It's never explicitly ironic-that would get tiresome-but its characters are intelligent and larger-than-life and invested in the world around them. J.'s folksy-poetic musings on the nature of war can be laugh-out-loud funny when juxtaposed with a Nazi trooper getting lifted off his feet by a pair of thundering megashotguns, but there's a glimmer in the game's eye when it presents you with this tonal contradiction.
The New Order is Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds by way of Moonbase Alpha-an x-rated episode of Captain Scarlet starring the world's most heavily militarised jacket potato.įor all that brutality, though, this is a far more thoughtfully written and well-acted game than it has any right to be. The interfaces, technology, even the typography of this speculative other-Earth feel correct and cohesive. Every environment expresses a distinct identity through its colour pallette, architecture, and use of light. This alt-history vision of Nazi-dominated 1960s Europe has been constructed with extraordinary style.
I would forgive you for missing all this evident care and attention to detail when you wrench your first Nazi lasergun from its fixed emplacement and use it to mulch a charging column of Third Reich roboguys.īut it is there if you go looking for it. It might not seem like the most pertinent observation to make as you hammer the middle mouse button to stab a cyberdog to death. This might not be obvious to you when you are giving a Nazi both barrels as the world around you collapses in a shower of bone and blood and concrete. Wolfenstein: The New Order has been made with love.