This Old Blood Could Use Some New, Uh, Order

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood makes short work of the goodwill built by The New Order. The latter succeeded as a parcel of entertainment because it wrapped a technically-tight shooter with interesting characters, intriguing settings, and a thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride of level design. But the former lays said technically-tight shooter bare: This is a Nazi-killin' game, with little else to it.

If Old Blood does anything better than its predecessor, it's putting forth challenging encounters with multiple and/or tough enemies. And frankly, I don't consider that to the game's benefit. Heavily-armored bullet-sponge enemies are annoying as shit -- throwing several of them at me at once is not what I consider a fun time. And when I can mow down dozens of Nazis only to die near-instantaneously to a machine-gun brute hidden in a monster closet; well. That's even less of a fun time.

But what hurts the most about Old Blood isn't that the shooting is hard, I mean, I would be more than willing to put up with that if the game scenario was as engaging as New Order. But it isn't. I have no motivation to go on in this game -- there isn't any grand narrative payoff to defeating a room full of crazy enemies. There are only more crazy enemies.

This might be pretty great for someone who was super into the older Wolfenstein games. But for me, it's a solid "meh," benefiting only from the fact that it's still a technically-tight shooter.

Better than: Sniper: Ghost Warrior
Not as good as: Wolfenstein: The New Order
And yeah: I know that I'm most of the way through the game, already. I feel like an idiot for wasting as many hours on it as I did.

Progress: Gave up in Chapter 6 - Ruins.