Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Delights In Sadism and Messing With Convention

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus picks up right where The New Order left off. You start as a pretty messed up B.J. Blazkowicz, mangled from his encounters in the previous game, but that’s not enough to stop him: this is the super soldier, the man who has become known to the Nazi order as one of the most dangerous terrorists alive. He’s being hunted. And - at the start of the game - they find him.

As it happens, Blazkowicz is still pretty messed up. He’s attached to a catheter, he’s bound to a wheelchair and he can’t recover his full health (you’re capped at 50). From the second the game gives you control - which is pleasantly early in the grand scheme of things - you realise that The New Colossus is going to experiment with FPS tropes as much as the previous game did: you’re in a wheelchair, you shoot slower, you move slower, you have less health. It’s an amazing concept that merges all the best bits of first-person shooter mechanics with a strong, well-written narrative. 

To add insult to (literal) injury, B.J. can’t go up stairs: you start in the basement of a U-boat where the hero’s Resistance is based. Lead by Irene Engel (who you may remember got slightly disfigured by B.J.  in the original game), the Nazi order is keen on exacting its vengeance, and they’ll happily rip through all of B.J.’s friends to achieve their goal.

So the first level tasks you with escaping the clutches of the invading fascists. Thing is, U-Boats are pretty deep, and this one has a lot of staircases. So the first level of the game not only gives you a crippled, health-slashed protagonist, but also wants you to navigate a sort-of puzzle platform scenario, too. As hands-on demos go, this is one of the bravest we’ve played in a long time.

It takes about half an hour to navigate the level, and early on you get to meet an old friend that’s rigged traps around the boat: if you’re canny and you can avoid the sightlines of groups of enemies, you can usually find a switch hidden somewhere that activates microwaves and turns the enemy into a bunch of bloody mush.

So you throw this trap mechanic in with the fact you’re using conveyor belts, hydraulic lifts and such to get around; you’re playing a battered, broken man; your friends are all being captured/killed and you’ve only really got a pistol to kill people with and then you understand mission statement The New Colossus is putting out: we want to mess with you.

Thing is, even if you don’t like that level of challenge from your shooters, that’s not a problem. The New Colossus - like The Old Blood and The New Order - has five levels of difficulty. You could totally not care about shooting through the game at all, and still have a really good time digesting the game’s fascinating story. It’s well-written, it’s well-acted and it’s full of intrigue. We will say that it feels pretty necessary to play the first game before you tackle this one (there’s a lot you’ll miss out on otherwise), but if you’re fully caught up, this has the potential to be one of the strongest campaigns on the market this year. 

All this comes in the first 30 minutes of the game. It sets a wonderful precedent for the title, but it begs the question: what if MachineGames has pumped all its ideas into an opening level and left the rest of the game feeling a bit bland? We doubt that’s the case: MachineGames has proved twice over it knows how to release a Wolfenstein game that doesn’t make any sacrifices on either narrative or gameplay to deliver an experience that fits perfectly in Bethesda’s roster of core titles.

We’re excited to see what more the game can deliver.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus will be smashing Nazis when it arrives for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 27th October 2017.