We may have been left to rot in a squalid prison camp while we wait for our opportunity to review Wolfenstein: The New Order, but at least we can round up the appraisals of others, right? Swedish developer MachineGames’ macabre debut has divided critics, who have peppered the web with bullets of both overbearing praise and unexpected dissatisfaction. We’ve included five of the better write-ups in the empty space below.
Polygon - 9/10
The New Order’s got all the workings of a classic shooter. But in their trip back to the well, MachineGames has brought all of its talents to bear. The New Order is held together, even rocketed beyond the basic sum of its smart levels and effective mechanics by its characters. That humanity takes what would be a good shooter and makes it something truly memorable.
Gamespot - 8/10
Both the laser cutter and the perks system feel like missed opportunities at worst, because even aside from them, The New Order's combat intensity and variety have granted the Wolfenstein series a breath of fresh air, whilst still managing to hit the nostalgic highs that I expect from the series. It has injected some substance into the primal pleasure of shooting Nazis by way of an interesting tone that addresses the changing roles of first-person shooter protagonists. Through this, the game is both a celebration of the Wolfenstein series and what feels like a fitting send-off for it. The New Order could be the last hurrah of William "BJ" Blazkowicz, an outing which, for all its excess and bombast, is far from mindless.
USgamer.net - 4/5
A sprawling epic that sometimes doesn't quite hit the ridiculously high bar it sets for itself, but nevertheless delivers an absolutely spectacular, supremely gory, utterly compelling experience.
IGN - 7.8/10
Wolfenstein: The New Order is the melding of your typical, everyday shooter with quality writing and a cast of believable and relatable characters. Machinegames' more grounded treatment of the often way over-the-top alternate Nazi history is also a nice touch, and while The New Order is in no way, shape, or form a simulation of the real world, its 10-to-12 hour campaign can certainly make you stop and wonder more than, say, Raven's 2009's occult-centric Wolfenstein reboot. With an essential early-game choice that makes it worth playing through twice, the story at the center of Wolfenstein: The New Order props up its competent — but mostly unremarkable — shooting.
Eurogamer.net - 6/10
"War is not nice," Barbara Bush supposedly said, and it's often difficult for creative media to get across just how nice war isn't. Wolfenstein: The New Order has all sorts of war stories it wants to share with you and it knows how it wants you to feel, but it's not convincing. Its stories are more sensational than poignant. It's a decent shooter with a good few impressive moments, but it can be buggy and it doesn't offer much you can't find elsewhere, with little to tempt you back when it's over. Where it most tries to stand out, in its narrative and setting, it often comes off as juvenile. Overall, it's built on an impressive world but it doesn't do enough with it, and as a result it's curious, but hardly compelling.
Are your trigger fingers itching over the prospect of dismantling robotic limbs? Has the very thought of a single player centric first-person shooter left you rolling your eyes? Gun us down in the comments section below.
Comments 18
i did nazi that coming xD Great scores
When's your review going up Sammy? Obviously it's the only one we can trust!
@Dodoo Alex Stinton is tackling this one as we type. Sadly, there's no ETA yet. I'm very disappointed we haven't got this ready in time, but it's been out of our hands I'm afraid.
Eurogamer...their view always seems to be heavily polarised to everyone else's these days. Click bait? Who knows. I used to enjoy their reviews but they've been slipping of late..
Closing up the office early to get my pre-order later. My co-editor has been playing since Saturday and his assessment is basically - If you like id shooters you'll love it. Which I do
All looks good, the criticism from Eurogamer.net are plain ridiculous. Looks like I've got something extra to look forward to over the summer.
@get2sammyb No worries man, can't win 'em all!
Yep it's getting good reviews, Eurogamer gave Daylight a 7-10 i think that alone says it all.
I think the Eurogamer writer didn't really like the story, which others have suggested is one of the stronger parts. I guess that's why their score is lower.
@MadchesterManc I will be playing it later on too
Eurogamer can be a strange beast for sure. Sometimes a reviewer is the most objective person who ever sat in front of a game for entertainment, and others are nitpicking fascists!
I'll be honest, I find articles like this much more useful and interesting than the individual reviews and ratings. If I'd seen the Eurogamer score in isolation then I wouldn't have known how out of step it is. To go by an individual rating is sometimes like just stopping someone randomly on the road to ask them how they'd score it, even if some of the reviews are eloquently worded and explain their scoring system.
Seeing all these scores together is handy - thanks for that.
Just waiting on the final verdict from PushSquare then
Wow, didn't expect the scores to be so good. Obviously looking forward to the Pushsquare review.
Would love to play this, because I love the over the top craziness of the game, but the German version sucks. Not only are you no longer fighting Nazis (which isn't a problem in other games like CoD 2 or such), but "the Regime", but because of that the English voice overs are also not on the disk and I hat dubbed versions of anything.
And importing it from another country is illegal in this case.
@Reverend_Skeeve illegal? Why are germans so touchy on the subject? ...
Usually these game's normally release on friday here in the EU so i wasn't excepting to see Wolfenstein until friday, to my surprise it's on the PSN Store to download now, so i'm downloading it now obviously on the PS4.
Better than I expected, hope I didn't make a mistake going with Watch Dogs instead.
@Sanquine Outside of things that are classified as art by law (such as movies, books, comics), Nazi symbols like the swastika or the SS-runes and the like are forbidden in Germany, for obvious reasons. And since the German laws classify games as toys, it's illegal to sell video games with those symbols here, because toys aren't allowed to have those symbols.
Most games handle this by "just" replacing the swastikas with other symbols, like the WW2 Call of Duty games for example, but keep the setting of the game as such intact (so it's okay to shoot Nazis in games here, as long as they don't wear any of the forbidden symbols). Wolfenstein however goes another route and changes the whole setting, thus you aren't fighting Nazis anymore, but "The Regime".
Since toys with Nazi symbols are forbidden, it's illegal to import them from other countries as well. It's mostly the law, though. Most Germans wouldn't have a problem with uncensored Games like Wolfenstein (other than the Neo-Nazos, of course ), and if games would be re-classified as art (as will hopefully happen someday, because I think we all here agree that games are not toys but an art form), it would be legal to sell uncensored "shoot the Nazi" games here.
My copy arrived in the mail from Best Buy today. Very nice indeed.
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