Wolfenstein II, The New Colossus.

CREDIT

For the oldest of the place, the name Wolfenstein arouses tickle. With Wolfenstein many things started. But 25 years after the mythical 3D and 3 of the outstanding The New order, Blazkowic returns to work to continue the work that did not end with the death of Deathshead. The New Colossus is an improvement over everything that its predecessor proposed and, in some specific sections, reaches very difficult levels of excellence to match.

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CREDIT

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A last fortnight of October hard to forget for video game fans. Just when announcing the closure of Visceral Games and EA decided to leave the game single player of Star Wars, (because apparently the titles for a single player "do not fit the model of video game asked by the user today"), We received Super Mario Odyssey . And the new Assassin's Creed. And the new Wolfenstein . Three bets that overlap part of their audience but with clearly differentiated market targets; three bets that base their structure and their success on the experience for a single player. And in the case of Wolfenstein II, prepared to satisfy the most demanding palates hungry for old-school shooter.

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After the surprising The New Order there was great expectation about MachineGamesand about what they could do with more time and more budget, and both have been well used; Colossus is developed from the events of the first, forcing us, however, to take up one of the great decisions that were left of it and that will directly affect our crew and the arsenal that we will have in combat. The principle of the game is a statement of intent for the player:

1) there will be no concessions regarding violence and brutality on the screen.

2) The game has some comic counterpoint but it takes itself much more seriously than we imagined and

3) we immediately know that it does not offer any kind of ideological ambiguity so fashionable in recent times.

Wolfenstein is a saga where the Nazis are the very bad ones and killing them all is the right thing to do.This game is one of the best playable experiences we have had with a shooter since, possibly, Doom.

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CREDIT

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This is a game not suitable for all audiences : it is explicit, it is grotesque, it is brutal. There is alcohol, partial nakedness, implicit sex, drug use. There are beheadings in the first person, there are mutilated members, there are heads split in half with an ax. We can even run with our "American football" armor and literally decompose an opponent without armor. And there is, of course, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, capacitism, humiliations of all kinds. There are, in short, Nazis exercising Nazis. It is not free, because all the staging has its reason, but it must be clear if someone is thinking about acquiring this game for the little nephew or for his minor godson.

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Blazkowic, the new colossus

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Impeded in a wheelchair, maneuvering with one hand through the narrow corridors of the largest submarine ever built while, with the other, we shot our Maschinenpistole - SMG - to the first Nazis who try to end the little life we ​​have left. That is the premise with the player starts to handle Blazkowic, almost fallen hero who notes during much of the game that his days on earth are running out. The fight against the Nazis is another one of those that our hero supports, that in addition has to battle with the imminent fragility of his battered body after the incidents of the previous game. And is that nobody in The New Colossus has been unscathedafter the fictional alternative story presented by the German victory in the Second World War. Everyone, without exception, shows signs and scars - physical or psychological - after years of occupation. Each character, each memory, each flashback, each conversation ... all distill the ravages of more than 20 years of holocaust. And that feeling is set there so that there is no hint of doubt when you press the trigger.

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CREDIT

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Wolfenstein is an action game, to be clear, but there is a great effort in there to tell a story. The interpretation by the actors is superb, frankly the best we've seen in a video game lately and highlighting especially the villain, Frau Engels. The action arrives dosed to impulses, with intervals interrupted by kinematics or by phases of "cooling" in the Eva's Hammer, the submarine. And there is a limit of adrenaline that the player can endure, so the management and balance of time is something that we also think is a great success. Even the comic release is meticulously calculated at the time of introducing it in the narrative of the game: it is not a histrionic video game and, nevertheless,Duke Nukem Forever would have liked to be able to let loose some laughter.

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This is Wolfenstein, not Deus EX.

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Wolfenstein II is configured so that the player can choose the path that best suits their style of play . Obviously this is not Deus Ex: although there is an option to take stealthier paths, eventually we will end up firing. And we're going to end up shooting a lot. But it is true that the levels have been designed to allow, in many cases, more than one approach to a meeting. This is probably one of the great advantages of designing scenarios without having to think about having to reuse them as multiplayer maps: the ability to provide complete and tailor-made experiences according to the narrative need and not according to the need to reduce costs. The scenarios are phenomenally represented, from the decadent post-nuclear New York to the Nazi technology mix of science fiction from the 60s and the Second World War.

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CREDIT

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But we can not forget that even with its many possibilities. all this that makes up The New Colossus is wrapped in a large "hall" that suppose the levels , detailed that yes until the last corner and hiding place that only after certain scrutiny we will be able to reach. Wolfenstein is a game to go from A to B, that is clear to everyone, with the possibility of deviating a little along the way, yes, but it is a gigantic and beautiful corridor with flourishes. In fact, one of the criticisms that can be made to the title is that the fact of making the scenarios almost completely pre-rendered is their limited ability to interact with them., which takes away some credibility. Some boxes are destroyed and a picture falls, of course, but the sense of power that we have using weapons against our enemies is lost when we interact with the world that the game proposes. On one occasion, for example, while stealthily advancing on the hunt for an enemy Überkommandant, a lamp illuminated our face, taking away our vision; We try to shoot unsuccessfully in the light to destroy it, leaving in evidence the limitations of ID Tech-6.

