Damn. Even in a biological sense that looks nothing like Reagan in the 60s. He was 50 at the time, and was very square with his outward appearance. "Reagan" from Wolfenstien looks like a 30 year old Leo DiCaprio dressed up as a hippy.
To everyone wondering how he was able to release all these videos one after the the other, he explained on twitter that he had them ready for months, he just didnt think they were good. He mentioned he had to deal with depression, and was doubting his own work. He's releasing all of these now, so he can soft reboot the channel, he mentioned he got consoles too, so he will also start making videos about console exclusives.
OH SHIT HE'S FINALLY GONNA FINISH THE CALL OF DUTY SINGLE-PLAYER RETROSPECTIVE. I've been waiting for him to touch on the console-exclusive cods since seeing that first video he did.
“What’s the point of walking a mile in a man’s shoes if you can’t feel them against your feet?” Man, that’s actually really insightful. Your knack for poignant phrases is one of my favorite things about your videos.
Best writer/reviewer of the video game medium... and i would also wager that he is amongst the best critics of culture, broadly speaking, right now. I wish we could have his critiques in book form (with sources... i loved some of his book recommendations in Mafia 3’s video)
@ It's a very natural kind of formlessness, at least to me. Though I definitely understand not being a fan of it. In answer to your question (I can't see your other comment, so if you're not interested in my answer it's all good), I don't see it as advocating for not empathizing with your enemy. I actually think it's about how if we're gonna try to empathize with someone, it's worth a whole lot more if we're actually open to understanding, viscerally, what it's like to have that person's experience. Some of that is out of our control, I think, but that phrase made me realize that I don't actually go nearly as deep with my empathy as I could sometimes. And sometimes that means making the effort to really imagine what those shoes feel like, but other times it's accepting the fact that I honestly can't and should exercise humility. (And then there's the obvious context of the quote, which is BJ's recovery being made tangible to the player by tying it to the character's health pool.)
AM Journal I believe the natural sounding effect of the formlessness is intended, it’s in there for the same reason that you can hear him misspeak and repeat words - in the end, it all comes together to create a kind of conversational tone that (as far as I’m aware) isn’t found on any other YT analysis channels.
Noah's the hidden gem of UA-cam analysis videos. The ultimate in detailed literary breakdowns and a sort of "analyzer's analyzer" like how some comedians are "a comedian's comedian".
@@ledjon Yea hes great at this stuff. I know i like and dislike games but cant put it into words many times. He points out things that i wouldve never thought of.
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As a side-note: past the high quality of your writing (quite knowledgeable and provides thoughtful insights, which lead to several interesting - mostly cultural, I find - perspectives to the games you review), I think you have, with little competition, the best voice in the UA-cam field of video critiques - it's very comfortable to listen to, which is arguably an important quality with the length of the majority of your videos. You're talented as a writer, as well as a speaker - that marks you as quite a gifted person. I really like your stuff.
I'm a huge fan Noah. Your videos burst at the seams with genuine personality and the tremendous work you put into them. A heartfelt thank you from me to you.
2021 here: Noah still has, by far, the best writing and analysis of any of his peers. Joseph Anderson is good, sure, but I truly feel that Noah is the titan in this creative space. If only the subscribers could reflect that. I have nothing but compliments for this content and its creator. There will come a time when a last video will be made, but I hope that day is far, far away, goddamnit. Thanks, Noah.
Agreed, Joseph Anderson is good in a very analytical nit picky game review way, but what Gervais does transcends game review and becomes art imo. I know how pretentious and hyperbolic that sounds but I really feel that way.
Im gonna be honest, joseph anderson is not a very good critic. He has a handful of good reviews but ultimately his critical style is just not particularly insightful. Games criticism to me is a coin- one side has the people who analyse games as texts, like NCG and Jacob Geller. The other side has the analytical critics who look more deeply into game design/mechanics, like Matthewmatosis. Imo JA leans more towards the latter description but his criticism is very lacking compared to his contemporaries
@@TheLetterH111 I actually 100% agree. Anderson is entertaining, but if you're looking for actual insight, then NCG/Geller are the best you can get on youtube (that I'm aware of)
The battle in the courtroom was the nadir of the game. Everything wrong with the game's shooting design came to a head. I replayed it so many times, dying to enemies I never saw and never knew were shooting me because the damage indication systems were so weak and nonspecific they might as well not have been there.
I ALWAYS play that level on Easiest Difficulty and I'll tell you why. It's BJ's Fantasy. in it, he's an unstoppable badass and all the other baddies are saying "Can I play, Daddy?" ...I still died twice when i first started. Fucking nazis.
You have a lot of insights about Wolfenstein's atmosphere and character moments, about things it has to say, but I feel like the flaws of the game lie more in the connective tissue between those moments. Things like how we spend so much of the game gathering up bands of resistence fighters, only to get almost no use out of them even in the final mission of storming the Ausmerzer, instead being accompanied by Anna for a climactic moment that feels like catharsis for a subplot we haven't had. It's weird. Watching this felt like gazing through a looking glass at a perspective that saw so much I hadn't, yet also overlooked so much that stuck out to me. Thank you for that.
Noah, it's fantastic to have you back. I thankfully have no personal experience of depression, but I have seen the effects it can have; it makes me really happy to hear that you are doing better and I really respect you for speaking about it - that can't be an easy thing to do. I'm proud of you! I hope that I speak for a lot of people when I say that I want you to take care of yourself first and foremost - I can wait for videos if it means that the man behind them is healthy. Regarding whether or not your back catalogue holds up - I put on some of your old stuff every once in a while just to have something to listen to, and while trying to sleep. Not in a super weird way, though. I'll dig into the Dead Space series right after I'm done with Overlord 2 so I can watch your retrospective! I only played 1 and 2 years ago. Take care, man, and here's to a great new year for you.
3 videos in 2 days? Somebody wake me up because this is obviously some kind of simulation designed to keep me impossibly happy for some nefarious purpose. That or I'm dead and this is my personal paradise.
The thing I hated about the dream sequence is, even though it's a dream sequence where BJ breaks from his restraints by pure force of masculinity and then kills several dozen armed men singlehandedly, your health and armor caps are unchanged from the sections where BJ is crippled in the suit. Not only does this make the section brutally difficult, suddenly giving the player a bunch of health would fit thematically with the dream sequence power revenge fantasy.
Holy hell, that sequence pissed me off so bad. I was playing on a higher difficulty and just kept dying over and over. When I found out it was just a day dream, this was the very first thing that popped up in my head. Why couldn't i have an ass ton of health and armor? I seriously died more than 10+ times before I ended up cheesing by hiding in a corner
@@JakenTheGreat Even worse, if it was just a dream, why did it matter if you died? They could've given you both an assload of health and armor, *and* had it end the same way whether you died or lived.
