Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus review of reviews | What the critics are saying
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is one of a tantalising bunch of video games released on 27 October. Up against the likes of Super Mario Odyssey and Assassin's Creed Origins, it's going to be a busy -and wallet-burning- weekend for a lot of players, with reviews for all three ranging from positive to overwhelmingly glowing.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is the sequel to Machine Games' reboot to the Wolfenstein franchise, Wolfenstein: The New Order.
You play as B.J. Blazkowicz, a soldier in an alternate history where the Nazis have taken over the world, not unlike Philip K Dick's Man in the High Castle. Set in the United States, you will work with resistance members from all walks of life to bump off Nazis in all sorts of gruesome ways.
The violent nature of the game is key to its appeal, in many ways. In a review for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Adam Smith describes it as "spectacular, grotesque, cathartic, beautiful, horrible and shocking" in one line. While the game is, in essence, a corridor shooter - a path from A to B where there's few opportunities to stray - it has a lot more than that. While Smith opens his review with reference to the brutality of Wolfenstein's enemies (they are Nazis, after all), he quickly moves on to talk about its characters, the humans that are a part of it.
"Its heroes don’t look like any one thing because they are many and they are diverse. They are survivors and fighters and thinkers, black, white, American Jewish, British, German, male, female, disabled, disfigured and powerful. They’re also flawed – sometimes too angry, sometimes too selfish, sometimes too afraid to face up to reality – but they are the kind of people you’d want in your corner if the world went wrong."
Perhaps, at first glance, it would appear that Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus would have little to say in terms of narrative and storytelling, more akin to an explosion-filled Hollywood blockbuster, but there's a lot to this alternate history that the game has created. In a review for PCGamesN awarding the game 9/10, Ben Barrett refers to how it humanises the Nazi enemies with the express purpose of showing that they are, simply, evil people.
"The message is that the horrors of this world are committed by people - men, not gods or aliens or interdimensional baddies - and they deserve to die."
Both Barrett and Smith continue along this path, that Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus isn't just about murder, death, and the catharsis of shooting baddies. There's a world and stories to behold here, although Smith is more critical as the game doesn't offer too many opportunities to explore it.
But they also differ in experiences with the combat. Barrett describes it as "a collection of perfected game elements built on an only slightly unsteady base", while Smith likens the game's attempts to "juggling chainsaws" in how much it tries to do. He never explicitly states if it's successful in that regard, but there's a regular series of references to things that bothered him throughout the game, from how it deals with stealth to its set pieces. While Barrett had issues with stealth too, saying it's not as powerful as in the previous Wolfenstein, it's not a focus of the review.
For GameInformer, Javy Gwaltney had little but praise for the game. Awarding it a near-perfect 9.75/10, he was "quite convinced [he] hadn’t played a better first-person shooter in years" upon finishing the game, viewing its campaign as "unbeatable."
Like Smith and Barrett, Gwaltney yet again praises the storytelling, world, and characters. He clearly believe that it's doing something truly special in its attention to greater issues. Smith refers to how Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus "shoves its fist right through the skull of questions around white privilege, machismo, racism, feminism and a whole lot more," while Gwaltney believes that the game handles dark themes well, "giving a proper amount of drama and emotional depth to each while also refusing to offer easy answers to the questions that plague the characters’ hearts."
Across the board, there's praise for The New Colossus in how it's happy to tackle these issues healthily. Barrett describes it as "a good message for the modern era," while Ben Kuchera on Polygon (who awarded the game a 9/10) says it's "the rare first-person shooter that is comfortable connecting with the primal, untamed parts of your brain while celebrating just how good it feels to lay out a Nazi."
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Where to buy
While there are issues in how Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus deals with combat to some, and it's up for debate whether its status juggling chainsaws is an impressive or terrifying there, critics are almost unanimous in praising the game for its social message. As of now, it has a score of 90 on Metacritic, and 88 on OpenCritic.
