Wolfenstein: The New Order, the newest game in the classic, long running FPS series (the grand daddy of the entire FPS genre, actually), was released a couple months ago. The title, developed by debutant developer Machine Games and publisher Bethesda, was absolutely amazing- it married old school shooter design with new age sensibilities and an incredible atmosphere, all coming together to create a hell of a shooter. It’s not much of a stretch to say it’s one of the best shooters of the last decade. And that is a point of view that ex-Epic Games developer Cliff Bleszinski certainly espouses.
‘The new Wolfenstein was in my opinion, and I daresay this, one of the best first-person shooter campaigns since Half-Life 2. And I think I’m about halfway through right now, I’m stuck on this bridge section but I refuse to lower the difficulty because I hate having to do that in a game.
“But when I saw that game at E3 a couple years ago and then PAX East, I was completely underwhelmed, I was writing it off. I didn’t want to be a dick and say something about it on social, but my expectations were really low—I thought it seemed kind of cheesy and just weird. And then when I got hands-on, it was extraordinarily well written, graphically gorgeous, and the maps were extremely well built. And the combat was just fantastic, it was a labor of love,” Bleszinski said to PCGamer.
You might disagree on the exact specifics of that statement, but there is absolutely no denying that this is a hell of a shooter, and it fills me with great optimism for the upcoming Doom reboot.
Machine Games, take a bow.