Nice to see an in depth video about this game that doesnt blindly dump on and finally understand the The Old Blood was. It was a throwback and tribute to Return To Castle Wolfenstein.
NCG is the best for his particular style of criticism. He doesn't bring much to the table in terms of mechanical criticism though, others do that much better.
See, Noah, I’m glad you’re doing relatively okay. But yes, I love Cap because of what a good writer can do with him. He fights because he wants to help others. He wants to rest but can’t. He is kind and compassionate. This questioning happens with Cap too, which is interesting. He fights for the America that could be. Him and BJ would be good friends I think.
This game took be by such surprise that I haven't felt in a long long while I felt so connected to the characters and their bantering, BJ's monologues that it took an already decent shooter experience to another heights entirely. I genuinely cared about the characters so much so that it even kind of leaned trough the game/irl barrier which, after playing so many games didn't really happen since I was a kid. I don't know whether that is because I didn't expect it or what ever but it was an experience. It is maybe why I love games and media in general, you never truly know how a title might affect you it is a risk and a journey and none two are alike, for both two people and two games.
It's been years since New Order and I still haven't seen a single video expressing how well utilized the leaning is in this game. I would imagine it has everything to do with the fact that Mouse+Keyboards can't give you the same amount of control over it as a gamepad of some kind. The way you can cut holes in metal barriers or shoot out completely prone under a desk or peak just your head out through that damage to the concrete pillar you're hiding behind and so on, all while unleashing two fully-automatic weapons at bloodbag targets creates the most Hype shooting experience yet created in my humble imho. Leaning itself isn't new, but I haven't ever seen a leaning system that gives you such complete control.
Pretty much the only thing I have left to live for! 3 vids in such a short time! I wish I had him as a friend in real life. It'd be cool to have someone else to play games with that isn't just online.
Your analysis of, and subsequent refutation of, the MC's father's viewpoints and inner life was incredibly good. I think there were some really good observations about people like him, of which more and more seem to exist every day especially in the US, as our culture becomes more and more fear driven, and less and less about a common, shared humanity and optimism. I don't even particularly care about Wolfenstein (never happened upon the original at the time), but your videos manage to still be gripping regardless.
The court room shootout was the low-point, mechanically. Almost no cover, poorly paced enemy combos coming in endlessly from all directions with a shitty roster of weapons, no ammo or armour. On higher difficulties it's a rage-quit moment and the fact that it's a dream sequence with no bearing on the plot is just the extra cherry on top, because apparently if you die in a dream, you die in real life and the game can't continue, Matrix-style. And when they fire a nuke into New Orleans during their escape, despite the entire city functioning as a concentration camp and being full of possibly millions of innocent civilians and potential allies, that was when I checked out narratively. By the time you get to see a pregnant topless woman showered in blood duel-wielding rifles, I just wanted to uninstall. And I really loved The New Order and Old Blood. The third (fourth?) game in this trilogy better be a home run.
Bluehawk2008 I played it on the difficulty above normal, so maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much. It was hard, I died dozens of time, but it’s the first time in the whole game where Wolfenstein decides to be Wolfenstein (despite the flaws you listed above). I only wish you could poke your head out of cover for more than 5 seconds without being shot dead. They got the gunning part, they just forgot the running part.
@@MorbidSlinky The actual explanation in the game is all the prisoners were already dead before they fired the nuke. Yea. Sure, game. Every single one of those potentially millions of prisoners are already dead. How wonderfully convenient, otherwise our "heroes" would like like total, psychotic nutcases for detonating a nuke in a city (TWICE, including Roswell) just to dislodge a submarine because Grace was stupid enough to run it aground.
I'd say a writing class, more like. Noah is an incredible games analyst, but his genre of choice is obviously mostly story-driven western shooters and RPGs, and a lot of what he talks about is the story over the gameplay. That's great, and it's what I'm all about, but hes not gonna be able to teach anyone how to make the next Devil May Cry level gameplay experience.
@Vazazell I doubt very much that it's intentional. He makes the mistakes but doesn't bother to go back and fix them. I actually found out that I prefer things like that and the lack of polish that Noah's videos have. It just seems more genuine. The lack of 3D animated dubstep intros, flashy graphics, and super well engineered audio is a nice break from the countless channels that all do those things.
@4:25 One thing worth noting is also that the first Wolfenstein games-the ones made before Id Software-were actually stealth games, and in fact were some of the first stealth games ever made.
I think you would love to give A Thorough Look at Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, and A House of Many Doors. They're all Indie titles within the genre of "Text Adventures separated by an Open World", but each takes different steps in how to approach progression, tone, gameplay loops, and death.
Another video in just a few days! Thank you for the superb commentary. You are my primary reference for video game criticism on UA-cam. From Russia with the utmost respect!
I liked this game a lot. I thought it was a shame that the discourse seemed to just focus around the things the first remake did and not seemingly what it was about. I liked all the characters (yes Grace too) and thought that most of the people reviewing it didn't have the time to navigate the sub in-between missions like I thought you were *supposed* to do due to time restraints on getting a review of a game out as soon as possible. Of course they'd have to bypass some of the subtle (or not too subtle) things like realizing Max Hauss of all people is a wonderful artist, good at chess, and figures out a bunch of things no one on the rest of the ship seems capable of without his help and he's only able to say his own name (and yet everyone gets something out of it regardless). I always thought this game got a rough time and even with the cringey cover of Twisted Sister and some of the repetitive nature of the side missions all being in burnt out NY, the odd cover-based gunplay that comes out on a lot of it and for that matter most of the space stuff but they had one hell of a narrative glue sticking all of it together. It's been nice to see someone give it the time and look arounds I think they actually planned out for. The DLC seemed a bit off and odd so I didn't really mess with it, but spare the last one, maybe I'll give 'em a shot. Always good to see your stuff, and with 3 in just a few days thank you.
