Wolfenstein: The New Order - from the makers of Riddick: Butcher Bay & The Darkness 1 - by EvaUnit02
froghawk on 27/8/2017 at 19:20
I am aware regarding starbreeze. I never did manage to finish Riddick - it didn't grab me. Probably because it was so overhyped to me before I tried. On this other hand, I'm enjoying the hell out of this, since I expected nothing from a Wolfenstein game (much like Spector) and got a whole lot more. My complaints re: stealth pertain more to believability than anything - I wouldn't mind them not being fleshed out if it didn't make the AI seem so dumb.
froghawk on 31/8/2017 at 01:22
Just played through Old Blood, and it actually addressed a lot of my criticisms!
Pros:
-Continuous levels (in each of the two parts) - makes a nice contrast to New Order's nonstop jumping around. Now we're at the bottom of the sea! Now we're on the moon!
-The stealth is way more fleshed out. Not only are there more stealth mechanics (still no corpse hiding / discovery, but that's ok), but it's just a more viable playstyle - you can actually stealth most of the game or shoot your way through it, which is awesome.
-The level design actually DOES have multiple paths in some parts.
-It was fun to see the plot of the older games updated here (like actually going to castle wolfenstein, then zombies!
-It's quite visually beautiful at times.
-Throwing in several wolfenstein 3D levels was awesome - particularly the end of the last one.
Cons:
-The awful climbing mechanic from Resident Evil 6. Has anyone EVER enjoyed that?
-The vehicle section is still kind of lame.
-Far less plot driven with less cinematics. Not reaaaally a con, but I enjoyed those in the original.
Overall, I'd say it's an improvement. A solid dumb fun shooter to occupy two afternoons. Looking forwards to the sequel - I hope they carry over the new ideas from here.
henke on 31/8/2017 at 05:54
Really? I liked The New Order a lot, but The Old Blood left me cold. I was pleasantly surpised by how robust the stealth was in TNO, but I think I had started to expect too much from it by the time I got around to TOB, because there it felt underwhelming. Particularly how, when you've gotten spotted, there's no putting the monkey back in the bottle, it's just straight-up shooting from then on. I think playing MGSV and some Far Cry games (games which blend action and stealth beautifully) inbetween raised my expectations too much. I didn't even end up finishing The Old Blood.
Jeshibu on 31/8/2017 at 08:57
Huh. I'd say TOB is very worth playing through myself. It's true that it's shooties only once you get spotted, but I don't see that as worse than guards with the attention spans of goldfish with dementia. Especially as it's mostly confined environments that don't leave a lot of spots someone could've escaped to.
The Wolf3D dream levels were actually pretty tedious imo, but they're entirely optional so that's fine. They were also in TNO.
I don't remember RE6's climbing mechanic being something out of the ordinary, and that game's not an FPS. Did you mean RE7?
Sulphur on 31/8/2017 at 09:05
TOB seemed a bit, for lack of a better word, 'tired'. Castle Wolf was great initially, but it eventually became pretty mind-numbing. The moment zombies happened and it ditched TNO's tendency to inject the proceedings with some sort of story development, it became readily apparent that the gameplay couldn't sustain itself in halls and corridors for extended durations without getting pretty stale.
Malf on 31/8/2017 at 15:47
Yeah, I was disappointed with how rote TOB felt after TNO. TNO I played through enough to get all of the achievements, and loved every single minute. TOB I played through once then ditched. The robot dog encounter outside in particular was god(dog)-awful.
froghawk on 31/8/2017 at 16:35
The stealth is the same in TNO and TOB, there's just a lot more opportunity to actually do it in TOB. So I could see how you could end up with a skewed memory of it from TNO, but it was even shallower in that game. TNO mostly clearly delineates which sections are for stealth and which are for shooting - TOB lets you pick your approach in a more LGS type way. Yes, the zombie bit was basically shooting only, but that's a brief part of the game.
I'm also surprised the robot dog encounter stuck out to anyone as it was over in less than 10 seconds for me.
I definitely meant RE6 regarding the climbing mechanic, since that's the quicktime heavy game. You climb by alternating mouse 1 and mouse 2 on pc and it's really annoying and easy to mess up, and it happens frequently during TOB.
So, I don't know - playing them back to back, TOB definitely felt like a refinement. Still very much a lite FPS version of these ideas, but it's getting closer.
Sulphur on 31/8/2017 at 16:51
Well, all said and done I didn't play TNO or TOB caring much about the stealth. It was nice as an option, yes, but as FPSes the priorities of both games were on delivering these broad, brash tableaux of Tarantino-inspired insanity, which they mostly delivered with TNO and not so much with TOB, because it split its priorities between cinematic aspirations and the need to be a callback to the older Wolfensteins, and thus didn't do either particularly impressively.
I'm glad that the new one looks like it's going to focus on being even more ridiculous. If the stealth's better-implemented, that's just going to be the cherry on the top.
catbarf on 14/9/2018 at 14:57
I wish I could be excited about that, but I was massively disappointed by The New Colossus after really enjoying both The New Order and The Old Blood. Well, maybe this is an opportunity for them to learn from TNC and return to form.
