MachineGames’ Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, the follow-up to the first-person shooter master class that was The New Order, looks like everything we loved about its predecessor cranked to 11.
How do you follow one of the greatest franchise resurrections ever attempted? If you’re developer MachineGames, you immediately sit down to come up with ways to one-up yourself. From what I saw of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus at E3, that’s precisely what they’ve done.
From the opening moments of the hilariously grim Lassie parody “Liesel,” Wolfenstein II makes a pretty compelling pitch for the Nazi-dominated Americana that has transformed its alternate history setting. To say that The New Order didn’t skimp on atmosphere would be an incredible understatement, but its sequel dives even deeper into the madness of an America conquered by the Third Reich.
Having thwarted General Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse in enemy territory, protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz is headed through 1961 Nazi-occupied America to build a resistance that will stage a second American Revolution.
Our time with the game was spent in the first minutes of the campaign, where Blazkowicz’s broken body is suddenly pulled back into active duty. He drags himself from a slab and into a wheelchair, where he spends the duration of the mission. What followed was a silly hybrid of stealth and action, mixed into a cocktail that is as ludicrously humorous as it is thrilling.
The wheelchair-bound stealth takedowns alone were enough to sell the whole mission, but excellent level design, great dialogue, and Wolfenstein‘s typically phenomenal gunplay were also proudly on display. It was about a half hour of everything I could have hoped that Wolfenstein II would be, and a little more besides.
The full campaign will introduce special abilities, a gloriously brutal arsenal, flexible dual-wielding combat that allows you to combine two different weapons, and a hatchet for those who prefer getting up close and personal for a quieter approach. You’ll travel from Roswell’s infamous Area 51 to the irradiated waste of a nuked New York City among other iconic settings given a similarly grim twist.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was easily one of the strongest showings at E3 2017, alongside the most unlikely of its peers. It has cemented its place at the top of my most-wanted list when it releases on October 27.
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