Wolfenstein: The New Order Review | Backlog Breaker

As someone with an ever-growing backlog, I often look for excuses to go back and check a game off the list. This usually happens when a series gets a sequel or a developer is releasing a new game. But what got me to revisit this 2014 single-player first-person shooter wasn’t a new game, but a new video game documentary from noclip about the history of MachineGames. After acquiring id Software from Activision, ZeniMax entrusted Bethesda with publishing a Wolfenstein game. In 2010, MachineGames began work on Wolfenstein: The New Order, a reboot that took the series to an alternate universe where the Axis powers won World War II.

Revisiting games always has a different impact from playing them at launch. With the added dimension of time, numerous other factors can be discerned, including the aging of the visuals, the weight of the narrative, or the impact it had on the industry at large. For example, Wolfenstein 3D (1992) might not stand out when compared to its contemporaries like DOOM (1993) or Quake (1996), but it really shaped the first-person shooter genre as we know it. Similarly, playing through Wolfenstein: The New Order in 2025 highlights the quality of its writing and how it remains relevant a decade and a half later.

Wolfenstein: The New Order starts during World War II, but a 15-year time jump establishes the alternate timeline quickly. Thanks to a combination of scientific advancement and luck, the Nazi’s have won World War II and rule over most of the world with an iron fist. After spending some time in a mental care facility and growing affectionate with one of the nurses, William Joseph “BJ” Blazkowicz is brought back into an oppressive world. He soon joins the resistance, willing to risk his life for the cause he is ready to fight and die for.

Let’s go over the game mechanics first before I dig into the narrative a bit more. The gameplay of Wolfenstein: The New Order isn’t quite run-and-gun like DOOM (2016). Despite running on id Tech 5 (as opposed to id Tech 6 of DOOM and The New Colossus), The New Order feels smooth to play. However, even with akimbo shotguns, you can’t just run around without cover without being shot down. The game has a fun blend of stealth and shootout opportunities, allowing you to live out your 80s action hero fantasies by silently moving through one level before Ramboing it out in the next.

The game has a really intuitive skill tree that upgrades automatically as you play. You don’t have to go to the menu to upgrade stealth points; if you’re being sneaky and clearing levels, you’ll make progress as you go. The same applies to weapons. No digging around in loadout screens; if you progress the narrative and explore the levels thoroughly, you’ll get weapon upgrades naturally. The New Order is designed to keep you out of menus so you can live in its world. Even if you want to keep tabs on collectibles or objective status, it’s a tap away and easy to read. There’s also a weapon wheel to manage your inventory in real time, though I did find it to be a bit annoying to use in the heat of combat.

Wolfenstein: The New Order sounds and looks fine, but due to its more realistic aesthetic, it doesn’t quite age as nicely as something more stylized like Dishonored, which came out two years earlier in 2012. I played the PlayStation 4 version of the game on the PlayStation 5. For context, it is important to remember that the game was also released for the previous console (PS3/360) generation; this might be the reason why the game ran so well with minimal loading times on modern hardware. The score for The New Order was composed by Mick Gordon, and the soundtrack is fitting. It rarely hit emotional moments home for me, but during gameplay, it fueled the action nicely. What really caught my attention, though, was the camera work of the game’s cinematics.

The game never gets bogged down with cutscenes, opting to put dialogue exchanges in with the gameplay instead, but the scenes do catch the eye. A big part of this is that The New Order is presented like it’s an amateur film. If seen in live-action, one might think the camera crew picked up a camcorder for the first time and started recording. However, in a video game, there is a lot of intentionality there. The handheld style mimics Blazkowicz’s mind. Throughout the game, he drifts in and out of the present tense as he dreams of a future he fears he won’t live to experience while monologuing in surprisingly endearing ways. Dare I say, for a game starring an ’80s meathead protagonist, BJ mutters some profound things throughout the game.

During my roughly 11-hour journey through The New Order, I took some time to read all the letters and newspaper clippings I could find. While these aren’t necessary to understand or appreciate the story as a whole, the notes do a lot to build out the bleakness of this world. Anyone versed in World War II history can spot the signs of a fascist regime. The harsh “us versus them” rhetoric and evident control over the media are as essential to the Nazi rule in Wolfenstein as the death robots that are trying to tear you apart throughout the game. And in an observation I can’t help but make following recent events, it’s quite interesting that the newspapers that get direct quotes from Nazi officials are the ones that gloat about the glorious empire and inflate the man at its helm.

Wolfenstein: The New Order has a colorful cast of characters, from sidekicks to villains, that are brought to life with excellent voice acting. In between the high-octane action missions, the game lets you spend some time in the resistance headquarters. You can rush through these sequences by completing the main objective, or you can take a look around. This lets you experience unique character interactions, find upgrades, and even return to Wolfenstein 3D in a brief nightmare. By the end, these moments add up, leading to a conclusion that lands most of its punches.

That’s not to say that you need to stop and smell all the roses to have fun with the game, nor do you need to ponder its world to appreciate the story. The New Order, at the very least, is a fun game, and only in the last few chapters does the difficulty get in the way of that. I really enjoyed the stealth here because of how gameified it was. Bodies aren’t frequently spotted by other enemies, and brutal melee executions are not heard; that design builds out the hero fantasy well. You are, despite everything, the handsome good guy with the plot armor. But much like BJ, the game has more than just good looks. Wolfentein has a lot to say, if only you’re willing to have a conversation with it.

By the end of the game, I was left quite enamored by Wolfenstein: The New Order. Accompanying the smooth and fast gameplay is a story that highlights the dangers of fascism around a broken archetypal hero, all while never failing to be entertaining. Whether you want to blast through the levels for some Nazi killing action or engage with its narrative on a deeper level, The New Order is a good time. Wolfenstein: The New Order is available on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC. As of now, the game is also in the PlayStation Plus Extra Catalog and Xbox Game Pass library. Check out the noclip episode to find out more about the game’s development.