The computer game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was developed by the Swedish company MachineGames in 2017. This is the sequel to Wolfenstein II: The New Order (2014). The New Colossus takes place in 1961, after 5 months of The New Order.
The sequel of the product in 2014 took first places in the ratings of many players for a reason. In addition, it received high marks along with positive reviews from the gaming media in the industry. This is a reboot of the classic and famous Wolfenstein series, more precisely, Wolfenstein: The New Order. Not surprisingly, after the success of the above project, many fans began to look forward to the continuation of the adventures of William Joseph Blaskowitz. The representatives of the Swedish studio and the publisher, as is usually the case, remained silent about all their future releases. The first minor details about the future novelty became known only two years later, when during the summer E3 2016 exhibition during the Bethesda Softworks conference, those present noticed a small hint of the name of the game. The official announcement of the project took place exactly one year later at the same exhibition and it caused a real storm of applause.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is an Action-adventure, First-person shooter video game developed by the Swedish studio MachineGames and published with the support of Bethesda Softworks on October 27, 2017 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The plot events of the sequel start practically a moment after the final of Wolfenstein: The New Order. As a result of the successful storming of the laboratory fortress and the decisive battle with General Wilhelm von Strasse, nicknamed "Deathshead", BJ was seriously injured. Realizing that his life was hanging by a thread, the protagonist decided to cause a nuclear strike, thereby destroying the latest technological and research achievements of the Nazis. Resigned to his fate, Blasco was ready to die, but, fortunately, at the last minute his friends returned for him, led by the chairman of the "Kreisau Circle" - Caroline Becker.
The protagonist's minds were quickly loaded onto a helicopter and successfully evacuated to the new rebel headquarters. She turned out to be the former queen of the Nazi Kriegsmarine - the submarine "Eva's Hammer", kindly "borrowed" by the resistance forces during the storyline events of the previous game in the series. Since that moment, a little more than five months have passed and all this time BJ was in a coma, lying on a hospital bed in the medical department of the submarine. During this time, he underwent several complex surgical operations and later remained in a helpless state, despite all the doctors' attempts to put his health in order.
Once Terror Billy did come to his senses, but it was not the friendly words of support from Caroline or Anna's girlfriend that woke him up, but the numerous sounds of shots and explosions on board. It turns out that the submarine was actively stormed by elite units of the SS troops, led by the old-acquaintance Irene Engel. This venerable frau, having received the title of Obergruppenfuhrer, did not sit idly by in recent months, but, on the contrary, made every effort to find and neutralize the enemies of the Third Reich.
Shocked by his rather bad physical condition and the general course of events, Blasco is not going to surrender to the mercy of intruders. Despite serious kidney problems and a completely paralyzed lower body, ignoring the terrible pain from his injuries, he decides to once again take up arms, find friends, and also help the team repel the attack on the submarine. This is the plot of the game, and then we turn to an overview of the technical and gameplay features of this game project.
From a technical point of view, this part of the series has gone ahead by leaps and bounds in terms of overall picture quality, increasing the level of detail of objects and game levels. First of all, this was possible thanks to the decision of the developers to abandon the old id Tech 5 game engine with all its problems and take as a basis the brand new id Tech 6 engine, which proved to be excellent in 2016 DOOM. From a gameplay point of view, at first glance, there were no dramatic changes. Those who have completed Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood will feel at home in the sequel.
Among the key gameplay features, the following should be highlighted: a familiar arsenal of weapons, wonderful shooter mechanics, a system for improving the main character familiar with the above games, officers, at the first shots immediately raise the alarm and call for reinforcements, as well as two styles of passing the storyline tasks of Stealth vs. Mayhem. Fortunately, some pleasant surprises awaited the fans of the series. The first of these was the presence of a full-fledged weapon improvement system. In the previous game in the series, it was only allowed to modify a few individual copies from BJ's arsenal.
In the sequel, the developers provided the opportunity to independently improve all weapons and grenades, provided there is a sufficient number of special kits, called the Upgrade Kit. It doesn't matter which one you choose, be it the regular Pistole, Sturmgewerh, Mashinenpistole, Schockhammer or Kampfpistole, each of them comes with three upgrades that increase their overall combat effectiveness. The second innovation was the emergence of completely new types of so-called heavy weapons.
The familiar MaschinenGewehr 46 and 61 series are a thing of the past, but the sequel has four completely new weapons, namely: Lasergewehr, Hammergewehr, Dieselgewehr and Ubergewehr. And while we have not yet completed the topic of the arsenal, we will consider innovations at number three for this part of the series. The developers have reworked the Macedonian-style shooting system, allowing you to pick up not only identical weapons, as it was before. For example, now the protagonist can easily take an assault rifle in one of his hands, and a shotgun or grenade launcher in the other.
The fourth innovation was the emergence of large-scale, full-fledged additional tasks. Apart from the main storyline, in addition to collecting collectibles or helping some NPCs aboard the submarine, the protagonist will face a series of missions related to the search and neutralization of representatives of the high command of the OKW forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) located in the United States of America. It seems like a trifle, but nice. Separately, I would like to focus on the work of screenwriters.
In the sequel, they once again managed to perfectly convey the atmosphere of the alternative sixties of the twentieth century and show America under Nazi occupation. In addition, they also quite well revealed the main character and the characters around him. Blaskowitz in the sequel no longer appears before us in the form of an extremely fearless fighter against the Nazis, ready to go even into the scorching heat towards his own goal, despite any difficulties. On the contrary, we are shown him from another more human side, as a person with a certain life baggage, character, emotions, everyday worries and problems, strengths and weaknesses. We will not ignore the wonderful musical accompaniment written by composers Mick Gordon and Martin Andersen. With replayability, the project is also doing well, because, as in Wolfenstein: The New Order, you are given the opportunity to see the continuation of the stories of Fergus Reed and Private Wyatt, which are radically different in places from each other. Unfortunately, there were two small flaws in the game, which partially spoiled the overall impression of the storyline. One of the downsides was, frankly, poor product optimization at the time of release, but fortunately the developers quickly fixed it with future patches.
The second drawback was the unexpected and completely unexpected ending of the story. We will not spoil here, we will only say that the grandiose event in the history of America, for which we are preparing so carefully throughout the entire plot of the sequel, in the end never comes. One gets the impression that the writers decided to complete or interrupt the history of this game, as they say, at the most interesting place. In general, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus came out, without exaggeration, an excellent story-driven shooter and a beautiful continuation of the series.
High marks from the specialized gaming media, as well as the awards received by developers at The Game Awards 2017, confirm this. Whether or not you want to buy this game is up to you.
