Comments
Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 12:45 PM
After the flood of WWII shooters, Wolfenstein is the only reliable place left for poppin' Nazis. It's too bad. I mean what a perfect enemy. Sure, zombies are fun to kill, but in a way, they just can't help themselves. They're hungry and you have brains. But Nazis? They just scream, "Hail! I'm collecting bullets for the Kaiser. Please, put some in my skull so I can return them to him and be happy!" I'm always ready to oblige. Oh, and one last thing, do not drop your drawers around this guy. He does not like the moon.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 12:48 PM
Someone is actually bringing back armor as a resource...that's ballsy. VERY ballsy...and I congratulate the developer on the choice.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 12:52 PM
The revival of 90s FPS franchises have been hit or miss. Mostly miss. Older gamers remember the magic of the originals, and the remakes fail to capture that (ie. Doom3). Younger gamers think of them as relics and can't compare to the franchises they love. If the blending of the old and new elements of FPS's that the articles mention hold true, I may have to check this one out.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 12:56 PM
Sounds Blood Dragon-esque with the humour and gung-ho mass murder. "Ever wondered what the 1960s would have been like if the Nazis had won the war?" No.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 12:58 PM
some of it sounds good, some bad......after the t pitiful effort of a wolfenstein, i'll wait til it's a little cheaper (depending on it's release price on steam - yes I quit xbox, just CBA to find somewhere to get PC news from)Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 01:06 PM
Sorry, but just no. Nothing will beat RTCW.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 01:07 PM
@5 I'm with you, PC gaming's got a better appeal than consoles, though I'm keeping my 360 till it dies on me. OT for me the old fps games are always going to be special, and modern takes on them fail to live up to the names, let's hope that starbreeze can make a game worthy of the nameTuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 02:04 PM
@ #1 Someone should make a game where you fight Nazi zombies. That'd be crayzee.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 02:36 PM
@WalterWhite Yeah, because CODs zombies are the worst part about COD. Nice name by the way.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 03:29 PM
@2 - God Mode would like to have a word with you. And I wouldn't call it ballsy, I'd call it much needed and missed. @5 - You'll be missing out! @10 - The worst part about COD is the online, derp. On topic, I loved reading this and I very happy to see that it's coming together in every way that I have imagined. Can't wait for this game, I just hope it doesn't get delayed eight times. Either way, we need more classic shooters.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 03:37 PM
Pre-rendered stills mean NOTHING.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 04:48 PM
@#12 - You *could* read the words =PTuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 04:50 PM
So the old ladies name is Frau? Does she work for Dr. Evil and is constantly shouting? "BRING IN THE CLONE!" This game definitely has my interest. Health packs and armor? Been a while since those have been in a shooter! Hopefully this game will be as awesome as it sounds, and single-player only is a plus for me since I haven't cared for competitive multi-player in years. I've got high hopes for this one! Yay classic shooters! Now if we can just get some news on Doom 4 and a new Duke game I will be happy! Please make good use of the Duke IP Gearbox! Either a new Duke game or a re-release of Zero Hour (so I can save without the need of a controller pack and use a normal controller that isn't made for people with 3 arms). And there was nothing wrong with Duke Nukem Forever people! Other than the lack of co-op the game was a blast! Oh, and the fact that the game got delayed too much to the point where people expected WAAAY too much from the game.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 05:12 PM
@14 - Round of applause for this man, he knows what's up.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 05:47 PM
im starting to come around, and this will be a stackable game as its coming to both generations of consoles. i wonder how many good games we will be able to do that with?Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 06:26 PM