I looked back at my old review to remember why I didn't recommend Wolfenstein 2 and you certainly nailed a lot of my views and expanded on them in an amazing way. I really admired the character building and story weaving, but felt like the game couldn't find its identity in the gameplay. Trying to build a game that allows a player to take both a stealth and frontal assault and have equal effectiveness usually, as it does here, causes both to be weaker. Further expanding that with the trio of 'powers' you get toward the end makes the level design suffer even more by forcing the level designers to create something that works regardless of what you choose. It's a game I completed because I found the story compelling, probably due mostly because of how outlandish it was, not because of the constantly faltering gameplay. The biggest difference I had from your discussion was that, when I played it nearer to launch, it was riddled with bugs, glitches, and crashes. These became the deciding factor for me to not recommend it with the caveat that, if they were fixed, it would be worth playing. I still believe if the game embraced a more Doom-like design and limited stealth as much or more than it did in The New Order, the franchise would benefit greatly. The copious amount of crouch walking while holding two of the largest guns that could be rendered on screen just looks and feels like the game was started by one developer and finished by another.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein managed to balance both stealth and action gameplay. MachineGames just went too far in the "Action" direction without really getting the good balance from TOB right.
@Robert Cowan All right. So you take a news story from some game developer being a pedophile, that has nothing to do with MachineGames or nazis or political affiliation. And it's not nazis fault that they exist, because someone else created them? I know who the Nazis were. I think everyone does. We had a whole war about it.
@@CharcharoExplorer How are we having this discussion 2019? How can you say "a minor" scuffle when the US had a major offensive in Europe? And, obviously, the Allied forces were several more countries than US and USSR. And what do you people mean when you say that we don't know who the nazis were?
"A man like BJ could have done very well under the Nazis had he simply collaborated" Um...isn't BJ's mother a Jew? Under Nazi racial laws, BJ would be a Jew too and would therefore probably not do that well under the Reich. BJ is a Jewish guy born in 1911. I realize America was never as hostile to Jewish people as Europe, but you kind of downplay the extent to which his Jewishness would have mattered in the 1930s. Under Nazi occupation, his heritage would be a death sentence.
Man we have got to have MachineGames' Wolfenstein 3, personally I was a major fan of The New Order and The Old Blood but found the New Colossus to be a major disappointment when I played it back in 2017 because it strayed from my expectations. Having come back to the game recently with a much more open mind, I love this game. Like Noah said in the video they easily could have done the exact same thing they did with the New Order again and it probably would have worked just fine, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as unique as The New Colossus genuinely is (from a story perspective anyway), it has one of my favorite character arcs in any story. Blazkowich starts out about at the lowest point it's possible start from in a game and by the end he has risen so high he stands taller than anyone else in the world. Wonderful character arc that is felt in both story and gameplay. We have just got to see how this story ends in Wolfenstein 3.
Yeah, I don't remember much optimism from BJ or much of anyone else in The New Order. The game was pretty dour throughout, and talking to characters either had them feeling like they were fighting a losing fight, or just having given up completely. Hell, BJ himself just sounded exhausted. He didn't seem to want to fight, but knew he had to. >"Sigrun never had it as hard as the others on the crew." She had to live under the cruel roof of the game's main antagonist. She was forced by her own mother to cut someone's head off. She didn't go through with it ultimately, but the game makes it pretty apparent that she's known nothing but suffering from her mother.
This might be a weird thing to say in a comment, but I've been binging your videos and I absolutely love how you keep in all your little vocal missteps, stammers, and repetition. It honestly feels like I'm listening to someone in a classroom giving a lecture. I unironically love it.
I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about the wildly swinging tone compared to TNO. In TNC you go from scenes like Grace recounting the bombing, Catherine's death or even just BJ's monologues and behavior... to scenes like a topless pregnant woman covered in blood firing off two machine guns. Wolfenstein has always had some humor and obviously it never strived for realism, but TNO felt more grounded in a way, TNC was just REALLY WEIRD sometimes.
The humor in TNO never felt out of place though it. The gags and silly little things weren't part of the main story and were totally missable meaning you were rewarded with a funny little gag and piece of dialogue for exploring and talking to everyone.
whipping out a princess bride quote for a wolfenstein review proves either of two things [potentially both]: 1. there is a quote from the princess bride that can be used for anything, 2. noah's writing is just that fucking peak.
I think the demystification of Hitler is such a great addition to W:TNC. it says "We haven't mentioned Hitler yet, but that's because he's increasingly mad and irrelevant to the nazi machine, hidden away out of embarassment more than his own protection" I've heard that Hitler's condition in this game is consistent with Syphilis, which is one of the more gross and insulting explainations for his madness later into the war. So yeah... no punches held there. We want to think of Hitler as this monolithic evil that required the whole world to rise up against, but he was nothing special. Like most fascists he wasn't clever or subtle in how he went about things, he was allowed to grow in power because europe Did. Not. Want. another world war and was willing to look the other way. Speaking as an english person especially, it's nice to think that in a history flooded with collonialism, our last great act was being the good guys in a titanic battle of good vs evil for the very soul of europe. In reality, it's the only reason we don't remember Churchill as a fascist himself.
Azzalack: Nah, not really. Hitler and his goons were always planning a war. However they were willing to make some slight modifications to the plan if needed.
I was really hoping to see gerbils in that scene. One of the things I like about the show man in the high castle is that it shows all the incredibly evil leaders of the nazis are still alive and doing their jobs. Rommel is still a general, gerbils is the head of media of propaganda. It makes it more real and more cruel. It’s a great concept too. Finding out about the multiverse and realizing you live on earth x and not 1 is a dark concept alone. But add nazis and it’s just even more crazy
me for the past week; "Honey it's time for your daily 4-5 hours of Noah Video game analysis" "yes dear..." I adore this channel. I have literally binged almost everything in the span of ONE week.
I've been playing and reading about video games for 32 years and I've never seen anyone look so deeply into the themes, characters and issues as Noah does in all his videos. Sometimes I even wonder if the developers even meant some of the insights that Noah spots but maybe. After so many recent additions to his channel it may seem churlish to make a request or two, but if it's ever possible in the future I'd love to see a Deus Ex and/or a Divinity: Original Sin 2 'thorough look' and I know many would also love that. Thank you so much for this great video.
Amazing video, very well done! At first I was a bit disappointed with his game, I liked it and all (I finished it yesterday) but you helped me see it differently, like another perspective. I think I should re play it sometime in the future, I still want to play on the highest difficulty
The New Colossus definitely plays better the second time, but I still liked The Old Blood much more, it was better integrated and tightly wrapped with a storytelling that was better fitted for a game like Wolfenstein. The cinematics in The New Colossus get a bit annoying after a while.
My take on those clan members talking to that German Soldier about language was literalization of an old turn of phase. We were seeing a literal grammar Nazi here! And part of the joke was he's nicer about it than most "grammer Nazis" in real life
This game fell on it’s face for me multiple times but man, I always gotta forgive it just for the fact that it tries so many things that any other big budget game wouldn’t even think of attempting. Even Rockstar, who have the clout to do literally anything in their games, didn’t dare use the n-word when an entire chapter of the story took place in the early Jim-Crow South. New Colossus drops it in the first hour, said by your character’s dad, who you later butcher with a hatchet before being held prisoner for weeks and executed on live televison in a Washington DC covered in Nazi flags. The balls this game has…
Just discovered your channel, and I have to say: Wow, you are really good! The connections you draw are really enlightening and matter far outside the video game sphere. Thanks for doing this!
