It’s hard to call Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus my most disappointing game of 2017 when Mass Effect Andromeda released just shy of nine months ago. But, if it wasn’t for that let-down of a space excursion, BJ Blazkowicz’s latest Nazi rampage would be taking that less than coveted prize.
However, this discontent actually comes about as a result of a conflict I haven’t felt this hard since Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The story and world building of Nazi-occupied America could well be one of the greatest plots ever told in a first-person shooter, and yet the gameplay that ties it all together is bland, monotonous, and incredibly frustrating.
Let’s start with that last point and the fact that any fun I was having in combat was thwarted by the worst hit feedback I have ever experienced in a video game. BJ’s health is capped at 50 for roughly half the game due to story purposes, and this combined with the fact that it is very, very hard to tell when you’re being shot at or even where it’s coming from, resulted in far too many deaths. You could enter a firefight at seemingly full strength, only to be gunned down within seconds without you ever knowing where the bullets came from. It’s this that creates a disheartening loop of replaying sequences over and over again, just to get a feel of where you could even possibly be shot at from.
To make matters worse, your own guns don’t fare much better. Every weapon, barring the shotgun you obtain well past the half-way point, feels weak to shoot and poor to handle. Enemies can soak up many more bullets than their Nazi uniforms suggest they could, and aiming down sights doesn’t feel accurate thanks to another dose of poor bullet feedback. Placing your shots through scopes actually becomes even tougher thanks to the severe amount of muzzle flash present, which when combined with a lacking selection of weaponry, makes engagements feel a little too torrid.
This could have been saved somewhat by interesting level design, but the missions themselves don’t amount to much either. While some truly incredible moments play out during cutscenes, the literal act of playing the game has you wandering the likes of your own submarine, the back streets of war-torn Manhattan, and the underground district of Roswell. It all just feels sort of the same, with corridors funnelling you into combat and a lack of navigational options keeping you on the core path to progression. The most visually interesting level, in my opinion, takes place inside a court, but this too falls victim to the formula of taking out waves upon waves of enemies until the next cutscene triggers. It’s formulaic, boring, and the refusal to deviate turns any combat encounter into a chore.
The one other element to engagements is the presence of commanders, whom return from Wolfenstein: The New Order. These high-ranking officers have the ability to call in reinforcements if you’re spotted, and so taking them out first becomes a priority. You could tackle this with stealth, but the game doesn’t lend itself to this style of gameplay much like the prequel did. Rarely did I ever get by not alerting anyone within the vicinity because it’s simply too hard to avoid every Nazi, even on the normal difficulty setting. And of course once you’re seen, the gameplay breaks back down into its repetitive nature.
One last flaw is the huge difficulty spikes spread throughout the game, and one certain scene illustrated this perfectly. In the Manhattan act you’ll meet up with Grace Walker’s resistance group for the first time, where a cutscene plays out which really pumps you up as you take the fight to the Germans. But what follows that feels like a culmination of every problem I have with the gameplay, as another horde of enemies descends on your location whom eventually turn the setting into a kill house. With your maximum health capped at 50 at that point in time, your poor selection of weaponry, a Nazi army that can gun you down in seconds, and the awful bullet feedback, you’re doomed to fail. I spent 30 minutes trying to beat this single two minute sequence on the standard difficulty option, getting increasingly frustrated with every passing death. It’s a truly woeful scenario that encapsulates everything wrong with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus’ gameplay.
And despite that, the proceeding cutscene almost made the chore worth it. The character of BJ Blazkowicz is absolutely phenomenal. He is written brilliantly, you really feel for him in the early parts of the game as he struggles to come to terms with his dying body, and the harrowing opening to the game gives a very raw rendition of his upbringing. To back him up, the story and how it plays out is simply unforgettable. There’s perhaps half a dozen scenes in this game that put any other first-person shooter campaign to shame, simply in how literally insane they are. The places this game goes and the things it does there are utter genius, and I won’t be forgetting them any time soon.