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Most of the missions are divided into a succession of encounters, a formula that worked so well for DOOM . On many occasions, a notice in the HUD provides us with the address to which the commander or the enemy commanders are and we have to manage them across the stage to reach them; if we are detected, which will be the most normal, we must open the way by force and also face their reinforcements, which are usually of higher rank: soldiers with weapons and various armor, supersoldiers product of Nazi experimentation, normal dogs, robot dogs, giant robot dogs ... either way, the music is responsible for raising the tension while the alarm sounds and we are ready to fight.

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CREDIT

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Approximately half of the more than 15 hours of the campaign (depending on secondary, collectables and level of difficulty) we can access one of the 3 great improvements for Blazkowic and that allow us to face the combat from new angles and approaches; at the beginning these improvements will be exclusive but there is the possibility of getting them all and becoming a total warrior, which is highly recommended. Throughout the game and practically without realizing it, we will also unlock passive features that can give us some advantage in the face of the confrontations and, in some way, entrust the player to execute certain action in a certain way to get that advantage: perform X shots to the head, kills X people with explosions from the environment, etc. If everything fails and we still get stuck at one point,

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The health in Wolfenstein does not regenerate (it is rounded up, say, from 15 to 20 or from 37 to 40) but fortunately there are many first aid kits and armor packs distributed on the maps. But those who like to stay in a corner to wait and shoot will find it harder to survive, especially in high demands. Wolfenstein is a game that wants you to move, that wants you to face the enemies looking for good coverage but firing incessantly. For not having no sniper rifle to use (the Laserkraftwerk does not count, so to speak), that is the message sent by Machinegames. The New Colossus is a game without sniper rifle, but it is a game in which you can carry a triple shotgun in one hand and a grenade launcher in the other. An SMG and an assault rifle.An improved pistol with magnum bullets. Or two pistols. Or two shotguns . When one enters into this proposal, when the player embraces this direct action approach, Wolfenstein II simply has no rival when it comes to offering definitive old school satisfaction.

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CREDIT

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That's where the success of the product sponsored by Bethesda lies: the sensations of the mouse or the sticks. And it is that Blazkowic is handled phenomenally, feels phenomenally. It is tremendously difficult to talk about sensations in a text because, with a screenshot, anyone could compare Wolfenstein with another generic FPS; it is once the character is handled and the immense work of physics is observed, from the engine that moves the game (the same as DOOM, by the way) to - almost always - 60 frames per second, when one realizes the level of polished from The New Colossus. The version that we analyzed, that of Xbox, had punctual drops of pictures (between 5 and 10) in some points, although never during the a priori situations of greater graphic stress. The version of the Microsoft console does not seem to reach 1080p, which in Playstation does happen. And that there are many things happening on screen: explosions, particles, spectacular use of textures ... Every time we shoot a Laserkraftwerk we see the effect of melted metal and sparks jumping around, while maybe a car explodes and a robot flies over stage. And all that in the third level of the game. However, the title phenomenally maintains the type throughout the campaign: even until the wee hours of the morning, has not been able to tear us or a yawn and the reason for stopping has had nothing to do with the desire to play.

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And in the end, what?

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In a world populated by games-service, it seems that a single-player title flies in comparison; Wolfenstein offers two timelines, so to speak, that affect the crew and one of the weapons that we can carry (excluding the other). It offers 6 basic difficulty modes plus another in which we will only have a single life. It offers an insane amount of collectibles, a joy for many and a horror for so many of us, although at least many are conceptual art, BSOs and others that we can then "take advantage of". It offers to revisit each level of the game from another angle in the hunting and capture of Überkomanndants, who are like normal commanders but more evil if possible. It offers some secondary missions, of low entity and little plot weight. And, as a nod,

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conclusion

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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus may not enjoy the freshness of its predecessor but undoubtedly is a much better game. Even with a campaign over the duration of what we usually see in titles of this type, it is almost strange that we have not abused some extra mechanics or the potential of the three improvements of BJ. It is true that sometimes a meeting or secondary mission can be missed but the feeling at the controls leaves such a good taste in the mouth -with a well-spun end- that I hope all the games will reach us with that same level of affection in them. The Machinegames game may not do everything right, but what it does well does it perfectly.

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The best

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• Impeccable mechanics
• The ability to customize our game style
• Spectacular sound section
• Well measured dose of action
• The design of levels

Worst

• Narrative can distract you from the objective of the game
• The "end-game" content, something repetitive

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