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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Review — Propulsive pulp classic

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With fascist figures influencing the world, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is as timely as a first-person shooter video game about fighting Nazis can be. How effective is its message conveyed through story and gameplay?

There is an important legacy to the Wolfenstein name. Wolfenstein 3D basically started the 3D first-person shooter genre in 1992. That name, however, had become irrelevant since then, as its World War II setting and white-bread protagonist BJ Blazkowicz were used as a template for a lot of FPS games for years. It wasn’t until Wolfenstein: The New Order came out in 2014 and surprised gamers that Wolfenstein mattered again.

It wasn’t because of innovative gameplay, although The New Order was certainly solid in that department. What wowed fans was its nuanced narrative.

As a direct sequel to The New Order, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was then burdened with the challenge of being as good or even better than its sleeper hit predecessor. Its marketing that capitalized on the political climate in the US only served to raise the stakes.

The New Colossus wields its storytelling and gunplay like dual shotguns to blow away those expectations and then some.

Horrifying alternate history

The New Colossus picks up right where The New Order left off. There’s a short video recap for the events of the previous game for players who missed it. It’s 1961 and the Nazis are at the height of their power. They won World War II and have taken over the United States of America after dropping a nuke on Manhattan, forcing the US government to surrender. Protagonist BJ Blazkowicz is with his ragtag resistance group from Europe. On board a captured high-tech German U-boat, they’re sailing to American soil to start a revolution and liberate the nation from Nazi rule.

Sounds like a hopeful premise to start with, no?

The New Colossus hacks that hope with a hatchet in the most shocking intro to a video game I’ve ever seen. In the first half hour alone, it features extreme graphic violence, domestic abuse, animal cruelty, racial and homophobic slurs, aggressive sexually suggestive behavior, and body shaming.

It’s understandable that some might find all this immediately off-putting and done for cheap shock value. However, considering the atrocities that the Nazi party, the Ku Klux Klan, and other racial supremacist factions committed throughout history, it’s critical for a game that has those groups in power to depict them for what they truly are: evil people who hold beliefs that cannot be reasoned with yet are rooted in very real human frailty.

Brutal combat for brutal difficulty

The game establishes its villains in the beginning so effectively that you can’t help but want to bring them down. Fortunately, you build up a small arsenal to do so in supremely bloody fashion. You get throwable axes, machine guns, explosives, and lasers to maim and murder Nazis. There are upgrade systems to improve your weapons as well as your character’s base abilities like movement speed and health regeneration.

You’ll need to take full advantage of these mechanics to beat these virtual fascists. The New Colossus is unforgiving in its difficulty. Most levels begin with you in stealth, but sneaking around is tough because of how most levels are structured. You’re either going through narrow hallways with just a couple of paths or wide open arenas with very little cover.

Like in The New Order, there are commanders that you’ll have to eliminate to keep them from calling in reinforcements. Unlike in its predecessor, these commanders are almost always hidden away at the very end of the sections you’re traversing. So what usually happens is you get spotted after taking out a couple of guards, the commanders sound the alarm, and waves of heavily armored soldiers swarm in for a gunfight.

Seconds of sustained gunfire will kill you. Making matters worse is there’s little feedback to indicate you’re taking damage. It’s very easy to get gunned down without you expecting it. Recovering health is finicky, too. While you can walk over health packs on the ground to restore your life, most of these items blend in the background and are up on shelves and desks. You have to manually look at these pickups and press a button to use them, and the seconds you take to do so can be enough to eat bullets from all sides.

The answer is to never stop moving and always pull out two firearms. Only through relentless mobility and ferocity can you reliably overcome these encounters. It helps that sprinting and shooting in The New Colossus looks and feels good. You can blitz across rooms while carrying an automatic shotgun in one hand and a grenade launcher in the other. Every blast from your guns explodes in a rhythmic song of righteous fury.

Momentum-driven human drama

This philosophy of constant, confident movement rings resoundingly in the cinematics. The New Colossus rarely lets up on dropping atomic plot bombs. The entire cast crackles with character in every cutscene. The dialogue and delivery pop and snap like a Quentin Tarantino flick, with motion capture rivaling the Uncharted games for expressiveness. The industrial metal soundtrack, courtesy of DOOM (2016) composer Mick Gordon, rips and tears to hype you the hell up.

It’s not just bluster, either. You take commands from the leader of a militant African-American organization and partner with a socialist armed rebel group. Both parties holler at the social injustices that are deeply ingrained in America’s racist and hyper-capitalist culture, long before the Nazis came along. In fact, The New Colossus reveals just how poised pockets of American society are to fully embrace white supremacist authority, which apparently isn’t so different from reality.