To put a cherry on top of that, the world building and lore is unmatched. Listening to the Nazis ambient dialogue can be very funny and result in some ironic laughs, which would go unnoticed if you were to kill them straight away. I also need to pay homage to the collectibles you pick up, which do an even better job of fleshing out Nazi-occupied America. I work as an usher at a cinema, and the collectible you see below has to be my favourite from any game, ever:
It felt like it was speaking directly to me. A very specific job received this sort of limelight, and it touched me.
It’s such a huge shame then that the detail and care put into the game’s plot and lore wasn’t replicated in the gameplay. I will never forget Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus thanks to its bizarre story, but I lament the fact that I feared picking the controller back up every single time.
Do you agree with Liam that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is more fun to watch than to play? Did you share his frustrations with the gameplay? Gun us down from nowhere in the comments section below.
Comments 33
"You could enter a firefight at seemingly full strength, only to be gunned down within seconds without you ever knowing where the bullets came from."
I know this game is single-player, but this excerpt illustrates why I pretty much never play FPS's online.
Really interesting read and viewpoint!
I hate it when games get in the way of good movies!
@get2sammyb The classic Uncharted jab.
In truth, I do agree. I am about half way through and I love the story but I find the gameplay tough but not in a good way. I find the stealth is tougher then the last game and level design means I constantly get caught out and have to blast away. The commandant's are spread out and now they can detect bodies. I think it needs a bit more balancing.
Sounds like this game needs a content patch for consoles tbh, I was watching a friend play on PC and some of the levels were so obviously designed for fast mouse control. Must be a pain with a stick.
I thought the combat was a blast especially once you got some perks mastered and contraptions. I admit I wasn't feeling the stealth in the beginning and thought it wasn't as good as 1 and even though I still don't it did get tons more fun and viable with some stealth perks mastered and the constrictor harness unlocked. I loved the levels because most were big with multiple paths through them and allowed you to use different strategies and I loved listening to the nazi soldiers conversations and finding newspaper and journal collectibles that really made the world feel alive. The game is easily goty material and while some things could be better like all games ever made there was nothing that seriously hampered the fun
Interesting view. Personally, I just wish the cut-scenes were shorter and more frequent rather than long and spaced. I should also say, I only rented this game and never finished. I am almost certain I was close to the end though.
As much as I love playing the Metal Gear series, THAT is a game that would probably make a better movie.
From what I have been hearing the story sounds amazing for this, but not the greatest FPS player and a lot of complaints about how punishing the game is and how bad the shooting is. Makes me less inclined to give the game a go.
I avoided this game because of the bs that bethesda pulled over the marketing of the game.
@b1ackjack_ps Lowering the difficulty wouldn't alleviate more than half of my complaints with the game.
I beat it on do or die, which is down to stubbornness on my part rather than skill. I can't say I agree completely with this article- I'd argue that the lower difficulties are there for a reason, and that the game is best enjoyed when you're barely surviving encounters- but you make some very good points. The damage feedback is a glaring mistake, and not automatically picking up health/ammo unless you're standing on it is not ideal.
With that said, I can look past that and I really enjoyed the gameplay. After a few upgrades the weapons are great, and the speed of the game is what makes it imo.
Nice write up. I agree about the story and cutscenes, etc being excellent.
As for the game's difficulty, it's true the game doesn't hold back, it's brutally hard sometimes.
But I wonder, did you consider tuning the difficulty to compensate? No shame in playing on easy peasy if you enjoy the experience more that way. I had to do that when I played Catherine on PS3, made things a lot more fun.
Haven't played but I've heard this kind of view from a few people now.
I'm always torn on the whole difficulty/enjoyment balance. It's never fun to keep dying over and over, but to the same degree it can be equally disappointing to just stroll through an experience without it ever really feeling like a "game" at all.
I think what annoys me is the constant hordes of bullet-sponge enemies in games, rather than have fewer enemies with better AI.
I played on the hardest difficulty and the courtroom area had me ripping my hair out.
I was determined to beat them though and think it took me a good two hours to get out of the room. After that I was fine for the rest of the level but my god it was very hard.
I can't say the combat is the best, far from it, but I've had fun enough that I certainly don't fear booting it up. This is one that I had to buy on PC for the higher framerate and sensitivity, and it seems to help when trying to locate where gunfire is coming from. Also helps to run stealth and kill the officers too.
