Wolfenstein: The New Order Hands-On Preview

Wolfenstein: The New Order is brutal, unforgiving first-person shooter romp to rid the world of Nazis (again). You’ll find yourself deep inside an alternate history where the Nazi’s actually won World War II. Cue lots of swastikas, banners, uniforms, propaganda, hats and giant Nazi robots. Yes, robots! Giant hulking things of evil covered with guns and looking damn cool.

You control series protagonist William “B.J.” Blazkowicz who must be getting tired of killing Nazis by now. Jens Matthies, Creative Director at developer MachineGames said that “because we are such huge fans of the original Wolfenstein 3D we’ve stayed very true to the original conception of this character [Blazkowicz]. He’s very much this muscle-bound Nazi-ass-kicking action hero.”

The New Order is filled with splendidly well-dressed Nazi soldiers who you must pump full of bullets at every opportunity. It seemed (almost) a shame to tarnish their impeccable dress uniforms or suits of armour with their red blood. The guns feel solid and powerful. The blood squib effects are all really very bloody and the enemies die properly. There was none of that rubbish rag-doll twitching that you see in some games.

Don’t expect to simply wander through the levels shooting from the hip like some sort of 80s action hero. This game will kick your butt if you do. It wasn’t so much the hordes of soldiers that were the problem – although I frequently came second-best in many a fire fight – rather, the giant bloody robots. They are big, hard and heavily armed, perpetually angry and very, very shooty.

After going, “Aaaggh, killer robot!”, I ended up scrambling for cover while emptying clip after clip of ammo trying to work out a weak spot. If I dawdled for too long behind a wall, as soon as I popped my head up to take a shot, a swarm of bullets appeared to say hi to my face. It was like taking on a heavily armed Strider from Half Life 2: Episode 2. These battles are fun but tough. I ended up restarting quite a few times before taking one particular hulking beast of a robot.

Thankfully the level I played rewarded my bit of exploration with dual wielding pistols and some body armour. According to Jens Matthies this game is “a little bit more of an action adventure shooter rather than just a straight up shooter.” OMG, there is a plot! Yep, there’s bits of the game that don’t involve shooting. I’ve seen them. One level involved a train, serving cups of coffee and a side-kick called Anya. A sidekick?

Don’t worry, the coffee serving was just because Blazkowicz was undercover, rather than any barista minigame intentions on the developers part. But on the subject of Anya, MachineGames weren’t revealing anymore info about her. If she’s a Wolfenstein equivalent of the Alyx Vance from the Half-Life games I’ll be very happy, as she’ll be able to look after herself while I go shoot Nazis.

Wolfenstein: The New Order will be out by the end of 2013 on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.