Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Graphics

Gameplay

Story/Extras

Bottom Line

Best gameplay of the series hands down. The story is good too. Borders the cliche/stereotype/racist/sexist writing you'd expect for "modern audiences" at a couple points and you can tell they shoe horned the writers/directors personal grudges into the game at points but over all they did a decent job at just keeping it about "BJ killing Nazis". The ones scene in particular that felt off is when BJ says "White Nazis facists pigs" or whatever, the inclusion of the words "white" and "pigs" comes off as more of a product of wording from today not from a 1940's American soldier. Prior to this in the games he just says he "likes killin' Nazis" without the "white" and "pigs" part. Just felt completely out of place and it's the only part in the game where he does that after meeting a stereotyped black woman. Hates men, thinks white people are bad etc. etc.

BUT after that the game drops that whole thing off and the writing goes back to just being about getting to the end game, killing Engle.

Having finished all three games, I genuinely liked New Colossus as a sequel to New Order, it gives some more depth and backstory to Blazkowicz, has some of the same gameplay mechanics slightly improved (although difficult can be a bit too extreme at times, I had to play a level lower than New Order/Old Blood to find it fun) and the aesthetic of the world is still pretty damn cool.

However, I still found it a bit *too* short. I was so rooting for more that I didn't realize the ending credits were the ending credits and I was excited for a second thinking there was a whole other game past that, but it's likely my fault lol

Another odd thing was how the writing suffered (IMO) compared to New Order: Nazis on the Moon I can understand and accept, but on Venus? That's way too bonkers even for this universe. Here's my reasoning:

New Order had a bit of serious worldbuilding at some moments. Of course, Nazi winning the war is already unlikely, but New Order explained it by this ancient ultra tech made by Da'at Yichud (which is bonkers, but at that point I just went with it naturally). However, the historical what-ifs like the Allied D-Day failing and becoming a Nazi museum, the Manhattan Project's demise, the twisted rebuilt of London, the Gibraltar Bridge's construction, the presence of the Volkshalle... Anyone with a bit of casual knowledge about WWII can see these would be things that either amazed or shocked you.

There's something that I can't quite describe, but the overall vibe of it all. New Order was pretty bleak and hopeless, while this one despite having some pretty fucked up moments... Fails to achieve that somehow. Nazis are more comical than in NO, less intimidating, and it was that intimidating aspect that made you feel satisfaction in annihilating them out of your way.

You can feel the hate and frustration delivered by Blazko when he stabs the Nazi soldier in the asylum in New Order, but here it turns into silly current-culture-war speeches that feel forced - and I felt this was often the case. It's like the game is constantly having to remind the player that Nazis are bad through dialogue when New Order had you actually witnessing their monstruosity.

Besides all that, it's just nitpicking... Just wish there was more of Blazkowicz badassery.

Not as good as The New Order. The gameplay is fine, but the writing is terrible. The characters are boring, and the cutscenes are far too long. Overall, this was a massive letdown

Great gameplay and graphics, but the story and its characters were a significant downgrade to New Order and Old Blood in my opinion.

It's seldom in modern days we can find out a game with a bold narrative when the humor and themes can picking up scrupulous moments and imagine the dark alternative history with rock! Many WOW-moments, dynamic combat and aesthetic are mixing up together in fresh shake to gain deserved Best Action on TGA.

From the design point of view, only few moments I've noticed that I wish to reiterate or rework: visual noise of NY, control disabling during combat (more than enough, look at DOOM) and player's movement speed is highly than it's needed according to the current level design.

I love this game!
Mein Leben- difficulty is a real challenge.

One man army game!

With some patches this game could be a 10 out of 10.
Sadly the devs don't care enough for their own gem! That's why i rate it with a 8 out of 10.

A masterpiece, I don't know if it's the game problem but i finish the story mode so fast. I would say that it's their problem actually.

gameplay is very good and story is interesting if you are aware of the franschise since the 90's ;)

Fun game. With it had the option to turn off the racier scenes and extreme violence like many games do.