After reading all those negative reviews of New Colossus I was convinced that its at best an average game - this video conviced me to give it a chance anyway.
If you like story, you'll like this. I felt folks were way too harsh on the game, it's not a masterpiece but I was left scratching my head as to where such violent vitriol was coming from - it's a minor step back from the previous two titles - but it's not something like Dead Space 3 or some other sequel which completely flopped. I learned when I saw people shitting on the new Red Dead game as if it were some huge disappointment, that sometimes a lot of folk are just into this hobby to hate-fuck the new releases and be angry all of the time like the industry itself let them down. Idk about them but I play games to have fun, y'know?
Fuzzy Dunlop Red Dead 2 was amazing, but people are mad that Rockstar used the same mission structure it uses for just about all their games. Years and years of developing games and they stick to the tried and true, especially for a game as ground breaking as Red Dead Redemption 2. For all it’s graphics, gameplay, storytelling, and world building, they couldn’t think of a more fluid structure than go to this location, follow your partner across the map to a different location and listen to their dialogue, shoot these guys, run away across the map again, rinse and repeat. A UA-camr names NakeyJakey made a very nice video all about this subject.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 The story was not good enough. Quite the opposite. It spit on the strengths of the previous Wolfenstein. It literally did everything wrong.
I remember watching ArchWarhamer playing this game... it flew over his head. He saw it as leftist propoganda.... I believed him to... God I hate how I use to be...
It's not like Horton or Grace were even heavy-handed in their 'political' actions(Less than a handful of a woman's perspective regarding the old America's patriarchal society and Horton's accusation of how the powers of old weren't that different from Nazi Germany) and in a lot of ways were shown to be something of hypocritical assholes. Grace treats her fellow resistance members as tools rather than friends, even to the point of being called out as acting like the very fascists she fights against. She has a strong personality that threatens to clash with other members of the resistance. Horton tries to immediately put you into some sort of alcoholic coma despite him needing your help to escape, with the suspicion that only the super body you have by then being the reason you don't die or remain knocked out. He also nearly refuses to join the 'Revolution' because he has (somewhat valid) fears that nothing will change even if B.J. is successful. All of this shows off how their individual perspectives are muddied by their personality flaws. It doesn't necessarily praise or condemn the things they say outside of comparison to said Nazi's, but that's probably why some doofballs got upset when the "Radical Communist Preacher" wasn't somehow proven wrong or something during a bombastic shooter game about killing a bunch of fascists.
Well, it is leftist propaganda in the literal sense that the game ends with a call to action against fascism. for a lot of gamers though it seems any time the status quo is changed you just have to cry “leftist propaganda! woke!”
I think my biggest problem with Wolfenstein 2 was that I came into it thinking it’ll be as grand a shooter as the first game in the series, but the game itself flipped the script, so to say, and it turns out it’s actually a cinematic romp. I was so focused on the gameplay that I didn’t pay enough attention to the story. I was too upset that the gameplay to cinematic ratio of the game was something like 40:60. That’s not to say the story was bad, I enjoyed most of it. I especially love BJ’s portrayal in this game as a broken man, tired, beat up, against unwinnable odds, but he still finds the strength to pick up a gun and fight for his family, friends, his country, and for a better world overall. I liked how they even deviled into his childhood and showed us what it was like for BJ growing up. I didn’t care for the new characters at first, however. I flat out did not like Grace. I couldn’t stand how much of a jerk she was, I hated her personality, she was just an all around, unpleasant bully and she was supposed to be Grace’s successor? Super Spesh I thought was unredeemably obnoxious. I know the writers were going for levity, but c’mon! A toilet joke in the middle of BJ pouring his heart out? I thought it was tacky, to say the least. And I didn’t like BJ’s dad either. His whole evil schtick comes off as overly dramatic to the point of being a caricature. He wants to teach his son to be a man, so he has him shoot his dog? He hates Jews, yet he marries one anyway? I don’t think they explain that one in the game. He comes off as forced, in my opinion. But, after watching your critique, you do bring up a lot of good points with Grace’s character. I don’t think I ever noticed those smiles when she was fighting with BJ and Sigrun and even if I did, I doubt I would’ve come to that conclusion. It’s something so small yet so important for me to understand her nature. I still think Super Spesh is obnoxious, but I did like his Roswell scene (before pulling a gun on BJ and exclaiming ALIENS!!) and I did like his scene where he pretended to be BJ’s lawyer (until he brought up the aliens again). I guess I can understand BJ’s father trying to toughen up BJ up, but his methods are so extreme. One minute he’s shooting dogs, the next he’s trying to teach his son to face his fears, a scene I thought was so touching for someone so unrelentingly cruel, which I get, that was the writers humanizing him, but he’s at two ends of a spectrum and it just doesn’t gel with me. It comes off as comedic. And I still don’t understand why he would marry a Jewish woman even though he hates Jews with a passion. Why? It doesn’t make any sense. As far as the gameplay goes, it was nice enough. A lot of the locales were just dull, though, especially since the last game had the moon, the London Nautica, the Gibraltar Bridge, they even had you go through a concentration camp. Wolfenstein 2 had ruins, ruins, and more ruins. And if it wasn’t in ruins, it was a narrow, linear bunker or industrial complex. The only stand out levels were the courtroom and the final level on top of the Ausmerzer, incidentally the hardest levels in the game. Even the hub world, Eva’s Hammer, was so poorly designed. I remember getting lost there every single time, the map was useless, the guiding arrows were useless, the level structure was all over the place and at the same time it all looked the same. I hated Eva’s Hammer, but I liked it in the first game! Level structure overall suffered in this game. The weapons were nice, I didn’t like how some of the alt fires were relegated to their own weapons, though. Keeping the grenade launcher on the rifle could’ve reduced some inventory clutter. Also, what happened to the sniper laser? Why did we need a sub machine gun when we already had an automatic rifle? Some of these weapons could’ve been dropped in favor of newer, crazier weapons, something like the sniper laser. The shotguns were excellent, though. I think they vastly superior in design to their New Order counterpart even if they’re functionally the same. Duel wielding different weapons was interesting, but ultimately complicated a system that was already kinda wonky. You leave yourself open for far too long when fiddling with the menu trying to get your desired combo. Graphics were wild (in a good way), audio was great, the ending could’ve used a final boss but the fight itself was challenging enough so I could forgive it. Environments could’ve been a whole ton better, I didn’t play the DLC, the special trinkets you get like the battle stilts were neat but very situational, and I’m looking forward to what this series has to show me when Young Blood comes out and eventually Wolfenstein 3 to finish the story up!
