Wolfenstein: The New Order

Everything op_2019_si said, I have experienced as well. I just started the game tonight and have had 5 or so lockups/crashes in my first session. Any time I died, or finished a mission/had to load cutscenes. It at least saved progress so when I loaded back in I was at the start of the new mission. I'm missing certain in/outro cutscenes though. I hope something could be done about this as I don't see myself finishing it in this state. I've read various fixes including updating directx and playing the game in windowed mode. I haven't tried the latter.

TLDR: Pros: -Great gunplay -Runs well -Graphics are good Cons: -Terrible pace -BOOOOOOORING missions -Story is meh (read why) -Textures are shit So game is good, gunplay is phenomenal, feel of the guns, kick, sound is ok, but overall gunplay is best part of the game. Graphics are okay but game is from 2014 (now is 2020) looks nice. Game runs smoothly on my 2014 hardware (r9 280x, i5-4460) so that part is well done. Dont see much more positive sides. So for bad things. When you turn your head textures become blurry and everything becomes like "glowing" indicating you can pick it up but you cant and looks bad, thats engine problem and its VERY ANNOYING. Textures are ok but still often look terrible by any standards. Story is shit, classic nazi shit, ultimate technology, get some of tech, win and I would not have any problem with it if it wasnt so heavily pushed down my throat, there is SO MANY CUTSCENES!!! WHY! Yeah, atmosphere is okay in sense its world of nazis and nice alternate reality but other than that story is garbage. So many times you find nazis, you shoot, its so much fun and then comes cutscene with some story you dont care about, maybe some more shooting but only enough to interest you BAM CUTSCENE, back to base then STUPIUD STUPID PART where you walk in base to collect 3 items????? WHY!!!!!???? bring those items, cutscene about stupid story, start new mission and guess what, remember cool double barrel you had last mission? NO MORE! you start with knife and gun, mid mission you find gun and shoot. If game was short cutscene, mission of shooting some words spoken mid mission through radio or something, shoot shoot shoot, cutscene about story and then new mission with same guns!? Game would get 5/5 even with texture problems. In short game has great foundation and gameplay destroyed by story and cutscens and stupid safe house missions which completely destroyed the pace of the game. Giving it 3/5 is overrating but gunplay is good.

This game has a massive memory leak. You can open task manager and watch it eat up more and more. I don't know what happened to this version on this storefront, but it ruined an otherwise excellent game. Yes, it's capped at 60 fps and has a couple sections that are a slog. But it's nice to play a shooter built from the ground up to be a single player game for a change. Too bad this one crashes so much you won't get to enjoy it. One hour of play testing could have revealed this. What happened?

Wolfenstein: New Order can be enjoyable, if you forget it's a Wolfenstein game, and you don't mind a corridor shooter. Enemies are fairly dumb and predictable, ammo, health, weapons and other pickups are plentiful, even in higher difficulties, levels are short and linear, and the plot has so many twists and turns, it seems to copy itself after a while. Early on you'll encounter so many types of weapons they'll become meaningless, some with endless ammo. In addition, every idea the game's creators had about a futuristic third reich is thrown into this game - from the childish to the sensible. After a while, nothing about this game seems to excite, nor is there any sense of dread. The only difficulty arises from enemies who can instantly spot you, or from bullets that seem to be able to turn 90 degrees to hit you while you hug a wall. There is stealth in the game, but it's fairly pointless, since the easiest way to get past a level is to brute force your way. You can carry so many weapons and have so much ammo lying around, it doesn't matter how many soldiers there are or how hard it is to kill them. You can duel-wield weapons and fire non-stop, meaning eventually some of those shots will connect. If you encounter a soldier that's tougher to kill, more often than not they'll move so slowly, you can either run away from them or flank them. The only difficult part is towards the end, when you're thrown more and more into situations where you're surrounded and have nowhere to hide, and your weapons are stripped from you. But a lot of times if the enemy doesn't have a direct view of you, they seem to ignore you. Especially the tougher enemies, which seem to forget about you once you hide behind a wall, allowing you to attack them without repercussions. New Order is easy to get through, but just difficult enough that you won't lose interest. There are occasional slowdowns - when lots of people are shooting at once, but this game has nothing to rage-quit about.

This seems to be a beloved game but I must say I'm rather underwhelmed by it. Some bewildering plot holes aside, it includes frustratingly long sequences with nothing interesting to do and which add nothing at all to the narrative. It feels like there are entire levels that the developers decided to leave out or perhaps cut due to budget reasons (like the totally unnecessary scene of firing the cannon). At least cutscenes can be skipped. Another thing that turns me off is the final boss battle. I know that some players love bosses but I can't stand them - once again, I find them simply long, tedious, arbitrary and with no value to the story. Basically they feel more like doing lines at school (you will shoot this on that spot three times for no reason at all). Having said that there is also some really great shooting with both stealth sequences as well as times to just go in all guns blazing. There are some cool weapons too and I found the player's characters (William Blaskowicz) surprisingly relatable and likeable. On the other hand, the main villain, General Willhem Strasse, seems undeveloped and just cartoonishly evil. Of course in a world that has seen Dr Mengele, we know that a mad Nazi scientist can indeed be insanely evil, but there was probably room to make Strasse more intriguing than just the designated bad guy.