This had me running around like Superman, with bullets bouncing harmlessly off me as I ran headlong into rooms of enemies, carelessly spraying lead in every direction. Being a Wolfenstein noob, I started out on the easiest difficulty setting. So yes, I agree with the rest of gaming culture, this bombastic game is great fun to play. The way these characters speak, move, and inhabit the space they are in lends a realism to the game that only serves to raise the stakes and sell the Wolfenstein universe. But then, after I reached a point in the story that included many of Wolfenstein’s supporting characters, I realized that I was seeing dialogue delivered in a naturalistic manner that was superior to most major films. At first, I thought that I was watching scenes that were staged and filmed as well as any Hollywood film.
The cut scenes that deliver the major story beats are nothing short of extraordinary. While I have seen a lot of chances taken in this regard in recent years (Mafia III comes to mind), I was still in awe at the ballsy-ness on display in Wolfenstein (as well as a hilarious takedown of the time-honored American practice of referring to things that are tough as “ballsy”). This is not a game that shies away from the uglier side of the United States, somehow finding a way to contrast the seedy underbelly of our collective history with the parts of our mythos that still strike brave and true.
As the game moved from New York City into America’s post-war South, I found myself gasping at the boldness of the storytelling. It didn’t hurt that the post-nuclear version of New York in Wolfenstein II is strongly reminiscent of the apocalyptic wastes of the Fallout series, which is pretty much catnip for my brain.įrom that point on, I was all in. It was like cresting the first big hill on a roller coaster and realizing that you were going over the edge now, so you might as well sit back and enjoy it. The combat level design opened up some, I was able to start modding my weapons, the environments were more interesting, everything about the game just slid into place and started propelling me forward. I realized that I had gained the character knowledge I needed through cut scenes and emergent storytelling, I had a good grasp on the major characters, and I was suddenly invested in the outcome of B.J.’s mission. I understood that the events I was witnessing were important, but I lacked the context as to why.īut a few hours into The New Colossus, when Blazkowicz heads to a bombed-out New York City in an attempt to make contact between his group and a resistance cell there, the game completely opened up to me and things started clicking in a big, big way. It was like sitting down to watch the third season of Breaking Bad, having never watched the first two. And I really didn’t have any emotional connection to the series’ characters, so beyond the audacity with which some of them are handled in the game’s opening hours, I was essentially just watching the continuing adventures of strangers. Sure, the cutscenes were nuts (more on this in a bit), but the gameplay seemed so…standard. Running down same-y-looking industrial corridors, crawling through ventilation shafts, shooting Nazis with some pretty run-of-the-mill weaponry, all of this had me itching to put down the controller and play something else. The initial levels, which have Blazkowicz stomping around in the bowels of various airships and submersibles, did not do a lot to draw me in. I’m not a big first-person shooter guy, and I can count the number of FPS campaigns that I’ve actually beaten on the fingers of one hand. I wasn’t initially sold on Wolfenstein II. Jamming this whole thing onto the Switch is a major achievement. Wolfenstein II is a sprawling epic of a game, with a campaign that can easily take 25 to 30 hours for pokey players like me. 3) I can’t believe the Switch is capable of running this thing. What did I think? I’m going to cut right to the chase here.
So, my excursion into the alternate-universe Nazi-occupied America on the Nintendo Switch was my first real experience walking in the shoes of series hero B.J. Play the games I purchase? Who are we kidding here? Sure, I purchased the first modern Wolfenstein title on sale for five bucks a few years ago, but I never actually played the thing. I went into Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus cold, having never played a Wolfenstein title. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I clicked the Start button on Wolfenstein II.