Game:

Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014)

Duration: 6:39

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The Wolfenstein series is regarded as the grandfather of the FPS genre. Wolfenstein 3D presented players of the 90s with maze like levels full of NAZIs to shoot and hidden rooms to find. Its simplistic game-play makes it fairly easy to return to, but its golden age has long passed. This causes any sequel to Wolfenstein to be looked at with a great deal of caution as previous attempts at revitalizing the franchise have been met with mixed reactions. That said, Machine Games had an uphill battle to fight when they set about making Wolfenstein the new order. Many doubts were cast on how this game would end up. It was expected to either shed what made the original games so fun, or cling to those aspects so hard the game would end up feeling antiquated.
Despite the doubts, Machine Games has crafted a nearly perfect blend of modern and classic first person shooting game-play. Classic in its content, and modern in its amount of depth. The player is given a variety of tools to overcome the Nazi war machine whatever way they want - as long as the way they want is stealthy, action packed, or a mix of the two. An average scenario in Wolfenstien will present the player with a squad of common NAZI soldiers, their commanding officer, and a couple heavy soldiers for good measure. The player can just shoot their way through them, but such a method is somewhat ill advised. Health is lost surprisingly quickly and only regenerates to a point. Health packs are fairly common, but must be found and picked up which may prove difficult while under fire. Furthermore, if a commanding officer detects the player, they will call reinforcements which will quickly overwhelm anyone who doesn't bring a swift resolution to the problem. The shoot 'em up play style is possible, but can be a challenging at times on anything above the easy difficulty.
For the most part, a stealth approach is much easier. NAZIs are extremely dimwitted and lack good senses. With that in mind, and a silenced pistol capable of headshoting enemies from across an aircraft hanger, stealth is almost to easy. This might make you think stealth is the focus of the game, what I just described would indicate a balance towards such at least. However, many enemies are not dispatched so easily by a head-shot. Some are, in fact, immune. Giant Death-bots are one example. So, the core of the game is not destroying your enemy in one of two ways, but is more balanced towards crippling them. The design encourages the player to weaken enemy forces before engaging in a fight. It encourages decimation followed by devastation. In this light, the combat feels innovative and fresh. I would compare it to Dishonored, another Bethesda published game. However, unlike Dishonored, the openness of combat is sometimes undermined by segments that are strictly shooter with no option for stealth. These segments can be fun and call back to its classical shooter roots, but they highlight how much better the guerrilla warfare style action is compared to super soldier kill death gun time. If super soldier kill death gun time is what you wanted from the game, its there, but its just not the best option to choose...

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