COMINTERNAKU REVIEW: Wolfenstein

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Today we shall be reviewing the first person shooter ‘Wolfenstein: New Order’.

The game is set in a troubling alternative timeline, in 1960, where the Nazis won The Great Patriotic War. Such a thing is, of course, unthinkable and impossible. It is distinctly troubling that such an idea could even be conceived of in today’s world and suggests possible counter-revolutionary thoughts in the designers which should be investigated by the KGB.

This is, sadly, far from the only problem with the game.

As a first person shooter it concentrates entirely on a single character, emphasising the power and prowess of this individual and, even though he works with others, placing him at the absolute centre as an entirely self-reliant hero who really need nobody else. This carries the risk of spreading destructive concepts of individualism to the impressionable youth and undermining the attempt to create a proper understanding of their place as part of a mutual supporting society. This problem is only deepened by the lack of multiplayer, meaning that there isn’t even a secondary game to encourage teamwork and cooperation.

With peculiar disregard for the great part that the Motherland played in the Great Patriotic War, the game concentrates on a latecomer American, a ‘BJ Blaskowitz. The choice of an American, capitalist hero is another strike against a game that was already, ideologically, on thin ice.

The existing problems with themes of ‘heroic’ individualism, capitalist imperialism and minimisation of the role of the Motherland in the Great Patriotic War are taken to breaking point with the inclusion of mystical and religious themes via the Da’at Yichud, a purely nonsensical religious order with access to ‘divine’ super-science. Obviously this stands in direct challenge to philosophical materialism and, as a plot element, takes the agency away from the people involved in favour of a pseudo-supernatural intervention.

As such, we cannot possibly recommend this counter-revolutionary nonsense.

Oh, the graphics are nice and the gameplay is fun though.

Score: 8/10 – Awful

AND THIS IS WHY  MOTIVATED REVIEWS ARE SHIT.