• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - Original Game Soundtrack
    26 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5etKIsCpZQ
Shame the game was sorta disappointing. I loved the New Order and Old Blood, but Colossus felt very off for most of the game.
I liked it, it did pretty good tbh. There were a lot of ups to be had for sure. It definitely wasn't as impactful as Order or Blood, though.
New Order was excellent, Old Blood was more gameplay with a classic wolf backdrop which was great. TNC was so disappointing though. The plot and characters weren't nearly as compelling as TNO and the locales weren't as exciting, and don't even get me started on the "bosses" On top of that the damage seemed inconsistent which made the gameplay feel less polished than TNO despite being improved in some ways. Idk the whole thing felt rushed
I've been waiting for this for so long.
Personally, I thought that The New Colossus was better than The New Order or The Old Blood. When I replayed the latter two in anticipation for the sequel, I thought to myself; "Jesus Christ is this game flawed". Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed both, and I agree with everyone else that the story and characters were great, but the rest of the parts I had serious issues with. Particularly, the gameplay wasn't all that fantastic IMO. There were just so many off-putting stealth-only and gimmicky sections like that one where you use the mini-submarine or whatever it's called, but what I hated most of all is the bullet-spongy enemies, particularly the Shotgun Guys and Super Soldiers. Not only did they take a ton of damage (obviously), but at least on the higher difficulties, they will completely wreck you if you peek your head out for even a second. The bosses weren't particularly great, either. Plus, aside from the Moon Base (but even then it was ruined because it limited your arsenal to just two guns)I didn't find the locations all that interesting, it was mostly just grey, dirty interiors (which may or may not have to do with id Tech 5. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but every game from RAGE to the Old Blood looked like shit, even The Evil Within with its fully dynamic lights). The New Colossus on the other hand fixed nearly every problem I had with the gameplay in the previous MachineGames titles; it lacked bullet-sponge enemies aside from the "mini-boss" Panzerhund and Zitadelle (and even then I didn't mind them nearly as much to fight), there were not forced stealth sections, the "gimmick" sections were limited to two (the Wheelchair and Panzerhund riding sections), but even then the former fit perfectly with the tone, and the latter comes at a good time and is even completely optional since you can just hit the crouch button to get off it, and while there was still a boss that wasn't all that great, at least there weren't as many like in The New Order, I would rather have that than more shitty bosses. Then, of course id Tech 6 was a godsend for this game, and I really liked the environments, as while it still could've used more variation (I'm look at you, New York Bunker), it still had some interesting locales, like the marshlands and ghettos of New Orleans, the subways of devastated New York, Mesquite, or the surface and retro-futurisitc iteriors of Venus. However, looking back on it, I do think that The New Colossus's story wasn't as good as The New Order, but it was still great and IMO has some of the greatest scenes in the whole series.
The major problem with The New Colossus was the pacing. Everything felt just a bit... off. There's no set "Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4" like in TNO and especially Blood, that all keep leading into each other as you build up newer and better and bigger sets of weaponry each level. Instead the game just sorta jumps around to different setpieces without any buildup and especially even shoddier story excuses than TNO. TNO at least made sense. You didn't just suddenly find yourself on the Nazi moon base in TNO, you had to slowly build up to get there, getting the U-boat to need the codes on the moon base, using the technology you found in the last chapter to destroy a bridge and get the documents to be able to take a flight to space, and then a fall back to earth. Meanwhile in TNC it was just a sudden cutscene about impersonating and actor, a journey to the surface of fucking Venus of all places, an then boom, cutscene of you hopping in a fucking flying saucer and you're back on earth. There's no build up in TNC, so there's no tension gained and thus there's no excitement. I didn't feel any more compelled or excited when Blazko got his head chopped off, just... elated. Wooooooo? Meanwhile in TNO as soon as shit started going down back home when the resistance base was under attack, I fought like a fucking lion getting through the London Nautica and went ham on the London Monitor trying to get back there as soon as possible. TNO has a proper plot ark to it. TNC just kinda... muddles the entire time. I often found myself more interested in the little written tidbits and reading up how the world got to the place it did than the actual story itself. Part of it is the characters too. The characters in TNO were much more believable and grounded, not stereotyped versions of their