This is an interesting take on a game I had a different experience with, as evidenced by my review.
I think it wants you to tackle it's combat in a very specific way. Dual-wielding, avoiding aiming down the sights, staying on the move, and keeping an eye out for armour and health as you go.
I also think the key to enjoying the combat is to find the right difficulty setting. The second lowest setting provided the right combination of challenge and enjoyment for me, but the lowest - based on the hour or so I spent playing on it - turned out to be a much more forgiving way to blast your way through.
The ability to save anytime - rather than a reliance on just a checkpoint system - shows that Machine Games were aiming for a more challenging spin on the combat of the first game. The courtroom encounter especially felt like a multi stage puzzle, and I enjoyed planning out my ballistic ballet step by step.
That said, I don't think the stealth is particularly great. You just don't have the feedback or tools at your disposal to make your way through without trial and error.
WOW I'm so relieved that I'm not the only one that spent 30 minutes on that sequence. F me I was raging so hard that I wanted to throw my controller...
But yeah I kinda see your point but the game is brilliant! I never thought I would be playing the game for the story alone but I am...the characters are so so good, and B.J. in this game seems so flawed, fragile, hurting...it's brilliant! What other FPS tells the story of your main character like this? I don't remember playing any other with this much depth
Wow, you must have written this article while reading my mind or something!
Totally agree on everything. I want to like this game more than I do. It needs SERIOUS rebalancing. The part after meeting up with Grace was the first (seemingly insurmountable) chore that made me wonder what I was doing wrong; the courthouse was the second. I have since set the difficulty from 'hurt me plenty' to 'not too rough', but it doesn't seem to matter much. How can there be THREE extra difficulties above 'hurt me plenty'? Full health and armor already get picked away in literal seconds.
I never had this problem in New Order, so something must be different. I sincerely hope they patch Colossus, because right now, it's a major disappointment.
@AlexStinton disagree on the ballistic ballet: once the side doors open, you can run upstairs and spam the mounted guns. Doesn't make the section more fun, mind you, but it's hardly a puzzle.
Also, having replayed the first part of that encounter about fifteen billion times, I saw the scripting becoming painfully apparent. Then it boiled down to trial and error, as most of the game does.
@Useyourname I guess we can agree to disagree.
It certainly was a very challenging encounter - probably the hardest in the whole game - but it's broken up into distinct phases that required a bit of thought and forward thinking as to how to deal with them, hence why the rigid scripting of the encounter made it feel more like a puzzle for me.
Would it be better to play this game on easy?
interesting read. many of your criticisms of the gameplay are exactly how i felt about the new order, which is why i didn't bother picking this up. might be worth looking on youtube to see if anybody has spliced all the game's cutscenes together though.
@NinjaWaddleDee well worth considering, a few people have said they loved playing it on easy mode.
Personally disagree with this article, which is fine of course. I personally find that the unique attributes and limitations that come with the combat are a little more engrossing and thought-requiring than you might find in a typical fps campaign that also has to worry about carrying those principles over to a balanced multiplayer component against other human players. This game gets to be more nontraditional with its gameplay mechanics, so I can see where someone might feel alienated. As someone who does NOT play a lot of multiplayer shooters but loves single players ones, I'm a big fan of the same things you have complaints about.
I..disagree entirely. But kudos.
Good job you weren't around for 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81 or Pimania on the Dragon 32. Now them were tough games.
Hmm, this article really gives me something to think about now. It will be $25 for Black Friday so I was pretty certain it'd be one of the games I would buy but dying constantly gets me super frustrated. Speaking of which, Crash Bandicoot will also be $25 and I was already having the same dilemma with that..😂
this game is killing my fan smh
Glad I bought it before reading this. Gonna have to disagree, but to each his own. It is hard though, but I've been playing through nioh dlc and ng+ so I've got used to dieing, a lot! Almost biggest disappointment of the year though, thats pretty harsh.
cant agree this game is easy to easy
I find the game is fine...lots of close shaves... perhaps you guys are too pampered with regenerative health...
@Rudy_Manchego
and i thought it was just me. i just bought the game fed into the hype and im selln it back. not fun
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