Sometimes, rebooting and reimagining a game can mean its death. Well, this series jump started Wolfenstein's popularity after a bit of a lukewarm reception of the 2009 version. This was a brand new installment with a grand bit of worldbuilding. This takes place in an alternate future where the Third Reich win the war. BJ Blazkowicz starts us off in World War 2 where the Axis's technology is far more sophistocated than this timeline. As they launch an attack, the allies are all killed except for BJ.
Our hero gets put into a hospital, and is basically forgotten about because the Nazis believe him to be dead. However, since they won the war, their stranglehold on Germany only grows more and more ironclad. Blazkowicz wakes up from his catatonia to find the world in a neo-fascist state where the Nazi Regime reigns supreme, and soon they come to the hospital and begin killing patients. Anya, the girl who was taking care of him and with whom he becomes interested in, also gets taken by the Third Reich before he comes out of his coma, ready to shoot and kill. Using a dinner knife, he kills one guard, takes his gun and from there, it's time to take the fight to them.
Basically, it gets to the same place as the original, but then spins it to where you're not just in Castle Wolfenstein. You're going all across a new aged Germany if it was still under Hitler's rule. You find and rescue Anya and you find and join the rebellion against the Third Reich. Throughout the game, you go on missions that gain more and more intelligence about their plans and this eventually leads you to the moon. One of this game's biggest draws was that you are literally killing Nazis on the moon. What sells this idea is that they actually sell it story-wise. You feel the stranglehold the Nazis have because you interact with them and see their cruely play out in front of you. You meet one woman on a train surrounded by guards and you genuinely think they found you out. What it actually was was them screwing with your head and making fun of you. They can play the most horrific practical jokes and just laugh about it and you naturally want to take them down.
When I say futuristic, I mean giant machine attack dogs, futuristic tanks and mech suits! They even have drones and the combat becomes chaotic when you're having to take down all of these elements along with the normal human guards. You can dual wield machineguns and feel like a real badass in all new ways as you take down the evil Axis!
The graphics are so huge that this game had to be released on multiple discs for the Xbox 360. With PS3, it simply had a lot of load screens. That doesn't take much from the gameplay aside from some textures and frames. The great thing is that you can see where all of that storage space went when you look at the game itself. It's not without its glitches, but it still came out a finished game that is so fun to play because you feel as powerful as the Wolfenstein man himself in Wolf 3D of old. It's science fiction, dystopian fiction rather than the more fantasy/scifi/horror of 2009 and RTCW.
It is also much more realistic with such detailed graphics and that is felt when you have a Nazi torture session. To find and rescue the rebellion fighters, you need to hurt an SS officer and threaten him with a chainsaw! This man is ready to take down the entire regime himself and that all begins with a new team to do it. BJ builds up this entire resistance himself and together they fight against the entire world order on every front. You want to succeed because you believe in the cause and it means you kill Nazis on a large scale. The story is engaging because you want to finish the mission and kill a lot of guys with big guns. The story has its highs and lows, the biggest low being the open ending that invites a sequel. The problem is that the sequel wasn't quite as good. The series itself took a lot of highs and lows: From the Old Blood to the terribly unoriginally titled Youngblood, the franchise didn't end up going out on a high note. No, it went out thanks to poor writing and ill-conceived story continuations that made no sense. Still, that's a story for another time. The New Order is awesome, it is totally worth your death---time! Totally worth your time.
