Wolfenstein: The New Order has a different take on what would have happened nearing the end of World War Two if the Nazis were the ones with the superior technology, taking it so far as to what life would have been in the sixties if they had won. Rather than play as the Allies winning the war, you play as a rebel, a freedom fighter trying to stop the Nazis wherever you can, one fight at a time. The game only took us about 12.5 hours to play through on one play through, even taking into consideration playing it a second time for the other timeline that only clocks in about 25 hours. If you are a completionist it may push you to 30, but that may be it.
Graphics: Rather pleasing to look at, yet seems to have excessively large texture packages that will eat over 40 GB of storage space, with most environments not being reused, we can only say that there must not have been any optimization done to reduce down the compression size. Only way we may not complain about that is that perhaps they didn’t bother to compress it at all to speed up load times, we rarely found we ran into any.
Gameplay: Health and armour packs make their return, ditching the health regeneration system most shooters use and abuse. The perk system adds permanent reward bonuses if you perform certain tasks; this can make the game easier later on, especially for harder play throughs. The two different unlocking methods were nice to see compared to just blast open a door with a grenade or a blasting charge.
Combat: A shooter that has the ability to allow you to kill enemies through the crack underneath the door, while also offering the ability to lean left and right out of cover is a nice change of pace compared to most in its class. We only wish we knew what constituted official cover for certain perks to unlock them. Weapons occasionally can be used to solve puzzles, as you are not spoon-fed where to go and what to do most of the time.
Side Quests: Not much to say here, other than exploring for collectibles, namely enigma codes and health/armour upgrades add to the game, yet aren’t forced to do any of this and it does not really ‘add’ to the story or universe of the game.
Story: Unique take on what would happen if the Nazis won World War II with superior technology and how one man (or a small cell of rebels) would fight back against them. Visit some landmarks, including the moon as you fight your way to stop the Nazi War machine, even after the war is over.
Replayabiliy: Other than playing it a second time for the other timeline and to find collectibles, there is no real reason to replay the game beyond that. It also lacks any sort of multiplayer or even mini-game aspect to bring you back to play it again.
