Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Review - The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe

lyra.roberge (56)in #gaming • 7 years ago (edited)

Where we thought that BJ Blazkowicz was the only one who would teach the Nazis in Wolfenstein a lesson, it turns out that he is not completely alone. The extensions for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus revolve around three other characters who are also keen to call the Nazis to a halt. The first of the three that we can get to work with - after we have briefly acquainted ourselves with all three figures in the prologue - is Joseph Stallion. An American Football player who ignores the rules and therefore gets into trouble.

Find it out yourself!

The Nazis have taken over everything in North America in this fictional post-war setting. The inhabitants must learn German, the German customs are taken over and everyone falls prey to this submission. Moreover, the inhabitants of the country are considered inferior by the Nazis. Whether that is the ordinary citizen, dignitaries or simply sports people. Joseph Stallion, or Joe for short, is a very talented American Football player, but the Nazis must of course excel in everything because of their superiority. Thus Nazis are deployed on the field and the Americans must always lose.

As a seasoned athlete, Joe sees it with dismay, until something snaps and he really overcomes all Nazis in the field. No longer does he want to submit to the occupier with their bizarre rules. The result, however, is that his entire team is sentenced to lifelong work in the coal mines and Joe himself, who travels behind bars. That is the point where the story of Joe starts and in about two to three hours you experience his adventure. While BJ Blazkowicz gave the 'Ram Shackles' the opportunity to ram through walls and doors with the help of a modification, Joe himself is sufficiently strong that he can physically do it anyway.

That turns out to be damn handy, because the prison in which Joe is sitting is not just a prison. The detainees are subjected to bizarre experiments by the former dentist Metze. Joe thinks this banger is so special because of his physical strength that he wants to experiment with it in order to make the Nazis even better. Before that happens Joe manages to escape, resulting in a roller coaster ride full of brutal action. One nazi after another is popped to the afterlife and in fact all the enemies that you saw in the normal game also pass by. The story of Joe is divided over three chapters and that brings him to different locations.

Wolfenstein mini

The adventure of Joe is, as already indicated, considerably shorter than the adventure of BJ Blazkowicz, but no less fun. The way of upgrading your skills and unlocking weapon modifications is therefore somewhat different. You have a total of only five improvements for Joe that you can unlock. For this you have to kill an x number of enemies with grenades, with a melee attack and more. Also the making of dual-wield kills comes over and it pays off to keep an eye on that, because with that Joe has a lot more possibilities at a second playthrough, making the run-and-gun principle even better coming.

The special weapon modifications can be found ready in suitcases here and there through the levels instead of spending points on upgrades. Two ways in which the expansion deviates from the normal game and because of the shorter playing time that is a good solution for the tempo. You can consider the expansion to be a compact Wolfenstein adventure that is completely self-contained. Incidentally, we do not look weird when the three characters from The Freedom Chronicles join BJ in Wolfenstein III at some point. Anyway, that is of course future music, after this episode of Joe we have two more to go.

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Only replay value

After you've finished this episode, you've unlocked a lot, but not all, of upgrades and because the pace is pretty high, a second playthrough is quickly a choice you make. It therefore has some form of replay value, on the one hand because it simply remains fun to beat Nazis and to unlock the remaining unlocks. On the other hand, the three chapters also contain collectables in the form of gold bars and readables. Nice of course for the collectors and Trophy hunters, but it is entirely optional. Apart from that, this episode also adds three Combat Simulations that play on maps based on the three chapters of Joe.

Here you can, as in the normal game, fight with Nazis and it is the intention to score as high as possible by effectively attacking Nazis. The more you shoot - let the commanders stay alive - the higher the score will be and if you can string kills together by jumping off as much as possible in succession, the final score will only be higher. These Combat Simulations offer a nice challenge, especially on a higher level of difficulty so even there you can have fun with it, which brings the total playing time quickly to four o'clock and that is pretty nice.

That's easy...

This entire episode is obviously excellent in terms of gameplay, since it is identical to the regular game. The only difference now is the development process of Joe which is faster and of course the character in itself. However, MachineGames has made it a bit easier by using objects and buildings from the normal game here and there. This is to shape the levels, but the result is that it all looks pretty familiar. So we walked around Springfield, where we initially thought it was Roswell, because for example the pumping station was taken one on one. It is also annoying that Joe sometimes hangs behind curbs and fallen doors, especially in the heat of the battle, but luckily that is minimal.

Conclusion

The first episode of The Freedom Chronicles for Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus has been successful, although the developer here and there has been a bit lazy with old assets. Nevertheless, the adventure of Joe is very entertaining, which is partly due to the way of storytelling. This is done with drawn animations and that works very well. In addition, Joe is an interesting figure. The entire episode feels compact and plays very well. The three extra Combat Simulations are a nice extra and thus the extension is a beautiful complete whole. Have you thoroughly enjoyed Wolfenstein II? Then this is a no-brainer, but we advise you to buy the Season Pass. This makes you five euros cheaper and therefore the price is just a bit more in line with the length of the episode (s).