This game is very okay, sometimes a little more than okay, sometimes a little less, but never great. I was surprised that I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would, which is sort of a shame, because the devs MachineGames are not only from my country of Sweden, but based in my hometown Uppsala. Although, my favorite type of FPS are so-called boomer shooters, like Serious Sam, so bear that in mind if you wonder why I recommended this game while mostly complaining about it. I guess I'm a boomer as well, since I'm early middle age and have played games for more than 30 years. Wolfenstein: The New Order feels like a newer game to me, which might sound odd since it's more than 12 years old, but you don't know the extent of my backlog.
If you like FPS games where there are lots of scripted scenes, where you simply wait until you can control your character again (sometimes you die if you're not quick enough), then you will feel right at home here. This isn't strictly a cover-shooter even if there is plenty of cover, some of which breaks after a while. The cover system allows you to lean out and shoot, but enemies can see you if you lean out. That is an odd thing to point out, I haven't encountered that before I think, but it's actually realistic, so that's not a negative thing. The shooting and different weapons were fine, but killing enemies wasn't that fun, especially the armored ones. There are perks you can unlock, but I didn't have much use for those, though I liked the different weapons upgrades you could find.
Some small things annoyed me, like the idle animations for the weapons. You can't stand around for five seconds looking around at all the wonderfully detailed scenery without the player character checking his gun or moving his knife around. This design decision is part of a mindset I've seen in many other newer games, where the devs seem afraid that if nothing happens in-game for a few moments, then the player will get bored (or worse...), which absolutely must not be allowed to happen. To be fair, the above is the only example of that fear. I've played some games where there is almost constant radio messages and have heard of games where enemies auto-spawn if you stand in one spot for too long.
This is a very linear game, though sometimes it wasn't obvious which way to go and the map didn't help much, but fortunately I always figured it out myself after a while (I hate having to look up walkthroughs). I did however need to google for a bug in Chapter 10 where you need to use a tunnel glider underwater. Players like me who use E for forward automatically exit the tunnel glider, which might have become a game-breaking bug if I hadn't found a solution online. I pressed and held down both W (Use) and E (Forward) when entering the glider, by which I could use the glider as long as I held down both of those buttons. That underwater sequence was quite short as well, so it wasn't a big problem.
If you've read this far, I'll tell you how this game holds a special place in my gaming life, but not a in good way. It's the first time I've started a game, lost any will to play games for a long time and then completed that game. I don't play, let alone, complete games that don't deserve to be played, because my time is valuable and my backlog huge. Wolfenstein: The New Order isn't that bad, so it's surprising why it led to another of my longer non-gaming periods (where I also don't feel like watching movies or tv-shows, since that also requires some will/concentration). I've had a few longer non-gaming periods ever since I got my first apartment. It usually happens after playing a bad game or a game that makes all other games seem bad in comparison, but this game is neither great or so bad that I felt it was fair to uninstall and forget about it forever, like I've done with a select few other games. I started it in August 4 2025, played for 2 hours, then stopped playing, because it wasn't that fun. Then somehow, I never played it or any other game until August 21 2026, when I played this game for 4 hours and now I've completed it today after a bit less than 10 more hours, mostly to get it out of the way so I can start something else which is probably/hopefully much better.