Gameplay was engaging the whole time, with challenging combat and a fantastic story. Stealth is also challenging when attempting to beat the game. Good stuff.

There are good things about the game like new interesting locations, added replayability (some would argue about this), but it honestly feels like a downgrade compare to the first game.
The story is not very well written and not logical at places, feels like the main cast is just fucking around and not trying to incite a revolution. Main characters are unlikable and each line of dialogue seems written by a different person, because they don't really follow each other logically. Characters go from being "angry" to "happy" to absolute clowns in a few seconds and I wondered at times if I lost consciousness for a short while and missed something, because it doesn't make sense.
Overall it doesn't move the story from the first game by a lot, so you're not missing much if you don't play this one.

There have always been few good story-driven shooters, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is one of the best. It's a high-budget game with stunningly brutal gameplay and incredible direction. The soundtrack here is my favorite work by Mick Gordon. The only problem with this game is its abruptly cut-off ending, leaving room for a sequel that never came out.

Introduction

Main plot

Gameplay and Visuals

Conclusion

good story and stuff but bad direction, you need to search up where to go since everywhere is a maze it honestly depressing

It's an odd one, to recommend it or not.
The game is solid, but I got bored with it after 6 or so hours.
Something just doesn't feel the same as Wolfenstein: The New Order
Might come back to it, but for now I'm good.

Chapter 9's door has a softlock where it closes if you go back for ammo and collectables and I honestly just can't be fucked to load the autosave.

It's my 88th review on Steam, and in honor of that being one of the two most important digits in Nazi numerology, I figured that the game I reviewed had to be one where you can stomp Adolf Hitler's head until he dies.

Unfortunately, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus isn't the blindside reboot that its predecessor Wolfenstein: The New Order is, nor the love letter to retro gaming that prequel Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is. It's the beginning of a downward trend that continued in Youngblood, but New Colossus still has high points that outnumber its low points. To dig into why I'm only mildly positive on this title, let's examine New Colossus as a sequel to New Order, as a work of exploitation fiction, and as a work of earnest political commentary.

New Colossus as a sequel to New Order

New Colossus as a Grindhouse Movie

New Colossus as a Work of Commentary

TL;DR

Shortest game in the series so far. A lot of review what happened in previous games, some more cut scenes and then a Shoot your dog simulator where the only option was to turn of the game. Hopefully the rest of last game in the series is longer.

I LOVE THIS GAME!!!

The story is gripping, funny, touching, topical, and just generally holds your attention. My complaints from Wolfenstein II were almost all resolved:

The weapons are better. There's still not a huge selection, but with the exception of one gun that I rarely used, the other handful of guns got lots of use. I like the upgrades, the alt-fire modes, and the ability to dual-wield (although I didn't use it much). The heavy weapons are fun for limited fun as well. The grenades could have used a little more bang.

While not a sandbox game by any means, it did feel like the world was less on-a-rail leading to a little more exploration. This also meant multiple ways to get from point A-B to accomplish a mission. The new abilities you get mid-way through the game help out this aspect a lot.

I can't say enough about the characters and story. The uber-villian was HEINOUS. You get to know the side characters. There's tons of humor and drama. There was more than one shocking moment and let me tell you it's been a very long time since a video game surprised me.

This is going to sound weird, but while it took me less time to finish than the previous game and yes I did complain about how short that was, somehow this game FELT longer. I mean that in a totally positive way, not in a dragging-on sense.

From a replayablility standpoint, the assassination missions are fun and challenging. Technically, you can start doing them before the end of the game, but most of them opened up after. If you are a collector, there's lots to go hunting for.

This game jumped possibly into my top 5 shooters ever and would be higher if it could find a way to double the gametime without losing all the brilliance mentioned above. Oh, and fix the maps. Having to dig into menus is tedious.

Great combat experience, and excellent story.

