Well, I've decided to throw in the towel on Wolfenstein for now. I had a very short window to blow through what appears to be some of the most frustrating parts of the game. And last night, as I was getting ready to play through the exact same scene for about the 10th time, I thought to myself "Do I want to keep not having fun and keep playing this just to beat it in time, or would I rather close this down and watch Game of Thrones with my wife?" (and just for reference, we ended up watching The Wedding episode, and no, not the RED Wedding.) And then I thought, "Well, do I want to keep grinding over the next few days, or just play whatever I want?" And sure enough, Wolfenstein is sitting in my mailbox waiting for the mailman to bring it back to Gamefly.
I will agree with others here that overall, yes, Wolfenstein: The New Order is a good single player FPS, but it has some GLARING issues, at least on the PS4. The running theme I seem to find is "inconsistency."
Let's start with the 400 lb gorilla that made me send back the game in the first place: The Difficulty. For me the most annoying part of the game was incredibly inconsistent difficulty. It's not even that the game would have difficulty spikes, but it also has insane difficulty dips as well. This was especially true in the last third of the game. The one that sticks out to me the most is when I was escaping a base after stealing some launch codes. The whole base was on high alert with alarms blaring everywhere and all that. Now in most games, when you're told "Escape the Base" that basically means "Expect a sh*t load of angry trigger happy troops." So imagine my surprise when I was trying to get out and saw about 80% of the guys on standard patrol in ways that made picking them off with STEALTH incredibly easy. And then in the next mission the difficulty then spiked back up to unfair levels to where I decided to just throw in the towel. A more consistent tone would have been greatly appreciated.
Speaking of tone, let's talk about the story and characters. The writers seemed to think that the story was better than it really was, because I found myself not caring about anything that was going on. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't at
Crysis 3 levels of apathy, but I wasn't really moved by the plight of the characters. Maybe this is the result of me just getting sick of the ultra evil Nazis being the bad guys, but I didn't find myself "pulling" for the characters as much as I just wanted to beat the game.
This may also have to do with the game's protagonist, BJ Blazkowicz. Traditionally he's been about as vocal and fleshed out as the space marine in Doom, but in this game they tried to give him a personality, but seemed to have forgotten that in order to make a character like this relatable or sympathetic, you need to shoot a little higher than a hybrid of 1980s action movie stars. Yes, protagonists in games rarely succumb to bouts of realism when it comes to injuries and the like, but you could at least TRY to make us believe this could happen. There are numerous eye rolling incidents, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most is when you get on the Nazi MOON BASE to get nuke launch codes (Yeah, that's real convenient and logical) and BJ cuts off a 4" X 1" part of the skin of his lower arm off. Not only does he hardly make a noise, but he doesn't even bandage it up! So he's just going to walk around bleeding profusely? Aren't the Nazi guards going to suspect something when they see blood trailing everywhere? Is BJ now Superman? (
FYI here's the non-spoiler video of the scene for those interested.) BJ's actions are accompanied well by his awful dialog and mind numbing narration. They sound like rejected lines from a Riddick movie. It almost makes you wonder if Vin Diesel wrote them himself.
Finally, the graphics in this game are all over the place. Overall the game isn't what I'd call eye candy, but aside from that the stark contrast in graphics in various parts of the game is, to put it lightly, glaring. I realize this is a 1st gen release on a new console, but this is the PS4. I shouldn't be seeing textures that remind me of Metal Gear Solid while I play. The one prop I will give the game is that it runs at a very nice 60 FPS nearly all the time, and I can't remember any times of slowdown even when things got hectic.
Overall, Wolfenstein: The New Order is a mixed bag where the negative qualities hold it back from becoming truly great, but don't hold it back enough to make the game not fun. I may try and get back to it eventually, but quite frankly I'd rather delve into Hyrule Warriors and Alien: Isolation for the time being. I give it a B-.
