WOL FENS TEIN II: THE NEW COLOSSUS
BJ Blazkowicz crashes the high castle
“MORE GUNS, MORE NAZI MECHS AND CYBORGS, AND A SWANKY POWER SUIT”
Format PS4 ETA 27 Oct Pub Bethesda Dev MachineGames
There’s a sequence in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, MachineGames’ newly-announced sequel to 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order, where BJ Blazkowicz takes down half the Nazi army from the comfort of a wheelchair. That’s a ballsy way to reintroduce a saviour of the world.
This highly anticipated sequel takes off where The New Order ended, with Blazkowicz now in hiding from nemesis Frau Engel and making his way to Nazioccupied America to cause havoc and stir up the resistance.
The same mix of alternate history, humour and triggerhappy first-person shooting is returning in this sequel. Now, however, MachineGames is turning up the heat. More guns, more Nazi mechs and cyborgs, and a swanky power suit are on offer to ramp up the action.
It takes a lot of hard work to make Wolfenstein look so casual and such fun. Yes, while there are corridors of dedicated shotgun carnage, there’s also some of the best world-building we’ve seen from any recent FPS. The clash of familiar Americana with Nazi symbolism, with ticker-tape parades and milkshake bars tempered by fascist propaganda, feels well-realised and grounded.
We can’t wait to see how MachineGames treats its new locations, which feel broader than past Wolfensteins’, and include the desert heat of small-town Roswell, a flooded New Orleans, and the claustrophobia of a post-nuclear Manhattan.
Rooting everything is the series’ dedication to epic gunplay and innovative set-pieces – our hands-on reveals levels can be tackled in various ways – plus great writing and the bravery to go out on a limb for a good joke (a team member who sees two-dimensional animated lizards is a humorous highlight).
To say The New Colossus is The Man In The High Castle with enormous guns would be fair, but it would also be underplaying the vein of dark, almost Monty Python-esque, humour that peppers the action.