This game surprised me, again and again. It was startling with how often important characters died, which made it feel like anything was on the table. However, it also surprised me by how abrupt it felt. I beat the game in about 7 hours, and the ending came out of nowhere. Things were really starting to get interesting, combat was evolving and i was really hitting my stride in terms of learning what weapon combos and upgrades i liked. New characters were constantly being introduced, and old ones flushed out. In particular, i was really interested in what wyatt had to say, and then all of the sudden, the game ended. In my mind, i thought i might be around the halfway point, and i was that dumbstruck when it became clear that this was the end.

All in all, a fun but short single player fps experience, that scratched the itch i was looking for. just wish it was longer and tied up more storylines

If you enjoyed The New Order than (from a mechanical perspective) this is just more of the same and you'll like it. My gripe is that the 'bad guys' are cartoonishly evil to the point of absurdity. The writing trends a bit trite and there's a narrative and tonal dissonance that is offputting. The moment to moment gameplay is solid but from a writing point, kinda annoying.

very good game to play if bored, towards the end it gets hard though so be ready

The only way I would play this is with mods installed to get rid of the nauseating head bob. Even after that I wouldn't say it's worth it. It's frustrating more than fun, the stories ehh, and the gameplays ok but worse than new order and kinda monotonous. Who wants to play a stealth Wolfenstein game? I swear, every fighting section in this game is a stealth section which you will ultimately fail and have to fight an infinite number of backup soldiers. The stealth alert meters a joke and as soon as you are seen you will get mauled.

Its a decent game, gameplay and all is fun, though it misses the tone on the story and characters all the time. The serious parts were interrupted by the funny parts (or vise versa) to a point where nothing really felt right. Also the game is quite short if you ignore all the "repeat this mission to kill another guy" kind of stuff, so I guess on a sale its a good deal.

I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to Commander Mannheimer, the first officer you meet in the game, for killing him over 600 times in 6 or 7 different ways in order to max out two thirds of the perks before the end of the first level.

Good shooting, rubbish story.

Gameplay and story are all great. My issue lies with the PC version. Even in 2024 it is a hot buggy messy with faulty error codes and crashes. I've browsed the internet and not fix has work. From reading steam pages and other forums, a majority of pc players seem to have the same issue, at the exact same point in the game. My advice? don't buy this game on pc AT ALL

If anybody has a legit fix for crash dump error, str_online_connection error and video memory allocation bug error, please, Id love to try anything. The story and gameplay is amazing. Tragic the pc version is a buggy mess

I'm giving it a thumbs up because there's no "mixed" review option, only "Yay or Nay":
- The campaign is too short, side missions, assasinations, collectibles and SAS are awful fillers
- Story goes nowhere, characters (mostly the newer ones) are, at best, forgetable
- Gameplay is great, despite being stealth oriented and most mechanics getting old fast
Get it on sale!

this game is a lot of fun and it comes with an amazing story.

You can shoot nazis, it has decent gun play and the technical side and story are well done.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is an amazing game full of intense action, crazy plot twists, and exhilarating shootouts where B.J. Blazkowicz demolishes Nazis with unstoppable enthusiasm. However, when it comes to the DLCs, things get, let’s say, interesting, but not in the best way.

The Freedom Chronicles DLCs include three episodes featuring new protagonists and side stories. Sounds exciting, right? But in practice, the levels feel like they’ve been patched together from recycled assets of the main campaign. There are barely any new enemies or mechanics, and the plots often feel like rushed fanfiction. For instance, Gunslinger Joe delivers solid action but lacks originality, while Agent Silent Death tries to focus on stealth but often results in more frustration than satisfaction. And the finales? Let’s just say they feel more like let’s wrap this up quickly than a proper conclusion.

The base game is phenomenal, but the DLCs? Don’t expect groundbreaking experiences. Instead, they feel more like reheated leftovers. Honestly, you’d get more value from replaying the main campaign, which is ten times more fun and engaging

I haven’t disliked a game this much in a very long time. The “conclusion” to the story is completely insulting to the player, so many plot threads are started in this game with basically zero having any conclusion.

