I did not expect for Wolfenstein to be the game that drew a line between concentration camps and a longer legacy of Western racism and anti-Semitism. It's horrible and awful and disgusting, and somehow it doesn't feel exploitative or unnecessary. The Final Solution isn't a diary entry or audio log reminding players about the Holocaust in an abstract way. It's not a pure look at duty or camaraderie - it takes the horrifying legacy of the Third Reich, adds the occult elements the Wolfenstein games have always played with and logically follows through with them. It's not the sanitized war of the Call of Duty games or Halo, or even previous Wolfenstein titles. The New Order succeeds by pulling few punches. The studio is confident enough to walk you through as needed, and allow you to explore when necessary. Machine Games built a world that it's interested in showing you. There's an unadulterated sense of heart at the center of it - a vision that doesn't feel chopped up or truncated or drawn back on because of budget constraints or development trouble. It is unabashedly what it is.īut it's more than the games that came before it, that serve as such clear progenitors to The New Order's basic mechanics.

In many ways, it's almost rebelliously old-school: armor pickups, boss fights, no recharging health, an ever-expanding cornucopia of firearms.

It's been a great year for shooters, many of which tried new things for the genre - things that pushed in directions that have left what I think will be a lasting mark on the genre. In the wrap-up quote for my review of Wolfenstein: The New Order, I stated that the game's humanity is what makes it something truly memorable, and really, that's what I've continued to come back to over the course of 2014.

Wolfenstein the new order armor upgrade