Machinegames' Wolfenstein Series (The New Order/Old Blood/New Colossus)

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Machinegames' Wolfenstein Series (The New Order/Old Blood/New Colossus)

Post by TypicalStandUser »

I thought I could handle The New Order like I played DOOM 2016, turns out I got rusty and had to trial and error some parts of the first stage. I enjoyed it and will continue to do so during downtimes in the week. I may even get Old Blood during the next Steam sale during the Turkey Day weekend.

Yeah, New Colossus came out and a few Metacritic reviews have given it zeroes for being a "SJW's wet dream" while most high-name reviewers like IGN/Polygon liked it for the impressive narrative and scathing satire of certain conservative ideology. Thanks to the IdTech6 engine (also in DOOM 2016), the environments are even more beautiful than before. Hopefully, that'll be true when its ported to the Nintendo Switch next year.

As much I would LOVE to play it, I'll wait until the bugs get fixed (Steam has reported a lot of them on day one) and buy it when all of the Freedom Chronicles DLC episodes come around.

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Re: Machinegames' Wolfenstein Series (The New Order/Old Blood/New Colossus)

Post by takenoko »

I just beat the New Colossus a day or two ago. I felt rather lukewarm on it. The Waypoint Podcast guys seemed really into it for the social message and the commentary, but I thought it lacked the same thoughtfulness that the original had which made it excel from being just an ordinary shooter.

Sequels are a tricky thing. It's tempting to capitalize on a successful game like Tomb Raider or Wolfenstein and use that brand name to get me back through the door, but you still have to hit similar beats of the original, while at the same time hopefully hitting all new beats. And I really didn't feel like Wolfenstein 2 or Rise of the Tomb Raider did anything besides feel safe.

It just felt very shallow. "How do we bring more shock value? We'll put Nazis in America. How do we make it shocking? Let's put KKK members on the streets. How do we outdo the moon from the first game? We'll go to Venus!" Instead of feeling like a thoughtful game that stood on its own, it felt like a painfully obvious extension to the first game, making the first game 18 hours too long retroactively!

I chose Wyatt, which apparently was the good choice since the other guy apparently had jack all to do in this story. Except, I spent the whole game being mad at Wyatt for being a druggie fuck-up man-boy. And no one else really gets an interesting arc too. I react to the world based on the way BJ and his friends react to it, but it felt like Machinegames decided it was more important to have a billion npcs saying one liners on the ship than write a new character arc for any of the main crew.

Part of the problem might be that they've always wanted to make this game series a trilogy. So maybe they can't do too much without disrupting their future plans... but the first game stood on its own, and there are a bunch of 2's that were good on their own too (Mass Effect 2, Arkham City for example). Grace is the clear winner this time around, but everyone else was pretty meh.

Yahtzee has a pretty fair review on which he covers the same points. It wasn't a bad game by any means, and clearly there was work done, but it didn't spark the same excitement that the first game did. When I finished the first one, I started it again to see the other storyline and to experience the world a bit more. This time, I think I'll pass on this and all the goofy side quests that don't reward you.

I mean, you can literally see the game padding when they have you go back through old maps to kill the uubercommanders. Which was, sadly, more fun than playing the main missions to move the story forward.

I'll be back for if/when they release 3, but I'll probably wait and see if people like it first. Sadly, they didn't hit lightning twice for me with this sequel.
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