Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

Wolfenstein The New Order
Developer: Machine Games
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Steam, Playstation3, Xbox 360
U.S. Release Date: May 20, 2014

Unfortunately the world we live in right now has become rife with a resurgence of KKK, Neo-Nazis, and Patriot Extremist groups that are utilizing similar tactics that the Third Reich did back in the 1930's.  And while I'm sure all of us can agree that these people are universally bad/hated/unwanted we also probably don't know how to handle them because of some of the overwhelming "are you serious" attitudes on social media nowadays.  Well I find it rather ironic that I started to replay though the new Wolfenstein game this summer only for something like Charlottesville to happen only a couple weeks after I was taking my slow progression through it.

But, I don't really want to dive down into the rabbit hole that is above (plus I'll be talking about the reaction on social media to the ad campaign of New Colossus in a future rantology), so I really want to start getting into the meat and potatoes here.  Wolfenstein The New Order is a brutal re imagining of the classic Wolfenstein series in a few bold new ways.  Everything you love about the old games is back, but with the added love and affection of glorious 2014 updated graphics, special kill sequences for melee attacks, and of course Nazis in space.  While the looks and action in this may be a far cry from older Wolfenstein games, the Nazi killing message certainly isn't.  The Nazis are back, and this time BJ Blazkowicz is even more pissed of than before.  Oh, and before we get too far into this thing I want to go ahead and toss in this just for good measure.

******************************SPOILER WARNING *********************************

So, the game starts off in 1946, taking place 3 years after the events of 2009's release.  The Nazi war machine has been developing new technologies with the help of General Deathshead, and they have managed to start to push back against allied forces.  So in steps BJ fucking Blazkowicz, the most badass soldier to ever rip a Nazis face off, and you guessed it, he's still fucking pissed.  During the attack on Deathsheads castle base BJ is mortally wounded when he narrowly escapes an encounter with Deathshead with only one of his fellow soldiers in tow (either Fergus Reid or Private Probst Wyatt III).  His allies are unable to find his body and he ends up in a Nazi run mental institution under the care of Anya Oliwa and her parents.  After nearly 20 years in a vegetative state Blazkowicz is able to get up and start kicking some Nazi teeth in when they come to shut things down.

After capturing an officer and escaping with Anya to her grandparents house they interrogate the officer and BJ discovers his worst fear: the rest of the world has given up and is now under Nazi control.  Angered he hatches a plan to liberate defectors and start his ass kicking campaign all over again.  After releasing the ally you saved Blazkowicz learns of a resistance underneath central Nazi command in Berlin run by Caroline Becker who hatches a plan to steal some stealth choppers and Nazi intel to put them in their place.  During the process Blazkowicz discovers a secret organization known as Da'at Yichud and a scientist known as Set Roth who is being held in a labor camp.  Blazkowicz infiltrates the camp, kills some fucking Naizs, and ruins some ancient Nazi bitches face by crushing it with a giant robot that Roth was forced to create.

After his liberation Roth agrees to give some of Da'at Yichud tech to the resistance to even the tides of war, but they need a U-Boat to operate it, and as it just so happens the U-Boat that Blazkowicz jacks is the flag ship of the entire Nazi U-Boat fleet. Why you ask? BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING BADASS THAT'S WHY.  Anyrate, this motherfucker isn't just a nuclear sub, no, nothing of the sort.  It's a nuclear sub with a fucking nuclear artillery gun on it, but the problem is they need the codes to launch it, which are on the moon.  So they hit the supply cache and grab a weapon known as the Spindly Torque, or what I call The-Badass-Ball-of-Death-and-Destruction because it is literally that, and set off to get some codes.  On the moon Blazkowicz airlocks some fucking Nazis and shoves a dick down their collective throats, but when he gets back he discovers that Deathshead tries to do some fucking of his own by attacking the resistance base, however this predictably back fires when he kidnaps Anya serving to only piss off Blazkowicz even further.

The end game sequence starts with one pissed off commando, in a gun loaded with one Baddass-Ball-of-Death-and-Destruction, aimed at Deathshead's castle. Over the course of his rampage he lays waste to dozens upon dozens of Nazi.  After reaching Deathshead you're forced to fight one of his newest creations: a robot with your allies brain in it, who you eventually kill at their request.  Finally Deathshead comes to die, in a giant robot, it's a good fight.  Really that's the story, this is one of the better story based FPS games I've played recently and I can say I'm excite for the second one.

*********************************END SPOILERS**********************************

While the game doesn't offer multiplayer (a fact that I personally find very refreshing and enjoyable), it doesn't suffer from a lack of replay ability and content.  From different difficulty modes, to collectibles, to even the original Wolfenstein being in game there is plenty to keep even a seasoned player occupied through the game.  Plus Nazi killing, who doesn't love that?

While I may not have much more to offer than a plot summary and to describe how much I love this game I will say that overall it is simplistic, with lots to do and keep you occupied, also multiple playthroughs will be required along with getting used to dying in some circumstances because you need to learn and adjust to your surroundings, especially on the higher difficulties.  I highly enjoyed it and look forward to the release of New Colossus.  I give Wolfenstein: The New Order 8 severed Nazi scalps, out of 10.