Holy shit, I am aghast there you said there were bunch of posts talking about how they hate grace. She's a fantastic character, but I shouldn't be surprised.
THANK YOU NOAH I think the most ironic things about your analysis is that the developers in most cases did not take into account the aspects of the game that you did.
An interesting perspective on this as always, but I think my biggest disagreement with this one(And there were many, but not enough to keep me from watching it, as always, a thought provoking video), is Grace's character. I hated her, and almost found her suicidal. Because she's not just like that in the quite moments, or to people who are on her side, she's always like that. Always pushing buttons, sometimes at the worst times, and while you could say she's doing that to make people stronger, she's not going about it the best way for a cell of guerrilla fighters At best, she's going to end up shot in the back of the head during one of the missions, and everyone's going to be so sad, and then move on. She makes people hate her, and in a way that's never, ever going to let them feel good about her ever again, and that's not the way a leader works. Oh, you can hate a distant leader, a captain when you're the bosonsmate or cabin boy, but Grace is too close to those she commands, and their hate will, not might but will, make one of them say screw her at the worst possible time, making things dangerous for everyone.
The game made for a very enjoyable movie, but the higher difficulties held the gameplay back from reaching the stories level. That being said, running through the game on easy with a shotgun in one hand and a dmr in the other was quite fun
![How Does the Blair Witch Game Compare to the Movies? [SPOILERS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/u6jz2gSq7cc/mqdefault.jpg)
![How Does Wolfenstein: Youngblood Compare to Previous Wolfensteins? [Spoilers]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kvINeAlslSs/mqdefault.jpg)
![How Does Mass Effect: Andromeda Compare to Previous Mass Effects? [Spoilers]](/img/n.gif)
Btw in the Hitler movie scene you also see a dude trying to cast for Hitler that is supposed to be Ronald Reagan
Lol I didn't even know that
the 'im from Arizona' dude?
@@lordvwphaeton5297 Yeah. That’s Ronald
Damn. Even in a biological sense that looks nothing like Reagan in the 60s. He was 50 at the time, and was very square with his outward appearance. "Reagan" from Wolfenstien looks like a 30 year old Leo DiCaprio dressed up as a hippy.
Reagan would have THRIVED under the Nazis.
Absolutely loved it.
To everyone wondering how he was able to release all these videos one after the the other, he explained on twitter that he had them ready for months, he just didnt think they were good. He mentioned he had to deal with depression, and was doubting his own work. He's releasing all of these now, so he can soft reboot the channel, he mentioned he got consoles too, so he will also start making videos about console exclusives.
OH SHIT HE'S FINALLY GONNA FINISH THE CALL OF DUTY SINGLE-PLAYER RETROSPECTIVE. I've been waiting for him to touch on the console-exclusive cods since seeing that first video he did.
maybe he should go on the road again
What does "soft reboot the channel" actually mean?
He must have been depressed, because I honestly can't think of any other reason why he would think that these weren't great. I love them.
Sounds like he's having a rough time right now :/
And the video's are as good as ever.
“What’s the point of walking a mile in a man’s shoes if you can’t feel them against your feet?”
Man, that’s actually really insightful. Your knack for poignant phrases is one of my favorite things about your videos.
Yeah... pretty much every other sentence is incredibly well put... well, the ones that aren't just cuttingly venomous...
Best writer/reviewer of the video game medium... and i would also wager that he is amongst the best critics of culture, broadly speaking, right now.
I wish we could have his critiques in book form (with sources... i loved some of his book recommendations in Mafia 3’s video)
@ It's a very natural kind of formlessness, at least to me. Though I definitely understand not being a fan of it.
In answer to your question (I can't see your other comment, so if you're not interested in my answer it's all good), I don't see it as advocating for not empathizing with your enemy. I actually think it's about how if we're gonna try to empathize with someone, it's worth a whole lot more if we're actually open to understanding, viscerally, what it's like to have that person's experience. Some of that is out of our control, I think, but that phrase made me realize that I don't actually go nearly as deep with my empathy as I could sometimes. And sometimes that means making the effort to really imagine what those shoes feel like, but other times it's accepting the fact that I honestly can't and should exercise humility.
(And then there's the obvious context of the quote, which is BJ's recovery being made tangible to the player by tying it to the character's health pool.)
But that's just my take on it. :)
AM Journal I believe the natural sounding effect of the formlessness is intended, it’s in there for the same reason that you can hear him misspeak and repeat words - in the end, it all comes together to create a kind of conversational tone that (as far as I’m aware) isn’t found on any other YT analysis channels.
Oh boy, I am very, very excited for this.
Love your videos!
Noah's the hidden gem of UA-cam analysis videos. The ultimate in detailed literary breakdowns and a sort of "analyzer's analyzer" like how some comedians are "a comedian's comedian".
@@ledjon Yea hes great at this stuff. I know i like and dislike games but cant put it into words many times. He points out things that i wouldve never thought of.
This channel is like an expensive drink for gamers, and I love that hahaha
I'm really happy I found these, keep it up!
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As a side-note: past the high quality of your writing (quite knowledgeable and provides thoughtful insights, which lead to several interesting - mostly cultural, I find - perspectives to the games you review), I think you have, with little competition, the best voice in the UA-cam field of video critiques - it's very comfortable to listen to, which is arguably an important quality with the length of the majority of your videos. You're talented as a writer, as well as a speaker - that marks you as quite a gifted person. I really like your stuff.
I'm a huge fan Noah. Your videos burst at the seams with genuine personality and the tremendous work you put into them. A heartfelt thank you from me to you.
so honest ...this game should be called...captain America the new colossus
2021 here: Noah still has, by far, the best writing and analysis of any of his peers. Joseph Anderson is good, sure, but I truly feel that Noah is the titan in this creative space. If only the subscribers could reflect that.
I have nothing but compliments for this content and its creator. There will come a time when a last video will be made, but I hope that day is far, far away, goddamnit.
Thanks, Noah.
Agreed, Joseph Anderson is good in a very analytical nit picky game review way, but what Gervais does transcends game review and becomes art imo. I know how pretentious and hyperbolic that sounds but I really feel that way.
Joseph Anderson went off a cliff and, at time of writing, has not released a video in 11 months.
