![]() It’s also used as a way to quietly take down enemies, which contributes to the game’s excellent balance between stealth and gunplay. This can be used for anything: the ability to break down fragile walls, jack open uncooperative doors, and scale giddy precipices adds welcome diversity to the environments. The Old Blood builds on that formula with the addition of a simple lead pipe. Certain design elements of shooters fell by the wayside over the last 10 years, but why restrict players to only two or three weapons? It may be more realistic, but is less choice better?" But the new Wolfenstein games don’t feel stuck in the past the simple combat and winding level design instead comes off as a breath of fresh air when married to modern graphics and responsive controls. "When first approaching a project like Wolfenstein, we had to ask ourselves ‘Why were the original Wolfensteins so good?’ and this forced us to look at some design features that might be regarded as old school these days. " The New Order was definitely a bit of a love letter to old-school shooters," says MachineGames producer John Jennings. "'The New Order' was definitely a bit of a love letter to old-school shooters." What it does share, however, is the way it plays: tight, old-school first-person action that removes many of the standard elements - regenerating health, for example - that people have come to expect from the genre. And, in some aspects, it turns out not to be as interesting. The Old Blood differs from The New Order in a few ways. It’s called The Old Blood, it’s a $20 “stand-alone expansion,” and it’s even more extreme. Dwight Schultz’s turn as skeletal antagonist Deathshead may not be quite as unsettling as Hans Landa, but his sadistic malevolence still earns him a place in the pantheon of great video game villains. It reminds me of nothing as much as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which adopted a similar schlocky tone to the same dark period of history to great effect. Set in a devastated Europe ruled by Nazis, with burly protagonist BJ Blazkowicz as the free world’s last hope, The New Order handles persecution, sex, and politics with unusual pathos for a violent video game, while still painting the overall picture in broad, colorful strokes. But developer MachineGames used smart storytelling devices to build up a truly evil enemy that you feel no guilt at all in taking on - the game is set in an alternate history where the Nazis won - and the results are surprisingly congruous and emotional. Wolfenstein: The New Order is as brutal and intense as any first-person shooter you’ll ever play, and it’s the most recent entry in a classic series whose stock has considerably fallen. It’s a problem that, for many, has sunk the experiences of games like BioShock Infinite and Uncharted they involve heroic characters whose nuanced behavior in cutscenes doesn’t match up to their murderous actions when the player is in control.īut last year, one game came as close as I’ve seen to solving this intractable dilemma, and from an unlikely source. Action video games that want to tell stories have a problem: players do little more than shoot people for the vast majority of their time.
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