Wolfenstein: The New Order

Wolfenstein: The New Order is a first-person shooter game developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was released on May 20, 2014 for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. The game is the seventh installment in the Wolfenstein series and the sequel to 2009's Wolfenstein.

Plot
Wolfenstein: The New Order takes place in an alternate 1960s Europe in a world where the Nazis emerged victorious in the Second World War, the story follows war veteran William "B.J." Blazkowicz as he thwarts the Nazis and puts an end to their world domination.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) A nicely well-crafted and engaging story that explores B.J. trying to put an end to infamous Nazi scientist, William "Deathshead" Strasse.
 * 2) The game's level design and aesthetics accurately depict the time period and alternate plotline and doesn't hold back in examining the brutality of a world controlled by Nazis.
 * 3) Most weapons can be dual wielded, ranging from the basic handgun to laser rifles.
 * 4) You have the option to either go in guns blazing or do a stealth-oriented approach in almost every level.
 * 5) Enemies don't endlessly respawn until you move forward like in Call of Duty; once a room is cleared, it will stay cleared for the entirety of the level.
 * 6) Guns have solid, heavy feedback when being shot and all of them, and even the pistol feels very powerful.
 * 7) Well-developed characters, especially the protagonist - William B.J. Blazkowicz (in previous Wolfenstein games B.J. is just "the guy you play" with little to no characterization, but in The New Order he has a fully developed personality).
 * 8) Great voice acting, especially Brian Bloom as B.J. who brings character life giving B.J. a soft but charismatic voice.
 * 9) At the end of the first chapter, you can choose who to sacrifice, Fergus or Wyatt. In doing so, things will be different depending on who you choose. These include the kind of upgrades you pick up, what character appears ('J' or Tekla), and even hidden areas in some levels.
 * 10) Great graphics with very detailed character models.
 * 11) Collectibles can be found throughout the game. Most common is treasure, which is usually just golden items, however, some can be actually rewarding.
 * 12) * Armor upgrades, which appear only in Wyatt's timeline. Each collected upgrade increase the armor value gained from armor pickups by 10%, up to a maximum of 100% (if all 10 upgrades are collected). The player's overall maximum armor value remains 100.
 * 13) * Health upgrades appear only in Fergus' timeline. Each collected upgrade boosts the player's maximum health by 10, up to 200 (if all 10 upgrades are collected).
 * 14) * Enigma Code fragments are hidden in the game world, appearing as red booklets with a black Wolfenstein logo on the cover, followed by the words "GEHEIM - Enigma Codes". Solving each code unlocks a bonus game mode with rules altered from the normal gameplay.
 * 15) * Letters: While not very important story-wise, these items can provide some background insights into the lives (and probable deaths) of some unseen individuals under the rule of the fascist regime.
 * 16) * Records: In some levels, you can find tracks that are mostly parodies and homages to real pop songs of the period "modified" to suit Nazi themes and doctrines. These parodies range from songs from The Beatles to The Monkees.
 * 17) Solving Enigma codes can unlock new game modes. These modes include:
 * 18) * 999 Mode: Difficulty is set to Über, but the player starts with 999 temporary health that slowly decays down to 100. All weapons have infinite ammo and the player can use an unlimited amount of grenades.
 * 19) * Walk in the Park: All HUD elements are removed entirely except for interaction prompts and the difficulty is set to I am Death Incarnate!
 * 20) * Hardcore: Difficulty is set to Über and all health and armor pickups are removed from the game's levels.
 * 21) * Ironman: Difficulty is set to Über and the player only has one life. No checkpoint saves and the game will start from the beginning upon death or quitting.
 * 22) Amazing soundtrack, making gunfights and boss fights even more fun.
 * 23) NAZIS THAT ACTUALLY SPEAK GERMAN WELL instead of speaking English with a terrible German accent (that is because of two things, this game was developed by a Swedish developer, and id Software opened a studio in Germany).

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The relationship between Anya and B.J. suffers from Instant Seduction. On the train to Berlin, the scene cuts from Blazkowicz and Anya (who previously didn't do much beyond look at each other in the previous mission) talking about possibly sharing a bunk, to them mid-coitus. However, it was foreshadowed that Anya had already taken a liking to Blazkowicz when he was in a comatose state. There's also some dialogue indicating it's Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex after all the insanity the two of them have been through in the past couple of days. Despite that, the relationship between the two seem to escalate too quickly.
 * 2) There are many times where the game will switch to full cutscenes almost every time you interact with another character, which feels jarring.
 * 3) The game doesn't explicitly tell you how to solve the Enigma Clues. Instead it gives you hints via numbers on a chalkboard in some levels, but nobody would know that's what they are for.
 * 4) While the soundtrack is great, the mixing is poor since the music is too quiet especially when in combat. What doesn't help is the lack of a slider to adjust the volume of the music like in most modern games.
 * 5) There are some textures in the game that look terrible; so much so that you'd think they're from the GameCube era. This is mainly due to the engine: id Tech 5. Unlike other engines which use multiple textures per environment, Id Tech 5 uses what's called 'Megatextures', a massive texture placed over the entire level, hence why the game is 40GB big. A technique called Virtual Texturing is used to control how much of an MT is moved into your GPU VRAM at a time which is what causes all the pop in issues.
 * 6) The 360 version was released on 4 discs (sound familiar), which shows that the game wasn't meant to be on the 360.

Trivia

 * The character 'J' is a tribute to the pop-culture icon Jimi Hendrix and the character Tekla is a personification of Nikola Tesla and is an homage to him.

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