Im gonna be honest, joseph anderson is not a very good critic. He has a handful of good reviews but ultimately his critical style is just not particularly insightful. Games criticism to me is a coin- one side has the people who analyse games as texts, like NCG and Jacob Geller. The other side has the analytical critics who look more deeply into game design/mechanics, like Matthewmatosis. Imo JA leans more towards the latter description but his criticism is very lacking compared to his contemporaries
@@TheLetterH111 I actually 100% agree. Anderson is entertaining, but if you're looking for actual insight, then NCG/Geller are the best you can get on youtube (that I'm aware of)
Extremely well presented arguments that touch, delicately, on some sensitive issues. Goodness me, this channel is so good.
"Man! I died in just one shot from mecha-hitler, just like in real life!"
The battle in the courtroom was the nadir of the game. Everything wrong with the game's shooting design came to a head. I replayed it so many times, dying to enemies I never saw and never knew were shooting me because the damage indication systems were so weak and nonspecific they might as well not have been there.
@LeadFaun
Shit, I had a momentary brain freeze and thought we were talking about *Namir* boss fight from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. My bad.
I ALWAYS play that level on Easiest Difficulty and I'll tell you why. It's BJ's Fantasy. in it, he's an unstoppable badass and all the other baddies are saying "Can I play, Daddy?" ...I still died twice when i first started. Fucking nazis.
You have a lot of insights about Wolfenstein's atmosphere and character moments, about things it has to say, but I feel like the flaws of the game lie more in the connective tissue between those moments. Things like how we spend so much of the game gathering up bands of resistence fighters, only to get almost no use out of them even in the final mission of storming the Ausmerzer, instead being accompanied by Anna for a climactic moment that feels like catharsis for a subplot we haven't had. It's weird. Watching this felt like gazing through a looking glass at a perspective that saw so much I hadn't, yet also overlooked so much that stuck out to me. Thank you for that.
Noah, it's fantastic to have you back. I thankfully have no personal experience of depression, but I have seen the effects it can have; it makes me really happy to hear that you are doing better and I really respect you for speaking about it - that can't be an easy thing to do. I'm proud of you! I hope that I speak for a lot of people when I say that I want you to take care of yourself first and foremost - I can wait for videos if it means that the man behind them is healthy.
Regarding whether or not your back catalogue holds up - I put on some of your old stuff every once in a while just to have something to listen to, and while trying to sleep. Not in a super weird way, though.
I'll dig into the Dead Space series right after I'm done with Overlord 2 so I can watch your retrospective! I only played 1 and 2 years ago. Take care, man, and here's to a great new year for you.
3 Noah's? We're breaking some laws of physics!
Quick! Check if the emergency button’s broken!
There'll be a fourth soon, according to his Patreon. ;)
Hyper light Drifter nice!
3 videos in two days?! What is going on? :O
Viktor Svensson there's a 4th coming too.
I feel spoilt.
He’s losing his mind!!!!
This must be some kind of gift for Valentine Day!
We have been blessed
3 videos in 2 days? Somebody wake me up because this is obviously some kind of simulation designed to keep me impossibly happy for some nefarious purpose. That or I'm dead and this is my personal paradise.
If that's the case let me sleep. It's a pretty sweet deal.
The thing I hated about the dream sequence is, even though it's a dream sequence where BJ breaks from his restraints by pure force of masculinity and then kills several dozen armed men singlehandedly, your health and armor caps are unchanged from the sections where BJ is crippled in the suit.
Not only does this make the section brutally difficult, suddenly giving the player a bunch of health would fit thematically with the dream sequence power revenge fantasy.
I’d also say it also acts as foreshadowing as to how it’s a dream.
Holy hell, that sequence pissed me off so bad. I was playing on a higher difficulty and just kept dying over and over. When I found out it was just a day dream, this was the very first thing that popped up in my head. Why couldn't i have an ass ton of health and armor? I seriously died more than 10+ times before I ended up cheesing by hiding in a corner
@@JakenTheGreat Even worse, if it was just a dream, why did it matter if you died? They could've given you both an assload of health and armor, *and* had it end the same way whether you died or lived.
Because it's supposed to trick the player, too.
Huh, that actually would have made that section less frustrating and would have made good foreshadowing. Good idea ManlyChicken.
Nice to see an in depth video about this game that doesnt blindly dump on and finally understand the The Old Blood was. It was a throwback and tribute to Return To Castle Wolfenstein.
How you discussed this game at length without spoiling a particular scene I will never know. Great stuff. I love your channel.
Literally came to the comments to make sure I hadn't skipped a part of the video somehow
It's fucking scary how much better your game analysis is compared to your peers. I don't even know why they bother.
Because the alternative is to stop analyzing games at all, which would be a terrible state of things.
NCG is the best for his particular style of criticism. He doesn't bring much to the table in terms of mechanical criticism though, others do that much better.
See, Noah, I’m glad you’re doing relatively okay. But yes, I love Cap because of what a good writer can do with him. He fights because he wants to help others. He wants to rest but can’t. He is kind and compassionate. This questioning happens with Cap too, which is interesting. He fights for the America that could be. Him and BJ would be good friends I think.
This game took be by such surprise that I haven't felt in a long long while I felt so connected to the characters and their bantering, BJ's monologues that it took an already decent shooter experience to another heights entirely.
I genuinely cared about the characters so much so that it even kind of leaned trough the game/irl barrier which, after playing so many games didn't really happen since I was a kid.
I don't know whether that is because I didn't expect it or what ever but it was an experience.
It is maybe why I love games and media in general, you never truly know how a title might affect you it is a risk and a journey and none two are alike, for both two people and two games.
It's been years since New Order and I still haven't seen a single video expressing how well utilized the leaning is in this game. I would imagine it has everything to do with the fact that Mouse+Keyboards can't give you the same amount of control over it as a gamepad of some kind. The way you can cut holes in metal barriers or shoot out completely prone under a desk or peak just your head out through that damage to the concrete pillar you're hiding behind and so on, all while unleashing two fully-automatic weapons at bloodbag targets creates the most Hype shooting experience yet created in my humble imho.
Leaning itself isn't new, but I haven't ever seen a leaning system that gives you such complete control.
This channel is so underrated. Some of the best game analysis on the site.
Pretty much the only thing I have left to live for! 3 vids in such a short time! I wish I had him as a friend in real life. It'd be cool to have someone else to play games with that isn't just online.
Your analysis of, and subsequent refutation of, the MC's father's viewpoints and inner life was incredibly good. I think there were some really good observations about people like him, of which more and more seem to exist every day especially in the US, as our culture becomes more and more fear driven, and less and less about a common, shared humanity and optimism. I don't even particularly care about Wolfenstein (never happened upon the original at the time), but your videos manage to still be gripping regardless.