Ghost Recon Wildlands Review

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Steam
U.S. Release Date: March 7, 2017

Oh what a brave new world this is.  Once upon a Tom Clancy game was nothing more than a name slapped on an overly ambitious video game to garnish a higher number of sales by associating with a famous author.  Now that isn't to say that the games are inherently bad, but let's just say that history hasn't been overly kind to them either.  The series is as marred with shovelware CoD simulators as much as any other as large as it has been with some series getting a new title with as little as a year between them, but that doesn't preclude them from having a few good fully formed turds every once in a while.

While Wildlands may be a polished turd we still need to remind ourselves that at its core is is just that: a turd.  The controls are anything but smooth and honestly it took some serious patching to solidify how helicopters fly (honestly now after 6 months post release do they FINALLY feel flyable without much trouble). But that's not really how I want to focus this review.  Yes, the game has issues, be aware that it controls like a drunk brick, that the menu is unintuitive, that the map is more clustered than someone's gonorrhea splattered genitals, and that honestly the way leveling works really makes me want to throw someone off a cliff.  Be aware of all that, because it is important.

I feel like bothering spoiler tags for this game and this review would be doing it a disservice because the story is so fragmented and all over the place (literally the map is a bunch of different provinces, each with their own story that wraps back into the big one in small little ways) that I'd never be able to fully describe it, so I'll give you the ass wiping version of it and call it good.  More or less the game takes place in Bolivia where a Mexican drug cartel called Santa Blanca and their leader El Sueno (Spanish for The Sueno) has come in to take over the local coca fields and make some sick ass fucking cocaine man.  Now obviously this is a bad thing and the CIA sent in an agent to get the skinny on them before sending in the ghosts to take them out.  Well shit went sideways, he got killed, and an embassy was blown up, so no its time to take this cartel down for good.  You're team (Nomad) is an elite group of special agents called ghosts.  You have to go through and destabilize the cartel operations in order to get to El Sueno.  There also a rebel faction who are freedom fighters for Bolivia too so they throw in their best for you too.

Throughout the game you have to complete a series of provinces to destabilize the cartel and their operations with influence, smuggling, production, and security.  The base game offers 21 of these provinces, and each province is held by a boss or buchon.  In each province you must perform different tasks to lure the buchon out of hiding and either kill or capture them.  These tasks can be airing out their dirty laundry (not literally), destroying coca fields, blowing up stockpiles, or my personal favorite, killing bad guys.  No really, despite the shitty controls the gun play in the game is incredibly fun because you can mark targets for the AI to automatically kill, and you can mark up to 3 at a time.  It's kind of insane.

As I mentioned the gun play is excellent especially with how they give you a different set of options to mix it up with when you're playing with different approaches.  For example I constantly found myself in the eternal debate on whether to parachute into a base, ram through the gates with a truck loaded with C4, take out the guards and stealth in, or guns blazing in a Humvee with a minigun on it.  The awesome thing is that for the most part, the choice is yours everytime.  There's a handful of situations that require the use of stealth, but outside of that go wild, do what you gotta do, and by all means make the cartel suffer.

I doubt it would surprise anyone that turds are offensive to people, and this one is no different.  The entire country of Bolivia was so pissed off that Ubisoft left this nice plopper on their lawn that they actually filed a suite against Ubisoft Paris for "misrepresenting their country", and while I can totally agree with their claim, it is a bit silly.  But, in Ubisofts defense they did use Bolivia as a backdrop for their claim of "[Bolivia's] beautiful vistas, wholesome culture, and lively people" which actually does shine through in the game, and has turned Bolivia into somewhere I have actually added to my top places to visit since this game came out (though I'll fully admit to a desire to do more research before I go).  So whatever the hell Ubisoft did, it worked on me.

The largest overall complaint I have is how unintuitive and hard to use the map and mission selector are.  Some games have really well made UI's but this on is just kinda like here's this really detailed map, and then here's literally all this shit you can do, sort it out, oh and zooming out doesn't help because you never get a summary of activities for a region, just who the boss is and your progress on getting them, and beyond that is a cartel overview. Additionally there are no indicators of what collectibles are underground or above ground so you can spend quite a bit a time searching for one specific item if you don't already know where it's at (I actually spent around 30 minutes trying to get an item that ended up being underground which I never really got because I couldn't find a way down).  Really even if it's just on the mini map this is the kinda shit that needs to be marked or indicated in some way, shape, or form as it caused me a large headache.

Finally the last little bit I want to touch on is DJ Perico, the in game radio host who works as a propaganda agent for the cartel.  He quite enigmatic, fun, funny, and one of the most real characters in a game I've ever met in a while.  He only plays a small role as a buchon in the story, but due to his status as a radio personality he's all over the place in this game.  Really he adds a lot to live up to here, and makes the driving portions a lot more bearable as you get some genuinely funny dialog along the way.

While Wildlands is a turd, it's a fun turd, the kind you play and enjoy your time with despite all the glaring flaws that the game has.  I actually once referred to this game as my guilty pleasure, because to some the idea of fun (which I've talked about before) is so foreign and almost damning that the true purpose of games is all but lost on them.  Though all of that I'd like everyone to remember that.  MY final verdict comes down to seven wet squirts out of ten, I do want to add a turdsterisk to it and say that it's a fun experience even if you don't play it through to completion.