Wolfenstein: The New Order

I can't tell you how much I wanted to title "Wolfenstein: The New Order: I did 'Nazi' this coming", but then I thought I better not, but now I get to put it in anyways while still looking like I didn't, stuff they don't teach you in journalism school (not that I went to one).

This was a surprise.  I took the news of "There's going to be a new Wolfenstein game" pretty much with no reaction.  The last one that came out in 2009 simply called "Wolfenstein" presumably to make googling anything about the game damn near impossible, was not great.  It was a pretty meh shooter.  But then I heard Bethesda was making it, and I got a little more interested, then I heard that they finally sorted out the iD Tech 5 engine, then I heard there wouldn't be a separate release date for PC.  And when the game came out, and people whose opinions I respected said that it was good, then it came up on the steam summer sale and I said fuck it, I'll buy it.

And I'm very glad I did.  But first, the tech side of things.  As I've mentioned before, my computer is not insane.  I built it 6 years ago and didn't go all out on a graphics card then.  Its not a bad card and I have put it through more shit than it probably deserved.  As a result, I'm always a bit concerned that new games won't have a stable frame rate and because it's the iD Tech 5, notorious for bringing even the best cards to their knees.  When I start up a new game I usually just start it, watch the frame rate jump between 35-45 on the settings the game chose for me which are always wrong and then I lower the AA, turn down shadow resolution and it'll sit at 60 from then on.  But fuck me if the game didn't pick them right off the bat, this game ran amazingly.  It gets fast and heavy a lot but that framerate didn't budge a frame.  And I know this because FRAPS was running because I have grown weary of Steam's screen shot system, but for some unknown reason it insists on putting it's overlay in the screenshots.  I guess life's pretty good if my current biggest worry is the framerate being in my screenshots BUT THAT DOESN'T STOP IT FROM BEING ANNOYING!  So half the screenshots have them in there, try not to stare.

But that long ass story was basically to explain that this game is amazing visually and runs like a champ even on older hardware.

Yes, I know it says lower than 60fps, but screenshots tend to lag when to take them

And while my computer sounded like a jet engine reving up, it managed to not use 100% GPU the whole time, so that was nice.

Now I'm going to complain, but first I'm going to confused the hell out of you.  As I mentioned in previous posts, I play games on the hardest difficulty possible these days, and it's because I'm better than you.  In reality it's tough for me to care if there's not a real obstacle to get over.  So I played it on Uber.

And here's where it gets confusing, the game was still way too easy, but I say that after having died 95 times.  The difficulty is insanely inconsistent.  The combat is broken into two distinct ideas.  A building or area with somewhat confined movement with patrolling guards that you can stealth or just shoot your way through, and this is the bulk of the game and it's incredibly easy.  The guns feel really nice, but a single headshot from any gun will take out the standard nazi.  And even if you miss, it's somewhat trivially easy to just mow people down.  But the reason for my 95 deaths was the other type of combat.  Every now and then you get placed in a room and they send waves of enemies at you, some of which are much stronger and heavily armored than the ones previous.  There's not an easy way to take some of them out, even if you outsmart them.  So it turns into a grind where you just have to run through and memorize enemy spawn locations and get lucky.  A few times this demotivated me to such an extent that I would stop playing for a while.  This is not fun difficulty, this is the worst kind.  I never did turn down the difficulty though at times it was incredibly tempting.

I could do an entire post explaining my views of games from the slant of game theory, but it basically boils down like this.  Difficulty should be dependant on player skill + situational ease and should not be dependant on surprise or an arbitrary assumption of player skill.  Since I managed to put together a whole sentence that doesn't actually say anything, basically difficulty is good when it tests you over what you know and is bad when it tests you on what you don't.  For example, a boss fight in Dark Souls tests you on your ability to read attacks, dodge effectively and balance defense and offense, on the contrary TNO often tests how well you can pick a spot that won't have an enemy spawn behind you or how often the RNG on the enemy shotgun spray decides to screw you over.  The difficulty balance is all wonky in this game because there's often no chance of reading the situation and reacting accordingly because of arbitrary reasons.  The game's difficult to be sure, but in anti-fun ways.

And now come the accolades, and there's a lot.  Story sucks in most shooters, because it's not important, at least to most people.  Spec Ops: The Line and FarCry 3 are the exception amongst a sea of shit.  Shooters don't get popular because of their story and it's soul crushing to me because I've seen it done well.  Your trigger finger in shooters often feels too light, it's too easy when it doesn't carry weight.

Most of the people in my life would probably call me cold and stoic, maybe not in such harsh terms but for the most part it's true.  I'm not a crier and have been called "heartless" on more than once occasion.  TNO shook me.  It's not a happy game, it'll trick you, at times into thinking it is, but there's a time where the game just starts piling it on and it doesn't stop.  The characters are incredibly human and the writing is truly astounding.  I usually don't mind "terrible" voice acting too much but I fear that might be broken, it's impressive to see what truly good voice acting can do.  I'm not sure if it will effect people like it did me because I have somewhat of a history with some of the subject matter, but I actually had to stop playing for a bit because my screen was getting too blurry to shoot nazis.

Basically just play it.  It's not perfect, it's got a lot of problems, but this is important to the genre.  It has enough good ideas to really show what's possible.  A gruff, built as fuck alpha male with cheesy lines that's well written, the themes are cliche but the writing is astounding, the gameplay is generic but is just plain old fun, the story hurts but it's beautifully done.  It's a perfectly broken game and I was totally surprised.

Now for all the spoiler free screenshots I got, there's not a lot.

I'm sure this is a fallout reference