I'm happy that I just found this channel, your insight is both profound and witty. Thank God that Noah is doing what he's doing
The court room shootout was the low-point, mechanically. Almost no cover, poorly paced enemy combos coming in endlessly from all directions with a shitty roster of weapons, no ammo or armour. On higher difficulties it's a rage-quit moment and the fact that it's a dream sequence with no bearing on the plot is just the extra cherry on top, because apparently if you die in a dream, you die in real life and the game can't continue, Matrix-style.
And when they fire a nuke into New Orleans during their escape, despite the entire city functioning as a concentration camp and being full of possibly millions of innocent civilians and potential allies, that was when I checked out narratively. By the time you get to see a pregnant topless woman showered in blood duel-wielding rifles, I just wanted to uninstall.
And I really loved The New Order and Old Blood. The third (fourth?) game in this trilogy better be a home run.
As rage inducing as the courthouse dream was for me on the highest difficulty, I loved it.
Bluehawk2008
I played it on the difficulty above normal, so maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much. It was hard, I died dozens of time, but it’s the first time in the whole game where Wolfenstein decides to be Wolfenstein (despite the flaws you listed above). I only wish you could poke your head out of cover for more than 5 seconds without being shot dead. They got the gunning part, they just forgot the running part.
Bluehawk2008 Didn’t they evacuate New Orleans?
@@MorbidSlinky The actual explanation in the game is all the prisoners were already dead before they fired the nuke.
Yea. Sure, game. Every single one of those potentially millions of prisoners are already dead. How wonderfully convenient, otherwise our "heroes" would like like total, psychotic nutcases for detonating a nuke in a city (TWICE, including Roswell) just to dislodge a submarine because Grace was stupid enough to run it aground.
I quite welcomed the challenge. I thought "Ohhh you're going to do me like that?!" and I got mad, in the most enjoyable way
Jesus Christ, Noah. Hitting us with videos like bursts from a Maschinengewehr. You're awesome, man!
I feel like Noah needs to teach video game composition at a university. These retrospectives are formatted like realy realy good lectures.
I'd say a writing class, more like. Noah is an incredible games analyst, but his genre of choice is obviously mostly story-driven western shooters and RPGs, and a lot of what he talks about is the story over the gameplay. That's great, and it's what I'm all about, but hes not gonna be able to teach anyone how to make the next Devil May Cry level gameplay experience.
@Vazazell I doubt very much that it's intentional. He makes the mistakes but doesn't bother to go back and fix them. I actually found out that I prefer things like that and the lack of polish that Noah's videos have. It just seems more genuine. The lack of 3D animated dubstep intros, flashy graphics, and super well engineered audio is a nice break from the countless channels that all do those things.
@GiRayne It's definitely one of those though where you quickly realise it doesn't matter.
@GiRayne That's nice.
@4:25 One thing worth noting is also that the first Wolfenstein games-the ones made before Id Software-were actually stealth games, and in fact were some of the first stealth games ever made.
I think you would love to give A Thorough Look at Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, and A House of Many Doors. They're all Indie titles within the genre of "Text Adventures separated by an Open World", but each takes different steps in how to approach progression, tone, gameplay loops, and death.
I second this motion.
Another video in just a few days! Thank you for the superb commentary. You are my primary reference for video game criticism on UA-cam. From Russia with the utmost respect!
I liked this game a lot. I thought it was a shame that the discourse seemed to just focus around the things the first remake did and not seemingly what it was about. I liked all the characters (yes Grace too) and thought that most of the people reviewing it didn't have the time to navigate the sub in-between missions like I thought you were *supposed* to do due to time restraints on getting a review of a game out as soon as possible. Of course they'd have to bypass some of the subtle (or not too subtle) things like realizing Max Hauss of all people is a wonderful artist, good at chess, and figures out a bunch of things no one on the rest of the ship seems capable of without his help and he's only able to say his own name (and yet everyone gets something out of it regardless).
I always thought this game got a rough time and even with the cringey cover of Twisted Sister and some of the repetitive nature of the side missions all being in burnt out NY, the odd cover-based gunplay that comes out on a lot of it and for that matter most of the space stuff but they had one hell of a narrative glue sticking all of it together. It's been nice to see someone give it the time and look arounds I think they actually planned out for. The DLC seemed a bit off and odd so I didn't really mess with it, but spare the last one, maybe I'll give 'em a shot. Always good to see your stuff, and with 3 in just a few days thank you.
I looked back at my old review to remember why I didn't recommend Wolfenstein 2 and you certainly nailed a lot of my views and expanded on them in an amazing way. I really admired the character building and story weaving, but felt like the game couldn't find its identity in the gameplay. Trying to build a game that allows a player to take both a stealth and frontal assault and have equal effectiveness usually, as it does here, causes both to be weaker. Further expanding that with the trio of 'powers' you get toward the end makes the level design suffer even more by forcing the level designers to create something that works regardless of what you choose. It's a game I completed because I found the story compelling, probably due mostly because of how outlandish it was, not because of the constantly faltering gameplay.
The biggest difference I had from your discussion was that, when I played it nearer to launch, it was riddled with bugs, glitches, and crashes. These became the deciding factor for me to not recommend it with the caveat that, if they were fixed, it would be worth playing.
I still believe if the game embraced a more Doom-like design and limited stealth as much or more than it did in The New Order, the franchise would benefit greatly. The copious amount of crouch walking while holding two of the largest guns that could be rendered on screen just looks and feels like the game was started by one developer and finished by another.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein managed to balance both stealth and action gameplay. MachineGames just went too far in the "Action" direction without really getting the good balance from TOB right.
@Robert Cowan Transposition of Nazi's onto the current *Nazis in politics.
@Robert Cowan All right. So you take a news story from some game developer being a pedophile, that has nothing to do with MachineGames or nazis or political affiliation. And it's not nazis fault that they exist, because someone else created them? I know who the Nazis were. I think everyone does. We had a whole war about it.
@@DAVVEZ396
The USSR had a war with them. The US had a minor scuffle with them.
This doesnt mean you know who the nazis were though.
@@CharcharoExplorer How are we having this discussion 2019? How can you say "a minor" scuffle when the US had a major offensive in Europe? And, obviously, the Allied forces were several more countries than US and USSR. And what do you people mean when you say that we don't know who the nazis were?
Truly great video Noah. Always love how you're not afraid to absolutely shit on fascism too
"A man like BJ could have done very well under the Nazis had he simply collaborated"
Um...isn't BJ's mother a Jew? Under Nazi racial laws, BJ would be a Jew too and would therefore probably not do that well under the Reich.
