ONE, TWO, THREE, IT’S A LET’S-KILL-THE-NAZIS SPREE!
“Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus” is bloody, over-the-top and ridiculous fun
WOLFENSTEIN II: THE NEW COLOSSUS
PS4, XBOX ONE, WINDOWS If any form of entertainment, whether it be a movie, song, or videogame, upsets Nazis — which is a ridiculous thing to say because it’s 2017 and not 1943 — then we want in on it. Enter Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, a first-person shooter from the same minds that brought you Doom and Fall
out that have sent the alt-right into a hissy fit. They may bring out their tiki torches again. But like we said, anything that agitates Nazis is something we definitely want to be a part of. The Story Set in an alternate timeline established in the first game, the game takes place in a post-WWII world where the Nazis won. The new Kreisau Circle rescues BJ. Blazkowicz, immediately following the events of the first game, and afterwards he falls into a five-month coma. Blazkowicz awakens to find that the sadistic Frau Engel is hell bent on capturing and killing him. With a psychotic Nazi hot on their tail, the Kreisau Circle determines that the way to start the end of Nazi rule is to gather those still resisting and liberate the United States to become a base to fight against the Nazi menace. The events that tran- spire become more extreme and ridiculous as you progress; no where else will you see a woman pregnant with twins get in a gunfight with Nazis, or a semi-paralysed man in a wheelchair go up against enemies. There were two specific sequences which made us go “WTF?”. It just goes to show how over-thetop the game is, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The Gameplay and Visuals If you’re aware of Bethesda’s previous works like Doom and Dishonored, and add the fact that the alt-right are butt-hurt about this game, then you can easily conclude that Wolfenstein II’s gameplay can be described in three simple words: blowing away Nazis. Seriously, that’s pretty much it. Sure, there’s a mini-game where you get Enigma Cards and you solve this really simple, but guess what that does? It reveals the location of a Nazi commander which you then have to kill. Really, the whole game is a Nazi slaughter-fest, and while it is fun melting the face of a swastika-bearing soldier with a giant laser gun and blowing heads off with two machine guns, you can only do so much. You can actually sneak around and go about your killing quietly so as not to trigger the calling of reinforcements, but it made no sense for us to do that when it’s so much more satisfying to blow away soldiers while dual wielding sub-machine guns. Graphics-wise, the game’s alright, although it was jarring to have the cutscenes be graphically different from the actual gameplay, although this may just be the case for the PS4 which is what we played the game on.
The Verdict
Wolfenstein II satiates your bloodlust all the while telling a story that is just completely bonkers. It harkens back to the days of an old fashioned shoot-’em-up game. Having said that, it’s pretty repetitive, and if you’ve had your fill of shooting Nazis, you might easily get bored with it.