The New Colossus
The Wolfesntein saga has been one of the great surprises within the video game industry in recent years. Despite being a franchise that laid the first bricks to cement the genre of the first person shooter, the course of the saga from the year 2001 indicated that, perhaps, its time had passed and it was relegated to a niche franchise away from the general public. However, that was before Bethesda and MachineGames joined forces to bring to market Wolfenstein: The New Order, a play that drank from the more classic shooter to return Blazkowicz to his rightful place.
A shooter masterpiece
Before getting into the specifics of the Nintendo Switch version, it's worth a review to remember what Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is. The Latest from MachineGames is a direct sequel to The New Order, both playable and narrative. The New Colossus rescues the same formula taken directly from the classic FPS to put us in front of a video game loaded with quite demanding firefights, in which we must take into account our armor, health, ammunition and the position of the enemies.
From the first moment, Wolfenstein II is a video game that manages to conquer us, no matter what kind of player we are. Thanks to the different abilities added in this sequel, it is possible to adapt the environment to our way of playing, and use more stealth, tactical advantage or brute force. The styles of play, although they are differentiated, are not imposed on us at all and we choose what we choose we can always play as we want in each of the situations.
Along with all this, the gunplay that the work has is simply perfect. The sensation of shooting makes us feel the weight of the weapons that our protagonist carries; the possibility of dual wielding any combination of weapons gives us freedom; And overall, Wolfenstein is one of those works where just shooting is a pleasure to do. And more if in front of our weapons there are Nazis to blow their heads off.
Regarding the narrative section, although it is a direct sequel to The New Order, it is not at all necessary to have played the first installment to fully understand this second part. At the beginning of the title we are given a small summary of what happened in The New Order and, in general, this sequel deals with very different issues. All you need to know is that the Nazis have taken America and our mission is to kill as many of these vermin as possible.
Going deeper we find that the work done is quite good. The company in charge of this port is none other than PanicButton, who already amazed the world a few months ago by bringing the spectacular DOOM to the Nintendo hybrid. The first thing that stands out in the port is that they have learned from DOOM and have included a more exaggerated auto-aiming system, which we can deactivate if we wish, but which is practically necessary in portable mode, given the demand of the game in shootings. However, even with this auto-aiming, shooting is still satisfying and the experience is fun.
Overall, from a playable point of view, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus continues to be an outstanding shooter. It's quite comfortable to play even in handheld mode, the controls are responsive, and thanks to auto-pointing and motion control, a satisfying experience can be achieved. It is true that you can choose, but the truth is that taking into account the demand of the game. And it is that killing Nazis on the bus on the way to work never hurts.
Technically fair
Playing Wolfenstein is still a fun and satisfying experience. That said, we must clarify that technically the port is quite fair. The New Colossus is a real beast on a visual level, a game that in its PC version makes a technical display capable of offering one of the best visuals in recent years. This is something that, as is reasonable, is almost completely lost on the Nintendo Switch. The graphics of this version are much inferior to the rest of platforms; resolution is lost, textures are worse and, although the scenarios look good.
However, the truth is that I cannot complain about PanicButton's decision to sacrifice visuals in order to offer a stable performance that allows you to enjoy each and every one of the game's shootings, no matter how crazy they are. Thanks to the visual downturn, frame drops have practically not existed in our experience with the game and everything feels quite fluid in practically the entire work, allowing the core of the gameplay, which is gunplay, to remain at the same time. height of the rest of the versions. In this way, although the technical quality is much lower, The New Colossus is able to continue being fun, satisfying and a good bet on the Nintendo hybrid.
One detail that we must take note of is the absurd size of the texts. Both some menus and subtitles have a font size that forces us to use almost a magnifying glass to be able to read it. And they don't even take up the entire screen. A small increase in the font size would have been appreciated to make reading the subtitles more comfortable, in case we want to activate them (which happens by default with, at least, some dialogues that are produced in foreign languages).
If the port of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus had to be defined with a single word, this would be “correct”. PanicButton has once again done a more than good job adapting MachineGames' work to the Nintendo hybrid, making good decisions and betting, correctly, to sacrifice the visual spectacularity of the work in order to offer a fluid playable experience that really does justice to one of the best shooters of recent years.