Yeah, this is a weird pick, given my usual gaming preferences. Thing is, multiple people whose opinions I generally respect listed this as their best game of 2014. Plus I haven’t played a straight shooter for a while now, so here we are. This one plays it so straight that it’s downright anachronistic, without even a multiplayer component. That’s unheard of in this day and age!
Wolfenstein: The New Order doesn’t stand out in any way when it comes to game mechanics. Like in all the traditional shooters, you can carry all of the available weapons at the same time. Here you can even dual-wield almost everything, even shotguns! There is a cover system now but everything stays in the first-person view and it works very organically. There’s a perk system which gives you some small bonuses for performing specific feats but the effect is rather small and it should be impossible to get all of the perks in a single playthrough. It’s best thought of as a nice way to encourage players to at least try other playstyles to see if they like it.
I don’t even think that its graphics are especially impressive. They’re good of course as befits a modern AAA game but they’re not going to blow you away. I’m actually kind of stumped why this game requires a 40 Gb download. I will say that the levels are well done and the variety of them is kind of astonishing. The sound design is excellent as well with some genuinely good music.
Where this game does stand out is its story and the writing of its characters. I’ve written, again and again here, about how videogame stories are crap and should just be ignored or tolerated just because the gameplay is good. This is the rare example of the inverse case, a game with a story so well put together that it elevates solid but unspectacular gameplay into an amazing game. The weirdest thing about this is that it manages to do this with so stale a theme as the Second World War and a protagonist as boring as BJ Blazkowicz.
Now I’m not going to mislead you into thinking that the story here is great art. In many ways, it’s played just as straight as the game mechanics. One might even claim that it’s main claim to being good is that it doesn’t try to be too clever about twists or so dumb that it breaks your suspension of disbelief. It goes beyond that however. This version of Blazkowicz is a fantastic character, the way he compares his current situation to his past experiences has a chilling effect. I love how everyone around him constantly remarks about him being a stupidly tough brute who is good only for being a Nazi-killing machine. Yet you can tell from his inner monologue that he is a surprisingly thoughtful and intelligent person even while he resigns himself to being a killer.
Another reason why it should held up as an example of good storytelling in games is that it repeatedly uses elements that in other games would be instantly groan-worthy, yet it pulls them off incredibly well. Blazkowicz has a love interest in the game and there are a couple of sex scenes. Yet they never feel exploitative. Instead they’re used to highlight how precious love is amidst war and how desperately everyone seeks it. The other obvious example is setting a level in a concentration camp. There are so many ways that this could go wrong but Wolfenstein never so much as stumbles. If you pay attention, you can notice that the cutscenes in here are actually well directed. It’s not about being flashy and having lots of action. It’s about good grasp of camera movement and how best to convey the horror of a situation. Odd as it seems, this shooter made me care more about the characters in it than many other games, including ones that ought to be better at storytelling.
To me this still isn’t quite worthy enough to be the best game of any year. I’d need the gameplay to be better than this and I’m annoyed about how the final boss is a huge leap in difficulty. I had to dial down the difficulty level a notch to complete the game. I suppose even that is a testament of how closely it hews to being a traditional shooter. But I’d readily agree that this is a surprisingly good game and those who played Wolfenstein 3D would especially appreciate the nostalgia value.