The Wolfenstein series makes its comeback with the first next-gen title, The New Order, after a break of over five years between game releases. Since then rust took over most of our weapons, after being stored for almost half of a decade in our humble houses and the taste for Nazi blood has almost reached its climax while we patiently waited for a new game. But The New Order it’s finally here and we already have cleaned our weapons in preparation for the game.

The New Order starts a new era in the series, being the first title released on both current-gen and next-gen consoles. While you could pretty much play this game on every platform available, the differences are enormous between platforms especially when it comes to visuals.

The game looks terrible on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, while the versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One shine in a way you’d never expect. Because I only tested the PS4 version of New Order, I won’t be taking in consideration the fact that if you do buy it on the older generation of consoles you’ll get terrible graphics and animations.

The New Order is an action packed shooter that never forgets the importance of a plausible story. You’ll feel and live the real threat the Nazi’s represented through the eyes of the protagonist. The overwhelming cruelty will make those hen-hearted shed a tear when they will see what the new Wolfenstein title has to offer in terms of brutality and human torture.

The story is tailored in such way that will captivate the gamer from start to finish, and will let them to take important decisions in key moments. Sure, no matter what you will be choosing the ending will mostly be the same, but it’s always nice to feel like your actions have an impact on the story, and not only on the gameplay.

Wolfenstein’s more than decent story is completed by a simplistic gameplay style. The lack of an upgradable skill tree and the archaic ammo loot system will sure make your shooting experience a bit more annoying. There will be plenty of times when you will run out of ammo and you’ll be forced to dodge bullets while searching for dropped weapons.

The brand new dual wield system and the possibility of carrying two weapons at a time will save you more often than you’d think. There’s also the possibility to upgrade your weapons, by finding the twelve well hidden upgrade packs throughout the game. Sure, you’ll be able to finish the game just fine without them, but they will certainly give you an edge in combat if you do have all of them.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the only thing that the game doesn’t excel at. Not only that you can trick your enemies without sweat, but sometimes they appear to be retarded. Trying to complete the game by mostly playing stealthy won’t be a problem, as most of the enemies have hearing and vision issues and will not hear or see you running while they turn their backs.

Completing the game while only using the knife could more than likely be achieved on the medium difficulty. Changing the game’s difficulty to a more extreme one will also awake some of the enemies, but not all of them.

As a final note, you’ll love Wolfenstein The New Order as much as I did. It’s fun, it’s simple and it doesn’t ask too much from the player. While there’s certainly room for improvement, The New Order has exactly as much content to be a smart buy for everyone. But, I’d recommend getting the next-gen version, as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are not as good.

Final Score: 3.5 out of 5