During the final boss fight, I had no idea the game was gearing up to end because even while playing on the hardest difficulty the fight was so easy to breeze through, there was no epic-ness to the final boss I feel I came to expect from the Wolfenstein games, it felt like generic mini-bosses. Adding to that fact that the game started so many plot items and it seemed as though none came to any form of fruition, or seemingly had barely anything to do with the story. Maybe they will in DLC or what was planned for future DLC, but that is terrible practice to make the game have to conclude (Or have any story arcs at all) its story in paid DLC.

Overall the gun play was very fun throughout the game, but how the story concluded was so insulting that it brought down any good feelings I had about the game.

2/10, stay away from this game unless it's on sale and you are only looking for a short game and are only wanting to play for the gun-play. This game is below well average.

The 2 points it got were that I loved that we got to kill Hitler , probably my favorite part of the game. In addition, I did have fun with the weapons and most of the gameplay. I also bought it heavily discounted which you should too if you are planning to buy this.

I cant stand having to loot medkits in the middle of combat. The healing system is terrible.

Underwhelming story, bad performance issues, mind numbing missions, awful level design.

Cool visuals, some fun gameplay and characters. 5/10

Wish steam added a neutral option

The best game in the reboot series IMHO.
This game has the most story/character development. It literally went from 0 character to development to everything Machine Games had.
Level design is the most beautiful and robust pretty sure they borrowed themes from other well known action games.
You'll recognize a few by playing through the game (if you play a lot of action games of course).

Gameplay is as slick as the first with new shiny bells and lasers.

Gameplay lackluster: Mashing E while running around and staring at the ground to collect stuff in the middle of combat. Brilliant design decision.

Uninspired level design. Badly implemented "stealth" gameplay. Enemy waves spawning from god knows where. Frequent cut scenes after extremely short gameplay sections. Running around the mothership to fulfill mini fetch quests just so you can advance to the next mission. Nerf gun like weapon feeling and hit response. Difficulty spikes instead of difficulty progression.

The only positive aspect are actually the quite funny conversations you can overhear between the German guards. Don't be baited by the few funny cut scene shorts floating around the net.

This is not a Wolfenstein game, it's a wannabe B-movie made by people who probably should have been put on a different project.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossal Die Due To 50 HP Simulator


Killing nazis is pretty fun tho

A decent follow up to New Order. Gunplay is good, graphics are great. The dialogue is very campy and over the top. Good level variety. Out of these new Wolfenstein games, I enjoyed The Old Blood the most. I will not be playing Youngblood.

The game started running like trash, sub 10 fps, after running great the first time I ran it, what seems to have solved it was starting in safe mode and then restarting and reselecting all my settings.

Unacceptable for a game this old. Switching my review to recommended for now, but this is ridiculous.

Best Wolfenstein game ever. The voice acting was absolutely incredible and the gameplay felt smooth and was very entertaining.

4 hard crashes to desktop
hitboxes are scuffed (literally clicking heads and the shots getting eaten by random geometry, pretty much ruining any stealth gameplay, also had 3 instances of invincible enemies)
getting stuck in the middle of doorways
game also boots on a different monitor in a super low resolution, requiring me to change displays in-game, and then going back into windows to re-apply the native resolution to the monitor that the game booted up on
I'd like to finish this game, vibes and shooting are great, but an unpolished mess that I couldn't be bothered to deal with

I know I'm in the minority on this, but I enjoyed this game a lot more than its predecessor. Despite having played and beaten The New Order, I thought it was a functional but unremarkable shooter. Most of my memories of it are a dingy gray blur.

On that note, I absolutely do not miss TNO's hideous color scheme. Everything looked like it was soaked in dirty dishwater. It also hurt the gameplay, as I frequently found myself unable to see an enemy less than ten feet in front of me save for his muzzle flash. Now that TNC has some color in its cheeks, I can actually see what I'm trying to shoot at or sneak around.