What is most impressive though is the game’s deep dive into protagonist BJ Blazkowicz’s psyche and personal history. He cuts the perfect Aryan figure; a white, blonde, blue-eyed, square-jawed, deep-voiced, musclebound manly man. But The New Colossus takes the time to explore his emotional vulnerabilities, his sources of inner strength, and how his core values differentiate him from the insecure, paranoid, and destructive narcissism of Nazi oppressors.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a double threat of ultraviolent action and ballistic fiction. It swings from hilarity to horror with rockstar swagger while maintaining pitch-perfect solemnity in its soliloquies. 25 years since the series debut, Wolfenstein proves that it’s always relevant to resist.

SEE ALSO: Doki Doki Literature Club: It’s all fun and games until it’s not

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Gaming

The regular PlayStation 5 is getting an AI upscaling feature

The feature debuts with Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei.

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Marvel's Wolverine

If you’re an owner of a regular PlayStation 5, watching a PS5 Pro owner might touch you with a tinge of jealousy. Besides the upgraded console’s better hardware, it also has something called the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which uses AI to improve resolution and framerate. Unfortunately, that feature isn’t available on the regular console. But Sony is throwing the classic console a bone today by adding Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), which does the same as PSSR but on the older machine.

Since the introduction of PSSR, fans and developers alike have asked whether the older console can have a version of the technology. Developed with AMD, QSSR is an AI upscaling feature that improves performance for modern games on the PlayStation 5. For now, the feature is debuting first on Ghost of Yotei and Marvel’s Wolverine via a set of patches. Moving forward, Sony will also allow its developers to add the feature for their respective games.

Now, the choice of games is deliberate. Marvel’s Wolverine is still fresh on everyone’s mind. Meanwhile, Ghost of Yotei has just released a Complete Edition, which packs in a new story expansion and a roguelike mode. You don’t even need to Complete Edition or the corresponding paid upgrade to enjoy the new feature.

SEE ALSO: Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition review: More of a great thing

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Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition review: More of a great thing

Picking up where Atsu left off

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Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition

A year away from Ghost of Yōtei was enough to make me rusty. It wasn’t enough to make me forget why I loved it.

What immediately jumped out to me is how beautifully connected this game’s open-world mechanics are. Moving about and exploring felt like picking up where I left off after roughly a year of not really touching the game.

The Guiding Wind, the birds that point you toward locations of interest, and the encounters scattered throughout Ezo all work together to keep you busy without the tasks ever feeling like a chore. There is always something worth looking toward, whether it is a quest, a hidden location, or simply another reason to stop and appreciate the scenery.

And of course, the new area is just as beautiful as everything else we’ve seen in the base game.

That is probably the biggest compliment I can give Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition. It does not feel like an expansion bolted onto an existing game. It feels like another excuse to step back into a world that already knew how to pull me in.

Picking up where I left off

Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition

I started my playthrough of the Complete Edition with Echoes of Sekigahara. I thought it was going to be a quick romp, but it’s proving to be a longer experience than I initially thought it would be.

I’ve spent roughly five to six hours playing through it, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near completing the story.

That said, I did get sidetracked quite a bit.

Which tends to happen with these Ghost games.

Not to their detriment, though. Every other quest and encounter in the open world feels like a contained story on its own that is well worth your time. The game has a way of presenting distractions that never really feel like distractions. You can set out with one objective in mind, stumble into something else, and suddenly realize an hour has passed.

That familiarity came back surprisingly quickly.

The new region introduced in Echoes of Sekigahara brings unfamiliar enemies, new weapons, and memories tied to Atsu’s past, giving the expansion its own identity while still operating within the systems that made the base game so easy to lose yourself in.

The Wolf quest line in particular was the first one I tackled, and it was quite a ride.

I’m deliberately leaving the details there.

This is the kind of story that is better experienced without knowing too much going in, and the review guidelines themselves ask reviewers to avoid major narrative developments and surprises.

Finding my footing again

Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition

While movement and exploration felt natural, it took me a while to get reacquainted with the combat.

My Atsu had many skills mastered, but being a year removed from the game meant I was rusty. I was dying against what I would consider fodder enemies.

There is something humbling about returning to a game where you once felt completely in control, only to discover that your muscle memory has apparently packed its bags and moved somewhere else.

Even now as I write this review, I don’t think I’ve gotten to the level I was when I first completed the game.

But I’m getting by just fine.

And that is partly because Yōtei gives you another toy to play with.

Massive weapons make a massive difference

Massive Weapons

The new wrinkle in combat is the Massive Weapons you get to pick up and swing around.

They are an absolute joy to use.

More importantly, they bailed me out of a few encounters already.

There is a satisfying weight to picking up one of these weapons and simply going to town on enemies. It changes the rhythm of a fight without asking you to relearn the entire combat system. After spending several hours trying to remember how I used to fight as Atsu, having the option to grab something enormous and start swinging was a welcome change of pace.

