Killing Nazis in video games has somehow begun to feel even more cathartic than usual these days. Wonder why. Thankfully, we’re spoiled for choice. I looked at my Steam activity feed for my online associates and noticed they seem to have the same feeling, as they’ve loaded up on titles like Sniper Elite 5.

But, for my money, MachineGames’ revival of the Wolfenstein series is the best when it comes to Nazi-killing. No one is quite as direct and gleeful as they are.

A couple years ago, I even played through Wolfenstein: The Old Blood for a review here. My intention was to slide right through to its progenitor and chronological sequel, Wolfenstein: The New Order. It just didn’t quite happen. But my sudden thirst for blood must be quenched, so it’s time for another tear through.

NOW THEY’LL NEVER SAVE YOUR BRAIN, HITLER

Wolfenstein: The New Order picks up directly after its expansion, The Old Blood. It’s 1946, well after WWII was supposed to end. However, the Nazis have mysteriously leapt ahead of all other nations technologically, and things haven’t been going well. The Allies see Wilhelm “Deathshead” Strasse as the developer of this technology, and in a desperate move, decide that eliminating him is their last chance at slowing Germany’s conquest.

As usual, you play as William J. Blazkowicz, the best Nazi-killer to ever walk the Earth. He takes part in this raid. Unfortunately, things go tits up, and a piece of shrapnel lodges itself in his brain and puts him into catatonia for 14 years. This allows the Nazis to continue their quest for Lebensraum, and by the time Blazkowicz awakens in 1960, they’ve all but accomplished world conquest. The Allied nations were conquered, with the U.S. surrendering in 1948 after the atomic bomb was dropped on them. Even former Axis members were turned on, answering the question if Germany would even be able to co-exist with Japan: No.

But Blazkowicz is a hammer, he only knows how to hit nails, and it seems like there’s a hell of a lot more nails walking around. He’s not going to let something like impossible odds stop him. He’ll probably die with a disembodied Nazi spine gripped in his hand.

EVERYONE’S VEGAN IN HITLERLAND

That’s largely the game. You’re essentially taken from set-piece to set-piece and left to kill every goose-stepper in the vicinity. Blazkowicz eventually falls in with a resistance cell working in Berlin, but even they know that there is exactly one thing that Blazkowicz is good for: killing Nazis. So, if there’s something they need, they just drop him at its location, and he will get it for them, because there’s absolutely no stopping this man.

And I don’t think I have ever taken time to appreciate how great the combat of The New Order really feels. The effect of bullets hitting anything, be it Nazi or wall, feels satisfying as blood, sparks, and concrete fly. Lighting a Nazi up is such a spectacle, that you’ll be forgiven for standing out in the open for too long while you watch him rupture. If you’re close enough, it’s sometimes worth it just to close the gap and stick him like a fascist pig. Grenades… suck, for some reason, but you can eventually get an RPG attachment for the assault rifle that creates a lot of bratwurst filling.

There isn’t a tonne of enemy variety, and some can get a bit annoying. Big, armoured Supersoldaten are pretty common, and while they’re pretty enjoyable to fight in the right conditions, your options for dealing with them never really improve. They’re always a threat, and a fun alternative that progresses the enemy ranks never really appears. It’s not all that bad, especially because getting a hold of an MG60 and lighting them up is rather entertaining. Apparently, B.J.’s leather jacket is better protection than German steel. Unfortunately, getting an MG60 is, in some situations, only achieved by killing a Supersoldaten.

Regardless, Wolfenstein: The New Order is a dumb shooter, but it’s a pretty great dumb shooter. Since we’re all here to kill Nazis, it’s important that the focus is on enabling that.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN, FRITZ

Similarly, the narrative doesn’t stray far from the core focus of Nazi-killing. It’s largely about arming the resistance and following up on what the Allies failed to achieve in 1946.