I also much prefer TNC's story and characters. Aside from BJ, Anya, Fergus and Max Hass, I don't remember any of the other characters from TNO. This time around, every significant character left an impression on me. Sure, they're often silly and hard to take seriously, but they made me laugh and care about their struggles.

Any game where you can bury a hatchet in a Klansman's neck is going to earn a few points in my book.

This is a barely positive review given its still not-exactly-bargain price of $40 and significant warts, particularly its horrid writing and lack of consistent tone.

The gameplay is fun for the most part except for fights where enemies sort of merge with the background and take you out with a couple of shots in higher difficulties. The art direction is the only real improvement over the New Order/Old Blood - everything looks livelier instead of having muted colors.

The story is OK-ish with emphasis on retro-futurism and not so much on supernatural/mysticism as the two older retellings, but the writing for the side-characters and too many scenes in the story fall into the ridiculous particularly with the ham-fisted nods to what were current events and sensibilities in 2016/2017 and essentially slapstick comedy - it's just cringe crap that you have to put up with in an otherwise OK story. It's just absurd writing where you jump from a straightforward continuation of the story with Anya and Fergus to blaxploitation tropes and other caricatures. None of it feels necessary or appropriate.

Another issue with the game is that some autosaves will occur in the middle of a fight which coupled with a couple of seconds of non-responsiveness after each load can make autosaves unusable (there's always a backup save so you should not lose too much time if it happens - manual saves are also an option).

Get this if you liked the first one and want to continue the story of BJ. The writing is unfortunate but the base story and gameplay are mostly OK.

Love this game more than most games. Interesting plot, fantastic gameplay, really cannot complain about this. Would highly recommend playing the first Wolfenstein to truly understand the plot, but if you don't care for the plot and just want a fast acting shooter this ones definitely a must play.

DO NOT GO FOR THE STEALTH ROUTE, I stealthed my entire first playthrough on hard and it must've at least doubled my playtime, near the end I just said screw it and started blowing Nazi's away, it was harder but I sped through compared to the stealthy approach. In my opinion The New Colossus is a step down in every way from The New Order and two steps from The Old Blood, the game's shooting immediately felt softer or sloppier?(Not sure how to describe it) when I came hot off of playing the New Order, by the end of the game I didn't really notice or mind it since all of my weapons were upgraded to my tastes and for the most part did what I wanted them to. The story is a rollercoaster it seems like it can't decide whether to be serious or comedic and that is to it's detriment, at times though it can function and make you feel exactly what it wants you to feel but these times are fleeting, a minor thing I also noticed was the slight change in graphics from the New order which I felt was somehow off but maybe that's just me. Most of my concerns vanished like smoke whenever the combat really opened up and you were allowed to just go ham on the Nazi's at those times everything clicks in a way nothing else in the game seems to, the stealth is just bad, the commander placements are masochistic, the story is being pulled in two directions, and the expansions are short cash grabs but when the combat clicks it makes this feel like an honest to goodness Wolfenstein game. My last complaint is the side missions which for the most part are just pointless time wasters to make you go through places you've already been to grab collectibles and kill more uber commanders to pad out run time even more.

best game EVER! The story is amazing continuation of the new order's. I love the part where you think that you died, but then set and everyone else revives you, and makes you an even badder motherfucker. just as good as the first.

I'll be honest, its a real pet peeve of mine when my games don't randomly brick themselves halfway through it's campaign and forces you to do a total reboot every time you die or attempt to load a save, so Wolfenstein 2: the new colossus was the PERFECT game for me!

Wunderbar! Playing this game made me feel like a character in a Quentin Tarantino movie, but everything cranked up to 11 !! Dynamic action, original scenario, unique characters, diverse locations, excellent audio and graphics, and extremely satisfying gory gameplay.