#6: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
I don’t often have to judge a game on two somewhat wildly disparate elements often. Gameplay for the Wolfenstein sequel is much like the first: fast, frenetic and arcadey. More often than not, the solution to your 1960’s Nazi problem is to run in, guns akimbo, and slay while constantly on the move. In its best moments, the game can feel like a sort of bullet ballet, circle-strafing and swapping guns while trying to manage a dwindling supply of health, armor and ammo. Admittedly, this is a bit easier on PC than console, where a lack of precision could easily get you killed on the harder difficulties. This is one experience that I've heard from multiple sources that dropping the difficulty to the easiest may be recommended to some regulars just to take in the story at a better clip. It's a standard but enjoyable time. Not quite the rip and tear revolution of Doom 2016, but no slouch either.
But the story here is just wild. Following directly after the New Order, you once again find yourself in the shoes of B.J. Blazkowicz, a man of two very disparate worlds. In one hand you're fulfilling the legacy of the franchise as this walking power fantasy, crushing hordes of fascists wherever you go. Perfectly in line with a summer blockbuster. And yet as the next moment arrives, you'll hear an older and beaten-down William's internal monologue of being a broken husk, worried for the safety of his lover and unborn child into a cruel dystopia. For some this will seem like tonal whiplash, going between grind house and tragedy. However, I found this all to be enthralling, buying into this world from the foundation of it's predecessor as well as it's phenomenally written and acted characters.
There's a tone and rhythm in the dialogue, coupled with what I can only assume is a combination of motion capture and hand animation that manages to propel the cast past the uncanny valley. You see this kind of attention often from Naughty Dog, and MachineGames for me falls into this camp as well. I buy B.J. as a soldier from Texas who essentially has poetry about the fall of civilization running through his head. Or Grace Walker recalling the horror of an atom bomb being dropped in Manhattan, all while she breastfeeds her child. You care about these characters as the story takes wild twists and turns in this High castle world.
This take on the franchise continues to surprise and shock with such a grim subject. Come for the action but stay for the narrative.
#5: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
This one manages to simultaneously be a wonderful return to greatness for a long-running franchise, as well as being a fresh new take where one was desperately needed. It's incredible really that Capcom was able to make such a huge pivot in just about every way in the wake of 6.
The first smart move was to jettison just about all of the complicated lore and back story the franchise had up to this point in order to present a seemingly more grounded and intimate narrative. There's no worrying about Wesker, clones, Umbrella, or a multitude of virus outbreaks, at least within the grand majority of the game. Where this story links into the grander universe is present if the player chooses to seek it out, but it's not at all required, making the experience open to new players. Instead, there's a far more classical setting of an old, dilapidated mansion out in the swamp, as you search for your missing girlfriend. This gives way to a story more in line with Texas Chainsaw Massacre as you fight for survival and answers.
Action-wise, Resident Evil also manages to transition back into traditional survival horror, away from the third-person action shooter genre that has permeated the series for over a decade. Puzzles! Back-tracking! Save-rooms! Resource-conservation! It's practically 1996 in here! And it works! It works really damn well! You feel tense as you stalk around the creepy house, juggling your inventory, trying to hold all of these keys and gunpowder and oh my god I'm being chased by this psychopath through this environment and I don't know if I can take him out or if I'm just going to have to lose him. It's tense! It's stressful! It's great!
It's a really good-looking game too for that matter. There's a lot of gross, gooey, gory...well...stuff... all throughout the game, and the locked first-person viewpoint lets you take all the grizzly details in. Doubly so if you're playing in VR. This is actually one of the experiences that works best for a headset if you have the stomach for it. Pretty much the pinnacle game for horror fans this year, and it has me hopeful for the future.
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