It's Zee Germans

Holy shit...I turned my PS4 on for the first time in about a month. This wasn't from a lack of enthusiasm, but because there just isn't enough time in the day—that and sleep is way too appealing sometimes. In any case, I've recently found some time to game. I picked up Watch Dogs when it came out a month ago, and I had every intention to play it this weekend, but instead I bought Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Over the last number of weeks I've heard a number of things and did quite a bit of thinking. If you remember me talking about Wolfenstein a little while back, my main gripe with picking it up was that it was an arcade shooter without any online multiplayer. When I originally saw it a number of months ago, it looked really cool and that is again what I've been hearing lately after its release. Then I thought about games like Bioshock, where you play it for the story and the atmosphere—the second one even had online multiplayer and no one cared about it—so all that mixed together pushed me over the edge and I picked it up.

Wolfenstein starts off with a bang: you and your squadron are raiding a Nazi stronghold in an attempt to kill a very influential general, and then the story goes off in an area I didn't expect (I did not read up on the story before picking it up). Personally I really enjoy when people use an alternate history sort of scenario. A number of games have used this sort of tool in their stories and settings before— Homefront and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty come to mind—and if done right it can be a lot of fun. I won't delve too far into the story, but I do urge you to check it out if alternate history is your thing, as there is some solid stuff here.

When it comes to the gameplay, you're really just getting an arcade shooter; but the controls are tight, so no worries there. They have a flexible cover system in the game: basically you hide behind stuff (so none of that "hit a button and glue yourself to a wall"). Once in cover, you can hold down a button and it allows you to lean in any direction you want. It works very well. You can also dual wield any weapon, even the knives, but I'm not sure why you would ever need to...it does looks cool though.

Style wise, you can go in guns-a-blazing or you can take a more stealthy approach. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty, so for the most part I try to take a stealthy route. The system works pretty well and gives you a number of options to take enemies out—stab them, throw a knife at them, even use a silent pistol—the game even gives you some bonuses for doing your killing the silent way. The bonus is pretty much map information, which is cool. The rationale is when you stealth kill someone, you interrogate and get information out of them (this is all inferred mind you but who cares).

All-in-all I'm having a lot of fun with Wolfenstein and I'm pretty glad I didn't let the lack of multiplayer deter me from investing some time and money into it. I'm not too far in (chapter 4) and I don't really know how long it's supposed to be. However, if you're a fan of shooters and like alternate history/killing some Nazis, I would recommend giving it a chance as it's a lot of fun.