Wolfenstein: The New Order

Wolfenstein: The New Order's emphasis on storytelling and characters make it a shooter worth playing.

In the Nazi-dominated alternate history of 1960, it takes more than big guns to topple this new regime.

Wolfenstein: The New Order has all sorts of war stories it wants to share with you and it knows how it wants you to feel, but it's not convincing. Its stories are more sensational than poignant. It's a decent shooter with a good few impressive moments, but it can be buggy and it doesn't offer much you can't find elsewhere, with little to tempt you back when it's over. Where it most tries to stand out, in its narrative and setting, it often comes off as juvenile. Overall, it's built on an impressive world but it doesn't do enough with it, and as a result it's curious, but hardly compelling.

You can blow a Nazi to pieces among some lovingly-designed sixties furnishings and probably should.

The New Order's got all the workings of a classic shooter. But in their trip back to the well, Machine Games has brought all of its talents to bear. The New Order is held together, even rocketed beyond the basic sum of its smart levels and effective mechanics by its characters. That humanity takes what would be a good shooter and makes it something truly memorable.

An over-the-top shooter with fun action, memorable set-piece moments, and decent characters, Wolfenstein: The New Order successfully transforms an old-school game into a modern experience.

A more well-rounded outing than the last Wolfenstein game, but its more comfortable employing tried-and-true gameplay conventions than striving for innovation

However, despite its nods to the oldest first-person shooter of all, it does feel thoroughly honed and reasonably modern. It isn't the future of first-person shooters, but it does rank among the best single-player examples.

Adam: Wolfenstein – BETTER THAN IT HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE Alec: Quite right too.

In many ways, Wolfenstein: The New Order is "First-Person Shooters: The Game," but it gets most of the important details right. It's still weird to me seeing Wolf games developed over and over by new devs, but MachineGames did a great job adapting the franchise in its own way. With a few tweaks, the next iteration could be something truly special.