WOLFENSTEIN THE NEW ORDER ARMOR UPGRADE FULL
WOLFENSTEIN THE NEW ORDER ARMOR UPGRADE SOFTWARE

The game is chock full of Easter eggs and notes and letters, newspaper clippings and tchotchkes. The game equally briefly sticks you in a mech suit вЂ“ another glorious piece of the game engine that kind of isnвЂ™t put to any good use. Why they went to the trouble of altering the physics engine to make you jump around on the moon for only five minutes of gameplay вЂ“ thatвЂ™s beyond me вЂ“ but they did. They also have you travel to the moon in a level lasting all of five minutes. ItвЂ™s dark, real dark, but so outlandish that you can dual wield auto-shotguns turning enemies into pink mist with some giblets, and dual wield sniper rifles that can blow off someoneвЂ™s head so blood fountains out their neck. Maybe theyвЂ™re confusing it with Duke Nukem which was plenty snarky, but you used to stab guard dogs in the head in W:3D for christsakes, and W:TNO has not gotten more jovial with age.

IвЂ™ve had a number of people who know I do game reviews ask me if W:TNO is funny, and I have no idea why that should be so. So outlandish that Schwarzenegger would have difficulty playing it with a straight face, though let me clarify that this isnвЂ™t in any way a funny story. The plot is also outlandish, cartoonishly so. At points I was just about in that camp as well, even though all the acting and voicework are very well done. Some may believe that there are too many cutscenes, as sometimes you have a cutscene, then take control of your character long enough to do a single trivial task, like bring a note from one character to another, and that kicks off another cutscene. And though IвЂ™m not going to delve into that plot, because I think it is one of the biggest joys of the game to experience firsthand and you meet many memorable and complex characters through a slew of cutscenes, I will say that it is as satisfying as it is ludicrous. At its worst, however, it doesnвЂ™t exactly slog вЂ“ the game isnвЂ™t long enough for that вЂ“ but it becomes a very pat slit a few throats, hose down a few rooms, and activate the next cut scene activity that I think a better AI might have avoided.ДЇor those who are looking for a capsule review, those with short attention spans, think of W:TNO as Halflife with more bullets or Serious Sam or Bulletstorm with way more plot. At its best moments, it calls to mind some of the most memorable scenes from Halflife and Portal and Bioshock, games that draw you so deeply into their story that you actually care about the people youвЂ™re trying to save and want righteous vengeance against thine enemies. Over those lo and many years FPS games have come a long way, and Wolfenstein: The New Order takes a lot of those advancements and integrates them very successfully, pulling together stealth elements and bullet blasting without really cheaping out on either one.

WOLFENSTEIN THE NEW ORDER ARMOR UPGRADE SOFTWARE

I was a freshman in frigging high school when Castle Wolfenstein was released, and IвЂ™m not referring to Wolfenstein 3D which was an FPS that came out a decade later and is probably the first Wolfenstein most of you have ever heard of, but the top down stealthish game from Muse Software in 1981 (extra credit: do a little math and figure out how old I am, and IвЂ™ll thank you very much to get the hell off my lawn). This is going to be one of those reviews where I reveal that IвЂ™m old as dirt. The Bad: Wrapped around a pretty run of the mill FPS.

Wolfenstein the new order armor upgrade