Game Details Developer: MachineGames

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Platforms: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One

Release Date: May 20, 2014

Price: $60

Links: Steam | Official website MachineGames: Bethesda Softworks: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox OneMay 20, 2014: $60

This may be a technical distinction most people don’t recognize, but it’s also a historical truth: Most German soldiers during World War II weren’t actually Nazis. In games like the Medal of Honor series, the early Call of Duty games, Day of Defeat, or the new Heroes & Generals, players are fighting as or against the German Wehrmacht, their regular army forces.

The Waffen-SS, on the other hand, is the armed wing of the Nazi party that has always been the primary antagonist throughout the Castle Wolfenstein franchise. But these virtual enemies never felt properly evil to me until I got to engage with a three-hour demo of Wolfenstein: The New Order recently.

Sure, I've always known from history just how evil the SS troops in previous Wolfenstein games were, but that was knowledge I had from outside the game. Inside the games themselves, I was fighting an “SS Paranormal Division” that felt more like the cartoonish villains from the Indiana Jones movies—raising dead spirits, seeking religious totems, or engaging in other such hocus-pocus with a little Nazi superweapon vibe thrown in.

What made the preview build of Wolfenstein: The New Order so harsh for me were the reminders and references to just what made the Nazis one of the worst evils to blight the face of the Earth. The first two hours of that demo felt more like a horror movie than a first-person shooter, because I felt like I was fighting real Nazis in a video game for the very first time.

That's not to say this is a realistic historical document or anything. The New Order takes place in an alternate history where the Germans win the war, and there’s a strong sci-fi element to enemies, like giant robotic rats, cybernetically enhanced dogs, human soldiers piloting giant tripod mechs, and flying robot patrol drones. Amid all that fiction, there are distinct references to a not-at-all supernatural evil perpetrated by the Nazis of the sort that I haven't seen (or at least can't recall) in any previous Wolfenstein game.

At one point, the game leads you into a morgue with bloody sack cloths thrown over corpses on examination tables and diagrams of experimental human enhancement designs on the walls. Another room has corpses held up by their necks, skin pulled back from their backbones and held in place with clamps. “There’s ashes down here. There’s a lot of ashes down here,” says one of the soldiers who accompanies you into that room. If you don’t know what the scene is trying to evoke, you need to read some history.

The uncomfortable truths continued during a cut scene in a Polish mental institution while the game’s hero, B. J. Blazkowicz, is catatonic after an injury at the end of the introductory levels. Nazis storm in and take some patients in chains with hoods over their heads, the officer in charge shouting over a doctor’s protests that the patients are “subhumans who would serve the Reich,” another revolting reminder of Nazi ideology.

I don’t know if mass market video games should ever directly depict the reality of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis, but having some sort of sideways recognition of that evil in a video game is noteworthy. I'm all right with that recognition making me a little uncomfortable. It ought to be uncomfortable. You’re fighting Nazis.

Satisfying shooting

What finally wakes Blazkowicz up is the arrival of those same Germans to “decommission” the hospital; in other words, to slaughter everyone. That’s when the game’s primary storyline kicks in. According to producer Will Noble, that storyline takes Wolfenstein: The New Order away from the horror movie vibe of the game’s first few levels and into more of a science-fiction heist story about breaking members of the resistance out of prison and striking back against the Nazis who rule the world in this alternate version of 1960.

At least from what I saw in the first two levels of that main storyline, MachineGames has done its homework in terms of studying historical German army designs and trying to advance them forward in a grounded-yet-futuristic manner. I broke out of the mental institution and took cover behind what were clearly advanced Kubelwagen light vehicles, dodging fire from troops disgorging from what obviously looked like a future-version Puma scout car that smashed through the front gates.

I spent the rest of my demo on foot in some very satisfying first-person shooter combat. Playing with the difficulty set one notch below maximum, I had to put in some real work to proceed through that three-hour demo—sliding into and leaning up and out of cover were absolute necessities. I also had to be very careful not to burn through too much ammo and had to go back through cleared areas of the map and really scrounge around to get my bullet counts up.

The level designs provided multiple routes of approach and flanking positions and plenty of cover to leapfrog to. The enemy AI was fantastic and managed to use all of these level elements against me. I’d pop out of cover to take a bead on someone, and he’d slide into cover, and I’d miss those wasted rounds pretty quickly.

The New Order does offer a limited automatic health regeneration, but only up to a paltry one-fifth of your maximum capacity. Past that, you have to rely on med packs or food to keep yourself alive—no recovering from those multiple gunshots with a few seconds of rest here. You can also pick up supplementary armor and “overcharge” your health temporarily above 100 percent, an old-school touch that wasn't unwelcome.

I don’t have much patience for stealth in first-person shooters, but I may have to build some in playing The New Order. Players can track opposing soldiers via their radio signals, and taking them all down silently means they can’t call for reinforcements. Every time I didn’t bother to exercise the patience to get rid of the officers this way, I regretted it.

The game also features a light stat-building mechanic, letting players unlock perks like higher ammo storage, resistance to explosive damage, and quieter stealth movement as they progress. This means your B. J. Blazkowicz will naturally evolve over time to support your play style. I also gained the ability to hotwire electronics after one of my supporting characters died—a death I helped cause, indirectly, after choosing between him and a fellow soldier.

When producer Will Noble told me after my demo that there is no multiplayer in Wolfenstein: The New Order, it made sense. With no secondary game mode to divert development resources, MachineGames has been able to concentrate on the single-player campaign. I think the benefits of this approach are already showing through an attention-grabbing narrative and highly polished, challenging shooting.

Often developers only give you carefully coiffed and manicured portions of a game during a hands-on preview, but Bethesda just tossed me the keys and let me drive as far down the road as I could get in three hours. That extended play time convinced me that Wolfenstein: The New Order would be worth a pre-order even without the included access to the Doom 4 beta. That even goes for someone as cynical about pre-orders as I am. Make of that what you will.

Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston who also covers the video game beat for Salon and NPR. You can also find him on Twitter: @DennisScimeca