general archetype. In TNO Set Roth is a reserved wise man who is careful about letting his knowledge of Dat Yichud out and only helps the resistance when necessary. In TNC, Set Roth is a stereotypical scientist who is constantly tinkering and playing with stuff and has every care for the resistance efforts. In TNO, Bombate is a generally likeable, helpful and diligent fighter who is honestly the poster child of a resistance member. In TNC he's a fuckboy asshole who only cares about getting laid and serves to further the high school drama crap on the ship. In TNO, Max Hoss is a gentle giant mentally disabled man with a childish tenancy who sometimes helps out the resistance. In TNC he's a fucking god who can solve any problem ever, is an amazing artist, and overall an intellectual, he just can't communicate well. This isn't just a comparison between old and new characters though. Grace is a stereotypical female black power leader who commands all and gets respect from everyone just because she is, Horton is a communist asshat who is supposed to be strong but is undercut by his own decisions, and Paris Jack is a replacement J except unlike the nuanced view J provides, all Paris does is be a badass and fails horribly at that. That being said it's not all bad. While a lot of characters do end up falling into stereotypes, it's still mostly serviceable from a plot perspective, and there are still characters with balanced and ground to them such as Anya, Sigrun, Super Spesh, Professor, and a few others, but they're often written as doing really dumb or weird actions. It's really not a problem but it's not a good thing either, and especially the rewrites of what were already amazing characters is more what pisses me off. In terms of gameplay, while the gunplay in general improved, overall I felt the gameplay was a bit of a downgrade. The guns were all very fun to use and I found myself using all of them to very rewarding effect, it's more so everything else but the gunplay that was so, so much worse than in TNO. Tbh the level design in TNC was fucking god awful. As stated before the levels were mostly based around setpieces strung together awkwardly to keep your attention from one strange interesting thing for the next, and this did not make for good gameplay. Exploration was more of a chore than a natural affair like in The New Order, and the actual combat ecounters on offer were downright horrifying. Why would you ever, ever, ever, in a million years, put multiple enemies that upon detection, spawn many, many, many more enemies onto their location, and then sprinkle 50 million of them throughout a level not at all conducive for stealthily eliminating them? All it does is make the player either stealth his way through somewhere or bumrush the officers and only then turn around and actually fight everyone else. That was not a fun game mechanic, at all. TNO sprinkled them out nicely properly placing them in sections conducive to both stealth and action. TNC shoved them in your face where ever you went and made it a chore to actually eliminate them rather than something fun and exciting. Just in general the actual placement of the enemies was also terrible, with them coming at you from all angles and directions without any actual decent AI or tactics to them. TNO's gameplay wasn't absolutely astounding like DOOM (Either one really), it was more akin to the line of Half-Life where everything fit together and was fun to play around though not the sole reason the game was great. People fault TNO too much for bullet spongey enemies, but in reality it was mostly just you had to develop tactics to properly counter the enemies such as using the Lazerkraftwerk on the shotgun and rocket assholes, and disabling the robots with tesla grenades to flank behind them and shoot them. Overall the gameplay of TNC was just meh, it was certainly more compelling than the story but altogether it wasn't as consistent or carefully put together as TNO. Oh and just a small side note - the sound design in TNC was meh compared to the original. TNO Assault Rifle sounds still gets me hard to this day, the new one just sounds... eh. Overall a lot of the problems with TNC were needless changes from TNO that didn't actually fit what the previous game had established, and in a addition a generally decent story just without any claws to it. It's an okay game, but it comes nowhere to the original and it's strangely grounded and personal story that makes you actually feel while having a solid gameplay experience behind it. Hopefully we'll see these problems rectified in the next installment, as Machine Games gets it's shit together from all the new hires and learns from its experience from making TNC. P.S. Please bring back Guard Robots from TNO. I know they were mostly replaced by the new Ubersoldaten but they're just so iconic and menacing and are wonderful symbols of the Nazi's power.
I really enjoyed TNC but its kind of clear they ran out of the time in the latter half of the game. You can see where they wanted to go and there's a very clear tonal shift as things start to look birghter for BJ and friends but the pacing was so breakneck I feel they didn't have time to do as much as they wanted to.
Did they seriously not make this available to watch in Germany? I just wanted to listen to the music...
