Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

MachineGames followed up one of the best FPS campaigns of the 2010s with a sequel that doubled down on narrative ambition while struggling to maintain the gameplay balance that made The New Order work. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus picks up immediately after its predecessor, with B.J. Blazkowicz barely alive and leading a resistance movement across a Nazi-occupied America. The game arrived in 2017 to strong initial praise that gradually gave way to more divided opinions as players spent time with the full campaign.

Community sentiment on The New Colossus falls distinctly below its predecessor. The shooting and the story are both individually praised, but the way the game structures their interaction draws consistent criticism. Players who loved The New Order’s balance between action and character moments often find the sequel leans too heavily toward the cinematic at the expense of the mechanical.

Performances That Outgun the Gameplay

The writing and performances in The New Colossus represent a genuine high point for the medium. B.J.’s internal struggle, his complicated relationship with his father, and the resistance fighters’ individual arcs are handled with a level of craft that most shooters never attempt. The game swings between comedy, tragedy, and pulp absurdity, often within the same scene, and the tonal shifts work more often than they don’t. Specific scenes, particularly those exploring B.J.’s childhood memories, carry an emotional weight that has nothing to do with shooting Nazis.

The supporting cast is drawn with specificity and care. Each resistance member has a distinct personality, backstory, and perspective that emerges through optional conversations and scripted interactions aboard the submarine headquarters. The game earns its emotional beats by investing time in these characters before putting them in danger, and the payoffs are frequently powerful.

When combat does happen, it’s excellent. The gunplay retains The New Order’s satisfying weight and aggression. Dual-wielding remains central, and the weapon upgrade system provides meaningful customization options. The contraption system, which lets B.J. equip one of three traversal abilities depending on the player’s choice, adds variety to both combat and exploration. Environments offer multiple approaches, and the game rewards creative use of its tools.

The set pieces, when they arrive, deliver spectacle on a scale the first game rarely matched. Certain late-game sequences provide the kind of pure FPS excitement that justified the franchise’s revival in the first place. The problem is how long you wait between them.

When Cutscenes Become the Gameplay

The campaign’s most persistent issue is the ratio of watching to playing. Extended cinematic sequences interrupt the flow of combat with a frequency that turns the game’s pacing into a stuttering rhythm. You’ll fight through an intense encounter, then watch ten minutes of story, then fight briefly, then watch more story. The cutscenes are individually well-crafted, but their volume and placement create the sense that the game doesn’t trust its own combat to hold attention.

The opening hours are particularly front-loaded with narrative. B.J. spends a significant portion of the early game weakened and moving slowly through the submarine base, talking to characters and triggering story sequences. This serves the narrative’s purpose of establishing stakes and deepening relationships, but it delays the shooter half of the experience in ways that test patience on a first playthrough and become genuinely tedious on replays.

Tonal inconsistency creates its own friction. The New Order balanced its serious themes with moments of levity in a way that felt natural. The New Colossus pushes the absurdity further, sometimes within minutes of its most serious scenes, and the whiplash doesn’t always land. A darkly comedic sequence followed immediately by a scene of genuine trauma can feel like the game doesn’t know what it wants to be, even when both scenes work individually.

Difficulty balance drew criticism from players who found the game punishing in ways that felt unfair rather than challenging. Health management on higher difficulties can be brutal, and some encounters feel designed to overwhelm rather than test skill. The checkpoint system compounds this by occasionally placing saves in positions that make retrying an encounter more frustrating than it needs to be.

The Sequel That Aimed Higher and Hit Different

The New Colossus is a case study in what happens when a sequel’s ambitions outpace its structure. MachineGames clearly wanted to tell a bigger, more emotionally complex story, and in many ways they succeeded. The writing is frequently brilliant, the performances are outstanding, and individual scenes rank among the best in the genre. But the game that houses those scenes doesn’t give its combat enough room to breathe, creating an experience that impresses in pieces while frustrating as a whole.

Should You Play Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus?

If you played and loved The New Order, the continuation of the story alone justifies the investment. The characters, the world-building, and several standout narrative moments make it worth seeing through. Skip it if the idea of extended cutscenes between combat encounters sounds like a dealbreaker, because the game leans into that structure harder than its predecessor. It’s a shooter that sometimes forgets it’s a shooter, but when it remembers, the results are thrilling.

The Verdict on Wolfenstein II

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus reaches higher than The New Order and grasps some things its predecessor never attempted. The story is bolder, the performances are stronger, and the emotional range is wider. The combat, when it happens, matches the franchise’s best. But the game’s insistence on prioritizing cinematic presentation over gameplay momentum creates a campaign that feels uneven, oscillating between excellence and impatience. It’s a sequel worth playing but hard to love as completely as the game it follows.