We’ve been following Wolfenstein The New Order since it was announced and have a hands-on preview follow-up to our first look at the game from back in May 2013.  Wolftenstein The New Order is a first person action shooter starring B.J. Blazkowicz which will be released May 20, 2014 in the U.S. and May 23, 2014 in Europe.  The fine folks at Bethesda brought a playable version of the game to PAX East but we got to play it not long ago in a private demo and wanted to share our thoughts from then leading into the release of the game.

From our gameplay of Wolfenstein The New Order we started off in a plane during a frantic combat drop/mission with enemy airplanes attacking from all around and eventually landed where we fought against Nazi, angry dogs, soldiers and giant robots.  We played on the PlayStation 4 where the graphics looked very beefy – the game will also land on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Wolfenstein The New Order will appeal to both newcomers to the franchise and old war veterans.  Ultimately the new game will probably be known for its guns and being able to hold two at once but we found the melee combat quite satisfying as well.  For instance, you can change the knife position in your hand from slashing to stabbing and if an angry dog attacks you you can easily finish them off with a stab to the neck.  Wolftenstein The New Order offers some cover gameplay mechanics like you can pop up and quickly fire at enemies while kneeling behind a wall sort of like the way Killzone 3 handled first-person cover mechanics.

The first few levels of the game comprised of outdoor and indoor corridor combat with oncoming foes flanking and shooting from many directions.  Something we noticed early-on was that it was a bit difficult to tell which direction you were being attacked from especially when multiple enemies were on-screen at the same time.

Though we didn’t complete the game in our demo there will be some rewards for second-time playthrough like trying to use stealth only (with a silencer) and there are also achievements/trophies for ‘loot items’ like collecting swords, gold, cups, letters and also something called ‘Enigma Codes‘ which will unlock new game modes.

Wolfenstein The New Order Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS-Bg6drRZg