@Dan nothing like disrespecting non-PC gamers in one sentence. Especially from a site around a console. I was a gamer in the 90's and played games on Genesis, SNES, and PS1 that were much better than Doom and Wolfenstein (I can't speak to Quake, because I never played it). While those two/three launched FPS, they were to FPS games what Donkey Kong was to platformers. I can name more genre defining games from the 90s that I still play today from time to time.Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 07:59 PM
@17 - Umm... no. How can one say something is "much better than" Doom and Wolfenstein? How can one never have played Quake?Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 08:03 PM
@1 Did you really just associate the Nazi's with having anything to do with the Kaiser? *Reads comment again* Oh god, you really just did. Have you ever been in any form of education?Tuesday, June 04, 2013 @ 10:38 PM
I'm sorry @19. I thought mixing references to World War I, World War II, and zombies would be easily recognizable as a joke. It's a reference I borrowed from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade since I was thinking of that movie as I wrote it. Evidently, you honor the historical accuracy of Wolfenstein more than a sense of humor. Not the funniest post ever, I admit. But then, I got a good laugh out of your response. Perhaps a light joke doesn't need quite so much scrutiny and scorn? Nah, what the internet needs is more hate.Wednesday, June 05, 2013 @ 02:43 AM
Seriously cannot wait for this game. Next gen too!!!...oh man, this is where i wouldn't mind getting Xbox One. Especially for thisWednesday, June 05, 2013 @ 05:51 AM
Hopefuly "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" is playable on 360Wednesday, June 05, 2013 @ 09:16 AM
I do find it funny that Bethesda handed the Wolfenstein franchise to Machine Games to make, and not leave it with Id, who are the godfathers and it's originator afterall... But I may have just missed something.Thursday, June 06, 2013 @ 03:44 AM
@23 yeah you did miss something. Few weeks ago there was an article on here where they basically said that all of ID are working on remaking doom 4 for the third time. So not exactly time to make a new wolf game I'd guess.Thursday, June 06, 2013 @ 04:38 AM
Loved Wolfenstein 2009, didn't play the original 1992 release. The New Order looks great,next gen!!! and former Starbreeze guys = awesome.
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
If you were a 1990s gamer, three franchises will stick out as industry-defining at that time: Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein. Sure, there were other franchises, but these were the Call of Duty, Battlefield and Halo of that era. Attempts to revive those franchises have come and gone in the 21st century, but none have really captured the spirit and made the same impact that the originals once did.
Wolfenstein: The New Order may change all that. Developed by Swedish studio MachineGames, a developer made up of more than a few former Starbreeze developers, The New Order looks to meld Starbreeze’s trademark storytelling with the balls-to-the-wall action that you’d expect from a Wolfenstein game, and guess what? The early signs are promising.
Ever wondered what the 1960s would have been like if the Nazis had won the war? Ever wondered what a blonde haired action hero type would do if that was the case? Wonder no more, because The New Order has you covered there. Starring franchise protagonist, William Joseph "BJ" Blazkowicz, players will be thrown into a world of carnage and destruction to wage war against the ruthless Nazis. The New Order isn’t your standard shooter set in the 60s though, oh no. The totalitarian state is home to technological advancements that are so ahead of our current levels that you can only wonder what happened, and that’s part of the lure.
Our time with the new Wolfenstein was two-fold, the first, a playable cutscene of sorts aboard a train with BJ, the psychotic Nazi general, Frau Engel, and her boy toy. It’s a sequence of events that has Frau Engel test BJ’s loyalty to the Nazi cause –with him obviously being undercover. It’s a tense sequence of events as Engel has him pick cards laid on the table to determine his true intentions and his character, but she also taunts him by placing a gun right next to his hand – do you go for the gun and put a dent in the Nazi cause right now or do you play along?
Obviously, for the purposes of the demonstration, BJ played along. It was only a short scene, probably about five minutes in real time, but it’s exactly the kind of storytelling you’d expect from Starbreeze, and can only be described as something more akin to a few of the sequences in the original Darkness title or its hugely popular Riddick games.
The majority of our time with The New Order was spent hands-on with a level set in London with the goal of capturing the blueprint for a prototype chopper. This is the other side of Wolfenstein: The New Order: the aforementioned balls-to-the-wall crazy.
