2017’s latest entry into the Wolfenstein franchise proved to be little more than the power fantasy of status quo bourgeois liberals who want to feel like they’re fighting the power. Which is a shame, because the previous entry by Machine Games, Wolfenstein: The New Order and its expansion, The Old Blood, were excellent.
The biggest issue for this new Wolfenstein is the story. There is too much of it and it drags the entire experience down. It also has severe problems with clashing tones: one minute, it wants to be a serious drama and the next it wants to be a self-aware b grade type film, like Iron Sky crossed with Planet Terror. As a result, it is a narrative that I can’t take seriously, nor have fun with, resulting in awkward looks around the room as the sassy blaxploitation stereotype, Grace Walker, gives a chastising feminist monologue that is also about how ‘white America’ has given up against the Nazi occupation. The characterization of BJ in this game is also clumsy.
There is also an absurd point where Anya rips off her shirt showing off her tits and pregnant belly as she duel wields machine guns and is showered with blood. Because girl power or something. I’m not sure why this was put in the game, maybe the developers thought it would be cool, but it is just another embarrassing moment. I have no idea what is up with these Swedes.
The best example of the type of insipid, juvenile writing of this game is a scene portraying Adolf Hitler as someone who is clearly lost his mind and unashamedly and without dignity soils himself. This drawn out scene completely fails to be funny or even slightly amusing. In fact, it is embarrassing. Not all the writing is quite this bad or irritating, I found the alcoholic communist priest to be amusing and a part in the world of some Klansmen being asked about their progress in learning German to being similarly comical. However, scenes like the Hitler one or Grace’s ramblings are best representative of the overall attitude of the game, which I found grating. It would be less irritating if the cutscenes or narrative segments were shorter and just let me get back to shooting shit, but as it stands, it seriously hinders my ability to enjoy the game as an overall package.
When the game does let you just get to the business of sneaking, shooting and stabbing, it can be fucking awesome. The sounds, effects and overall visuals are amazing, not to mention the ever excellent musical compositions of Mick Gordon blaring out, perfectly complementing the frenetic action. The shooting feels powerful and impactful, with appropriate recoil, slick animations and responsive controls. The player has a high level of mobility as well, so expect the action to require a good mix of speed and tactics. Dual wielding returns as a novel feature, but I found myself not using it as much this time around as it felt a little more clunky and less effective than single fire. On the Bring ‘em on difficulty, I found the level of challenge to be just right the vast majority of the time.
The best levels overall were probably the underground military base, New Orleans and the courthouse, offering the most amount of combat and the best music.
The level in an occupied typical small American town looked nice, but that was mostly diversionary window dressing and for world building, which is wasted opportunity as it would have made for a challenging and visually, as well as thematically interesting level. The lowest points in the campaign for me would be the small stupid fetch quests in the home base, the level where you return to BJs childhood home, which is just a walking sim level with cutscenes, which is totally out of place in a Wolfenstein game. The level on Venus was clearly an attempt to one-up the moon base level from TNO, but rather came across as a pale imitation. It is a shadow of its predecessor and it simply lacks its strong, unique aesthetics and excellent pacing.
Ultimately, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus is a tonally confused mess and the content is exactly as I said in the first paragraph , a power fantasy for bourgeois liberals. Or, more precisely, it’s The Handmaid’s Tale but for weak antifascist men in Trump’s America that put “I punch Nazis” in their twitter bio. When the game just lets you play by shooting shit, it is fun and has its moments but is weighed down so much by the story line that it is hard to recommend, becoming an inferior sequel. If you need a Wolfenstein fix, you’re probably better off just booting up Return to Castle Wolfenstein again. Now THAT was a game.
CG Kino 