My main issue with TNC is when you finally get the jew suit and you feel like a wet piece of paper. Having your health capped at half with a little more armor killed it for me. I wanted to be a super soldier whos near bulletproof. Instead I got a frail old man simulator with focus being almost a requirement at later difficulties. The only time you get all the cool powers is fucking half way into the game. DOOM 2016 was hands down the best shooter I've played in a long time because everything is up for your disposal within 2 hours of gameplay. Having your character be handicapped for half the game before you can do any chaotic shit was horrible and boring.
I didn't like what they did with the villains in TNC. They made them all into silly caricatures but not in a fun way, it just made them all feel unthreatening and incompetent. Like I want to feel as though I'm actually smashing a Nazi empire not taking on a bunch of dementia ridden old codgers.
The low health makes you feel like you have to sneak through the game, but who ever designed the levels must have hated stealth games because they're fucking annoying to get around. Narrow corridors with enemies all over, and an officer way at the back. TNO had much more open levels and the officers were in locations that made sense, not just behind a wall of 25 guys.
They didn't even really add any new bad guys for TNC. The entirety of TNC was just chasing down the one old crone from TNO, and even when you get to her you just kill her in an (admittedly pretty cool) cutscene, even that weird dog lad from TOB had a bossfight.
Being capped at 50hp for more than half the game is just... lmao
TNC has some fucking weird problems, like very basic issues like having problems showing where you were taking damage from. Or making low life actually interesting.
The way they changed the damage indicators in TNC to make it almost impossible to notice when and where you're getting shot really fucked it over for me and made combat such a chore. I never felt like I knew why I was dying, so I had to creep around very carefully, especially during the first half of the game where you can't take damage.
I think their latest update fixed the damage indication at least.
Yeah there was update that came out not that long ago that supposedly re balanced all damage and made hit indicators more obvious. Haven't had to chance to go back and play it but those were my main complaints too back when I finished it.
I find it mind-boggling how the same company that made The New Order also made The New Colossus, TNC was worse than TNO in every aspect possible. It was still an okay game, but considering how TNO was one of my favourites that year, TNC being 'okay' left me sorely disappointed.
still cant believe that frau engel steals your jew suit and the final boss isnt engel in the jew suit the closest thing to a final boss the fucking game has is some robots on the ship
Yeah, I don't know if I was still in Doom 2016-mode while playing this, but I just kept dying and dying to hitscan weapons. The game's theme and mechanics want you to do the climax from Commando, dual-wielding assault rifles and mowing down everyone in the room. But the actual gameplay requires you to stick behind waist-high cover and pray you don't get blindsided. Blazko doesn't feel like an unstoppable killing machine, but more like a wet biscuit. I was stuck in the courtroom fight for who knows how long, because of this.
1:38:36 for best song.
Fuck the Courtroom fight. There's no excuse, it's so fucking terrible
The biggest problem TNC had for me was the level design. The level design in TNO and TOB was absolutely fantastic. They were open and incredibly well designed without overwhelming the player and the exploration came as a natural tendency to look for alternate paths. The progression through any given level was generally intuitive and enemies felt realistic and reasonable and levels remained fun to play on any difficulty. In TNC however, I had to actually turn the difficulty down just because of how confusing, PITCH BLACK, and random the levels seemed to be. Progression is not intuitive in most levels and the amount of back tracking (while interesting in some portions) really threw me for a loop in some places. Not to mention that the level design in some areas is just flat out bad (the side-mission bunker in new York springs to mind as the most egregious). Overall, TNC just feels like a lower quality game than TNO. It's good, but it isn't jaw-drop amazing like TNO was. I know it sounds like a stupid conspiracy theory but I really think that the game was rushed through the final stages of production so it could be released into a societal mindset that resonated with it's views in order to move more copies. I know several people who never played TNO/TOB or ANY other FPS for that matter that went and bought TNC because they 'wanted to kill some nazis'. The seemingly breakneck pacing of the last 3/4ths of the game and the seemingly bizarre game design choices (BJ only having 50HP for half the game...?) would seem to indicate that the game was rushed or had other development issues. Hopefully this isn't the end of the series, I'd like to see a redemption after TNC.
But you know what it left the door open to? Hitler in the Jew Suit.
The first had way better set pieces and levels. I just thought TNC was pretty bad overall and couldn't stand it at all something about it just felt off.
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