends and family in the war.

A lot of those disparate pieces, however, do have merit, but when they’re all stuck together, it kind of stops making sense. Taken alone, they all individually kind of excite me, but a more cohesive vision would really tie all those neat starts up into a nice finish. Maybe that’s why it got delayed until 2014. Maybe by then they’ll take all these different, cool ideas and turn them into a single great idea.

Hands-on with Wolfenstein: The New Order

2009’s Wolfenstein was more or less a straightforward first-person shooter. The supernatural stuff was neat but the potential never seemed fully realized under the weight of dead Nazis. Using the Veil was interesting but it actually negatively impacted the gameplay, so most of the time I had to resist the urge to activate it. At the end of the year, it came and went with little fanfare, falling in the bucket of memories most people keep stocked with “oh yeah, that came out” games.

So imagine my surprise when the hands-off portion of the Wolfenstein: The New Order demo in the Bethesda booth at E3 2013 opened with not a shooting gallery but a test. More than that, it opens with you doing perhaps one of the most mundane and boring and absolutely fascinating things I’ve ever done in a video game: carry a cup of coffee.

It opens with you as series hero B.J. Blazkowicz walking along on a train holding a tray with two cups of coffee resting on it. Physics are in full effect as every jostling motion you make fills you with anxiety and excitement all at once. The dirt sloshes around in these two ceramic vessels, inspiring fear in everyone wearing a white shirt over a brand new carpet. Blazkowicz had just woken up a 14-year coma in a world where the Nazis won World War II, so who knows why he was serving coffee.

He’s stopped, though, by a woman, a Nazi officer by the name of Frau Engel. She and her effeminate companion ask Blazkowicz to sit across from them in their booth, though it’s less of a question and more of a command giving the presence of a large Nazi-branded mech robot thing a mere 10 feet away. Engel wants to test you for impurity, though she does compliment your fantastically Aryan features. She places some cards with pictures on them on the table as well as a gun and warns you that should you go for the gun, things will go poorly for you. From there, she presents pairs of cards and you must pick the ones that fill you with joy or the one that sickens you, etc.

We fail the test anyways as we pick the third card, Engel takes the gun and points it at us, saying that a truth Aryan would have gone for the gun. After some fraught talk, we eventually get to take our coffee and go, walking out of the car and entering a cabin in the next one where we meet our partner Anya. I guess the coffee was for her, but the point is that this was such an incredibly unexpected scene and with both me and Blazkowicz knowing nothing about what was going on, the potential for where this opening went was boundless. It was so amazingly exciting considering where the Wolfenstein series started and ended up. Was this going to be the surprise of the show?

Well, uh, probably not. The demo then proceeded into a section from the late part of the campaign where Blazkowicz must navigate a wrecked bridge and, I think, some portions of a train (the same one?). We get a glimpse at some of the advanced weapons we’ll get a hold of including a laser blaster thing that can also cut out certain walls à la like basically every heist movie ever. We also get to hear some of our protagonist’s charming personality come through as he proclaims that he’s gonna stick it to one particular “motherfucking space Nazi.” (It was actually kind of funny.) He does a lot of shooting and they do a lot of dying. Pretty standard fare.

But then we jump to the hands-on portion of the demo outside of the theatre and it opens with us driving into a Nazi base with falsified credentials. The driver is explaining a great deal of the problems with the situation and things and whatnot (it was hard to get a handle on what he was talking about given our lack of story context), but the gist is clear: this is a one-shot deal. Whatever this mission is, they had to work hard just to get to this point. He drops us off and then proceeds to drive into a guard wall and blow it (and himself) up. It was actually kind of intense.

Then we start playing and it’s kind of just more shooting. The first bit required me to navigate the debris from the wall as a large robot dog thing tried to hunt me down before getting itself stuck under some concrete. There are mechs to fight with shotguns and soldiers to shoot with machine guns. They really kind of soak up the damage, so you’ll find yourself dumping a lot more than you’re used to with more modern shooters, but it’s kind of fun when you dual wield big-ass guns.

But I really didn’t find anything out of the ordinary with the base game mechanics. You can sprint and slide, but that comes in handy precisely once in the demo, and the plasma cutter gun is used in very specific, required instances. The enemies don’t seem especially smart or aware of their surroundings as I had little to no problem maneuvering around them for the better angle (the mechs, in fact, seem to have trouble navigating stairs, a challenge I took advantage of).

At moments, I was having fun. I thought yeah, I could do this for an afternoon. And then I would sometimes feel a malaise with it all. But then I would remember the purity test and the drive into the base and get excited again. I really don’t know what kind of game Wolfenstein: The New Order is going to be, but I’m excited to find out, even if the answer itself isn’t all that interesting.

Look for Wolfenstein: The New Order on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC in December.