This was a definite win.

It also highlights one of the strengths of Yōtei’s combat. The foundation is already strong enough that adding another layer does not need to completely reinvent it. Sometimes, giving Atsu something massive to hit people with is enough.

Most Wanted keeps the blade moving

If you want to dive deeper into combat, Most Wanted is where it’s at.

PlayStation first-party games have had a habit of adding these roguelike-inspired modes to some of their games. There’s Valhalla for God of War Ragnarök and No Return for The Last of Us Part II.

Most Wanted takes that idea and puts Yōtei’s combat front and center.

The mode is a single-player combat survival experience built around escalating bounties, different playable characters, and experimenting with the game’s combat system. Unlike Echoes of Sekigahara, you can jump into it immediately without existing save data or base-game progression.

I’ve only had a couple of runs so far, but I can say I thoroughly enjoy the mode.

Mostly because I love the game’s combat mechanics.

That is what you engage with for much of Most Wanted, and it gives you a reason to keep testing yourself. You start a run, make your choices, fight your way through increasingly demanding encounters, and inevitably reach a point where things stop going according to plan.

Then you try again.

And again.

There is a particular satisfaction to a mode like this when the underlying combat is already enjoyable. Losing doesn’t necessarily feel like wasted time because every run gives you another opportunity to get better at the thing you were already having fun doing.

It can also be frustrating.

That is part of the appeal.

More Yōtei is still more Yōtei

The biggest strength of Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition is also the simplest.

It gives me more Ghost of Yōtei.

Echoes of Sekigahara gives Atsu another story to tell. Most Wanted gives the combat another place to shine. The Complete Edition also adds cosmetics, Trophies, Photo Mode content, and other extras. Meanwhile, the October 1 update brings additional Watanabe Mode tracks, Beauty of Yōtei mode, quality-of-life improvements, and a new high-contrast accessibility option to all Ghost of Yōtei players.

After roughly a year away, I was surprised by how quickly I settled back into the rhythm.

The wind blew, birds flew, a quest turned into another quest, and a random encounter became a story.

Then I picked up a massive weapon and started remembering why I enjoyed this game so much in the first place.

That cohesion remains Yōtei’s greatest strength. Its world constantly gives you reasons to move forward without making the journey feel like work. The Complete Edition simply gives you more reasons to keep going.

Is Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition your Play Match?

Ghost of Yōtei was already one of the best experiences on PlayStation 5.

The Complete Edition gives you more of it.

Echoes of Sekigahara is shaping up to be a substantial addition rather than a short side adventure, while Most Wanted offers a compelling excuse to keep coming back to Atsu’s combat long after you’ve finished the main story.

I still have plenty more of both to see. But even after only a handful of hours with the new content, I know exactly how I feel about returning to Yōtei.

It feels familiar, fresh, and Most Wanted will both frustrate and hook you.

It’s absolutely thrilling.

Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition is an easy Swipe Up.

After a year away, I came back rusty.

I’m still swinging. And I’m still having a damn good time.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered is now available

The Witcher 3 gets a major overhaul

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CD PROJEKT RED has released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered, a free upgrade that brings a wide range of visual, performance, and gameplay improvements to the acclaimed RPG.

The remastered version is available as a free upgrade for existing owners on GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Players who own The Witcher 3 on the original Nintendo Switch can also upgrade for free to the native Nintendo Switch 2 version.

The upgrade also includes both expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, even for players who originally owned only the base game.

PC and PS5 Pro

On PC, The Witcher 3 now supports Path Tracing alongside improved textures, foliage, lighting, rendering, and ray tracing. The remaster also adds dedicated PlayStation 5 Pro support, with PSSR enabling ray tracing at 60fps and a performance mode that can reach up to 90fps with VRR.

Gameplay also gets an overhaul. CD PROJEKT RED has rebalanced the skill system, revamped combat animations, added new finishers, and introduced an adaptive camera. Geralt and Roach also receive updated animations, including more fluid traversal, vaulting, and ladder climbing.

The remaster adds cross-platform mod support through mod.io on consoles. Players can access custom content ranging from new quests and equipment to balance changes.

Switch 2

Nintendo Switch 2 gets additional features through its native version. These include motion controls, gyro aiming, mouse controls, and touchscreen support. Players can use motion controls for actions such as aiming the crossbow, throwing bombs, casting Signs, and controlling Roach. The touchscreen can also be used to navigate menus and play Gwent.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered is also available to purchase on Battle.net and the Microsoft Store, where it supports Xbox Play Anywhere.

The remaster replaces the Complete Edition on supported platforms and includes Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine as standard. It was developed in close collaboration with Yigsoft.

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