There’s one important wrinkle, and that’s in revealing the source of the Nazi Wunderwaffe. This might be spoiling things, but it turns out the weapons are derived from creations built by a sect of Jewish super-inventors. This comes uncomfortably close to suggesting that the Nazi genocide was motivated by something other than blatant racism and warped nationalism, which is a fringe conspiracy theory. I don’t think that was the intent, however. I think MachineGames just wanted to allow Jewish people to get in on the Nazi killing. I’m not really in a position to decide.

There’s also a part of the game that takes place in a concentration camp, which is always sort of touchy. But it’s maybe better to depict such horrors as a way of illustrating the terrible depths of an antagonist than to pretend that part of history just didn’t exist.

Nonetheless, the alternate history is pretty well realized, and you can tell the creative team really got into developing it. Most of the background is told through a scattering of newspaper articles that give a window into what has happened, and is still happening, off-screen. A lot of what’s given to you is through the lens of government propaganda. It talks about how the citizens of conquered countries have been freed from the shackles of their oppressive rulers and happily donned lederhosen and dined on schnitzel. Which, you perhaps need to have paid attention in history class to read between the lines on.

While the Nazis may seem cartoonishly evil, a lot of what’s depicted is an extrapolation of the beliefs spread by the government. I can probably guess that some folks look at the state of 1960s Great Germania and think it truly is great. Someone out there no doubt wonders if Blazkowicz is actually the bad guy. Those people need to study more.

In 2014, that might have seemed laughable, and MachineGames respecting its audience enough to know better was a reasonable expectation. In 2025…

YOU JAMMY BASTARD

There are a few areas where Wolfenstein: The New Order falls a bit short.

First, it’s built on idTech 5, which was the one that id Software built for Rage. I generally love id’s technical work, but idTech 5 feels gross. It’s supposed to be really slick when it comes to texture streaming and memory management, but the downside is that, no matter how fast your hardware is, you’ll actually see the texture streaming. Whenever you turn, the textures in the newly revealed scene will quickly melt from their low-res stand-in to their mega-res form. It’s gross. But worse is the lighting, which carries with it this weird haziness that feels close to how Unreal 3 Engine games look. Which I hate.

If that doesn’t bother you, then you might still be bothered by the fact that most of the environments look the same. It’s a lot of grey corridors. The Nazis love brutalism, I guess, so everything is concrete. The exception is when you go to the Moon (spoiler?), but that segment switches out your arsenal for some extremely crappy alternatives. I used my knife as much as possible, just to avoid having to use the unreliable laser weapons.

Lastly, there’s a part early on where you have to make a choice. You pick who to save between Private Wyatt and Fergus Reid. I don’t know who would choose to save Wyatt, because Fergus is just spectacular, and in all my replays, I have never changed my decision. That’s not the problem, though. The problem is that this sort of choice happens once. My guess is that in the original design documents, you would have made similar choices throughout the game, allowing you to create a timeline that suits your preferences, but only one made it into the finished product. And it’s pointless. It probably should have been scrapped altogether in favour of both characters surviving. Or just Fergus, because I can’t imagine anyone saving Private Wyatt. Sorry, Wyatt.

STABBING, STRANGLING, KILLING NAZIS

Anyway, there are times when I’m hot on Wolfenstein: The New Orders, and other times when I’m not. I think it’s largely down to whether I’m interested in a dumb shooter at that time. And when I say “dumb shooter” I mean one that’s linear with limited options for combat. I don’t mean that there’s nothing smart about it. MachineGames did a great job of crafting a horrifying alternate reality world by drawing from history and injecting some science fiction. Then, they filled it with some great characters. The Half-Life-style corridors interrupted by cinematics are just fun, Nazi-killing ligaments.

And, personally, I think that being so focused on the fun of killing Nazis elevates it well above most dumb shooters. Dudes, demons, robots, and aliens just don’t quite have the same crunch. I don’t typically advocate for genre homogeny, but I feel like there’s plenty more room for more games on the subject matter. We had nearly a decade of oversaturation from WW2 shooters, and that still isn’t enough Nazi-killing.

8/10

This review was conducted using a digital Steam copy of the game. It was paid for by the author.