Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus continues B. J. Blazkowicz's story in an alternate history where Nazi Germany won the Second World War and occupies the United States. The player joins the resistance and pushes through devastated cities, secret bases, and bizarre locations that couldn't exist in a more realistic game. The story is told far more cinematically than in most shooters: long dialogue scenes, dark satire, and characters with their own arcs alternate with extremely brutal action. It's precisely that contrast between quiet interludes at the base and the massacre in the following mission that gives the game its distinctive tone.

Gameplay is built on the choice between stealth and open combat. Officers patrol every larger map and can be eliminated with a knife or a silenced weapon. Whoever kills them in time prevents reinforcements from being called in; whoever fails faces an endless wave of enemies. Dual-wielding weapons, reloading on the move, and extensive weapon upgrades allow for very aggressive play, yet the game doesn't tolerate reckless charging, since the health pool doesn't refill above its base level on its own. In the second half, the player gains special equipment that opens up alternative routes and retroactively changes how earlier locations can be traversed. The Switch version by Panic Button lowers resolution and effect detail and is noticeably softer visually, but keeps a stable pace and even offers motion controls for aiming.

The audio is one of the game's most distinctive elements: period-styled German-language cover songs, heavy industrial motifs, and loud weapon sound. Reviews were very favorable, praising above all the boldness of the storytelling and the quality of the shooting, with unbalanced difficulty and a short campaign length as the most common complaints. Today it stands as one of the few big shooters on the platform bold enough to be both a brutal spectacle and a politically outspoken game, and it definitely doesn't belong in the hands of the youngest players.