In the demo I played on the PC version, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus brings back the challenging, unadulterated shooter action of Wolfenstein: The New Order in a great-looking followup to Machine Games' reboot. To be clear there isn’t a ton that’s radically different about it mechanically: BJ still sneaks around knifing Nazis in the back before grabbing two guns and blowing the rest away. But the two levels I played each have some distinctive qualities that made them feel different from the "original" in subtle but important ways.
Like the first game, Wolfenstein 2 plays its story of resisting technologically advanced Nazis pretty straight, with strong performances from its cast. BJ and his now-pregnant girlfriend Anya, grizzled science genius Set, and the rest of the resistance fighters left standing at the end of The New Order all give convincing dramatic performances during the cinematics I saw. At the same time, The New Colossus is self-aware enough to know when it’s being ridiculous – and fully embraces it.
BJ fights his way through a surprisingly wheelchair-accessible sub.
In the opening, BJ wakes up on the stolen Nazi sub in the alternate-history 1961, but his body’s in bad shape. When the sub comes under attack he hops in a wheelchair and proceeds to roll through the surprisingly wheelchair-accessible ship, blowing away Nazis by the dozen. Fighting in a wheelchair’s an interesting twist - you can’t dual-wield because you need one hand to push your wheels, and your movement speed is jerky between pushes.
This sequence has some excellent gags: during your reunion with Set, a parade of Nazis fall into a trap in the background, each unaware that the group before them was splattered on the walls by Set's powerful microwave beam. Later, returning villain Frau Engel takes time out from her apparent victory over the resistance to fat-shame her daughter, which doesn’t work out well for her. And when BJ calls himself "a burden" after having single-handedly killed dozens of Nazis, I laughed out loud.
Wolfenstein reminds you it’s only half joking.
After that, I skipped ahead to another mission in which BJ is equipped with an armored suit that restores his body to working order and sent to Roswell, New Mexico to nuke to a Nazi base built on top of a former secret American military facility. A parade scene in downtown Roswell gives a sense of small-town life in the Nazi-occupied United States; robed Klansmen walk around openly, but even they get stopped and harassed by soldiers and ordered to brush up on their German – or else. Shortly after, an encounter with a Nazi officer and a terrified American mother and her son in a diner is a strong moment where Wolfenstein reminds you it’s only half joking. But then we get an extended conversation between BJ and the skittish conspiracy theorist Super Spesh, which is another fun performance with some good gags to lighten the mood.
Fighting through an underground railway station and onto a high-speed train (which leads to the Area 52 base) is a full return to the mix of stealth and all-out guns-blazing action I remember from The New Order. The hatchet-based melee animations of chopping up unaware soldiers are fun and all, but I tended to go the loud route myself – because how often do you have the opportunity to grab two machine guns and mow down Nazis anymore? (Roughly as often as Wolfenstein games come out, by my count.) Using a mix of SMGs, assault rifles, and shotguns with a handful of upgrades, I tore through Nazi storm troopers, heavily armored tank dudes, attack dogs, and even super-fast terminator-like robots. When the action heats up it recaptures the same great, pure first-person shooting feeling as The New Order.
There are some tough fights, too, because Wolfenstein doesn’t go easy on you with things like regenerating health (above 10hp, anyway), and at this stage of The New Colossus BJ’s still injured and working with a 50% health pool to begin with. I died a fair amount, especially when I charged in without thinning the herd first, but most were good deaths where I went down trying to pull off some brave (read: stupid) kills.
It’s also noteworthy that in these two levels the action never paused for any laser-cutter puzzle-solving segments as The New Order does. I can’t say I missed those much, because the stealth and action pacing lets you change things up whenever you like anyway, and there are a fair amount of newspaper articles, journals, and photos to pick up if you want to stop to smell the roses. But we’ll see what other surprises Wolfenstein 2 has in store for us on October 27 – which, by the way, is the same day as Assassin’s Creed Origins and Super Mario Odyssey. That’ll be a big day for gamers, so stick with IGN for more.
Dan Stapleton is IGN's Reviews Editor. You can follow him on Twitter to hear gaming rants and lots of random Simpsons references.
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