For all intents and purposes, Wolfenstein takes the best of the 90s and melds it with the best of the noughties. You’ll be looting bodies for goodies, collecting health packs and armour, cracking safes for ancient artefacts that boost BJ’s abilities and more. There’s more than one or two nods to the classic 90s game.
On the other hand, Starbreeze hasn’t forgotten about the advancements in the FPS genre since then. Health regeneration, for instance. Your health will only regenerate up to the closest increment of 20, so to get above that, you need to pick up health packs. And yes, you can have more than 100 in health and armour, and yes, it degrades just like it did back in the day.
It doesn’t take long from picking up the controller before we’re in the thick of the action. After escaping a mechanical dog patrolling the now decimated entrance to the London Nautica, the home to the Nazi’s top research projects, we’re thrown into the building’s lobby, with Nazis coming out of every nook and cranny.
Dual wielding burst pistols – most weapons of the same type can be dual-wielded in The New Order – we fly into the lobby without a care in the world. Leaning in and out of cover, we systematically rip the once pristine lobby to pieces, watching as our bullets tear holes in every Nazi officer that is unfortunate to get in our way and marvelling at the pillared tiles getting peppered by our bullet spray.
We can’t hide our smug expression after freeing the lobby from oppression, meanwhile BJ can’t hide his disgust at a series of Nazi plaques lauding that they’d put a Nazi on the moon.
“You put a Nazi on the moon?” BJ asks himself, “Fuck you moon!” he remarks. BJ in a lot of ways is effectively a more high brow Duke from Duke Nukem. Just as testosterone fuelled, but with wittier comments, less misogyny and objectified women.
From the lobby we burst into a space museum of sorts dual-wielding shotguns and later dual-wielding rifles. We make quick work of the drones and Nazis patrolling the walkways that surround a huge – and destructible – moon sculpture in the middle of the room, surrounded by huge gold statues.
For such a relatively early stage in development, the controls are tight, responsive and ridiculously easy. You’ll be leaning in and out of cover, sliding across the floor and dispatching enemies with your dual-wielded guns in no time whatsoever. The only immediate problems seems to be how awkward it is to switch weapons and the lack of signposting available, but those are things that are easy enough to switch on the fly so we’re sure those issues will be ironed out before launch.
One of the cooler tools in the New Order is the blow torch, allowing you to cut holes in fences, grates and what not, sometimes with the intention of getting further into the level, sometimes with the intention of finding some well-stashed goodies. It’s an upgradeable tool too, and after escaping the museum and solving a fairly easy puzzle mid-mission, we’re rewarded with the Laserkraftwerk, a more powerful beam, one whose second alt-fire is a beasty blast worthy of dealing a crushing blow to most adversaries. It’s not an unlimited resource though, so use it wisely!
The final main section of the hands-on sees us enter a huge helicopter hangar, with hulking guard robots and Nazis protecting their valuable assets. Here we adopted for more of a stealth approach, using our knife to take down a few silent Nazis who were isolated. We get careless though and our timing is off, leading to a frenetic battle with dozens of soldiers and 12-foot tall guard robots.
There’s no time for tact here, as we bust out the shotguns and dash in and out of cover in the huge hangar. “Go big or go home,” mutters BJ, moments before a 20-foot guard robot turns up to upset the party. With smart use of cover, the alt-fire on the Laserkraftwerk, we were able to take down the huge robot, ending the demo, leaving us with a lot to take in from the last 40 minutes or so.
As we've already mentioned, early signs are promising for MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The New Order. There seems to be enough to appease classic Wolfenstein fans in The New Order, as well as enough to appease newer FPS fans. Couple that with the glimpse of the trademark Starbreeze storytelling we’ve all come to love, and The New Order could really be the Wolfenstein game we want and deserve. Keep an eye on this one, folks.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is scheduled for a late 2013 release on current-gen and next-gen platforms.