BJ is a Jewish guy born in 1911. I realize America was never as hostile to Jewish people as Europe, but you kind of downplay the extent to which his Jewishness would have mattered in the 1930s. Under Nazi occupation, his heritage would be a death sentence.
possibly the greatest 2 day span of my life
The Stilts are the most powerful module because once upgraded, they give you 200 health points.
You are so underrated, my friend. I really appreciate all the work and effort you put into these videos. It's always a joy to watch them.
Man we have got to have MachineGames' Wolfenstein 3, personally I was a major fan of The New Order and The Old Blood but found the New Colossus to be a major disappointment when I played it back in 2017 because it strayed from my expectations. Having come back to the game recently with a much more open mind, I love this game. Like Noah said in the video they easily could have done the exact same thing they did with the New Order again and it probably would have worked just fine, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as unique as The New Colossus genuinely is (from a story perspective anyway), it has one of my favorite character arcs in any story. Blazkowich starts out about at the lowest point it's possible start from in a game and by the end he has risen so high he stands taller than anyone else in the world. Wonderful character arc that is felt in both story and gameplay. We have just got to see how this story ends in Wolfenstein 3.
Yeah, I don't remember much optimism from BJ or much of anyone else in The New Order. The game was pretty dour throughout, and talking to characters either had them feeling like they were fighting a losing fight, or just having given up completely. Hell, BJ himself just sounded exhausted. He didn't seem to want to fight, but knew he had to.
>"Sigrun never had it as hard as the others on the crew."
She had to live under the cruel roof of the game's main antagonist. She was forced by her own mother to cut someone's head off. She didn't go through with it ultimately, but the game makes it pretty apparent that she's known nothing but suffering from her mother.
Your other video got me interested in going through the whole wolfenstein series last year. I'm glad you came back to look at New Colossus!
I guess sleeping is not an option when Noah uploads a new vid. Thank you for the great content, man! Such an inspiration.
Noah once again unleashing a tsunami of juicy content. You're the best, honestly!
This might be a weird thing to say in a comment, but I've been binging your videos and I absolutely love how you keep in all your little vocal missteps, stammers, and repetition. It honestly feels like I'm listening to someone in a classroom giving a lecture. I unironically love it.
I have to say Noah, you've really outdone yourself with the quality content that you've put out over the last couple of days.
Thank you.
OH BABY A TRIPLE I've been wondering what you been working on for the past month or so.
You have no idea how much your videos mean to me noah. Please keep making more
CHRISTMAS CAME AGAIN! Thanks Noah, you're videos are literally the best thing on the internet.
Representative from the year 2020 here. This game has aged like fine wine.
I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about the wildly swinging tone compared to TNO. In TNC you go from scenes like Grace recounting the bombing, Catherine's death or even just BJ's monologues and behavior... to scenes like a topless pregnant woman covered in blood firing off two machine guns. Wolfenstein has always had some humor and obviously it never strived for realism, but TNO felt more grounded in a way, TNC was just REALLY WEIRD sometimes.
That'd be the politically correct writing you're referring to
The humor in TNO never felt out of place though it. The gags and silly little things weren't part of the main story and were totally missable meaning you were rewarded with a funny little gag and piece of dialogue for exploring and talking to everyone.
@@danielclark653 Indeed
@@layers5255 No
@@sheep3370 Pardon?
My friend, your analysis is pretty much what i would describe as the Video Gaming equivalent of Sir David Attenborough! bravo sir 👏👏👏
Haha, I just finished watching your whole series retrospective, what good timing!
You sir, are an artist with words.
whipping out a princess bride quote for a wolfenstein review proves either of two things [potentially both]: 1. there is a quote from the princess bride that can be used for anything, 2. noah's writing is just that fucking peak.
As always, your observations are wonderfully framed and argued. Thanks so much for your work; I have now boarded the patreon train. Choo choo
Noahhhhh, you are the best. Thank you for the great content and all the hard work!
This was an excellent critique, and I believe I will be able to appreciate this game because of your content. Thank you.
These are so excellent. The sort of analysis video games deserve these days. I dearly hope there will be more in the future
2:58 I think I'm in love with BJ Blaskowitz
I think the demystification of Hitler is such a great addition to W:TNC. it says "We haven't mentioned Hitler yet, but that's because he's increasingly mad and irrelevant to the nazi machine, hidden away out of embarassment more than his own protection"
I've heard that Hitler's condition in this game is consistent with Syphilis, which is one of the more gross and insulting explainations for his madness later into the war. So yeah... no punches held there.
We want to think of Hitler as this monolithic evil that required the whole world to rise up against, but he was nothing special. Like most fascists he wasn't clever or subtle in how he went about things, he was allowed to grow in power because europe Did. Not. Want. another world war and was willing to look the other way.
Speaking as an english person especially, it's nice to think that in a history flooded with collonialism, our last great act was being the good guys in a titanic battle of good vs evil for the very soul of europe. In reality, it's the only reason we don't remember Churchill as a fascist himself.
He didn't want another war either but Churchill of Rothschild wasn't havin none of that.
Azzalack: Nah, not really. Hitler and his goons were always planning a war. However they were willing to make some slight modifications to the plan if needed.
Harvey Chesterfield colonization was a great thing
The English were the good guys of WWII so they could surrender their capitol to Muslims.
I was really hoping to see gerbils in that scene. One of the things I like about the show man in the high castle is that it shows all the incredibly evil leaders of the nazis are still alive and doing their jobs. Rommel is still a general, gerbils is the head of media of propaganda. It makes it more real and more cruel. It’s a great concept too. Finding out about the multiverse and realizing you live on earth x and not 1 is a dark concept alone. But add nazis and it’s just even more crazy
Noah these videos keep getting better and better please never doubt your work I’m always going to tune in
Of the three videos released, I think this one was easily my favorite. Thanks for the videos! =)
me for the past week;
"Honey it's time for your daily 4-5 hours of Noah Video game analysis"
"yes dear..."
I adore this channel. I have literally binged almost everything in the span of ONE week.
You've been killing it with the uploads, Noah. Loving it.
I love you Noah. You deserve a vacation, 3.5 hours of videos in two days?! Go take two weeks off!!
jkagkajsdftubes more like two years.
I've been playing and reading about video games for 32 years and I've never seen anyone look so deeply into the themes, characters and issues as Noah does in all his videos. Sometimes I even wonder if the developers even meant some of the insights that Noah spots but maybe. After so many recent additions to his channel it may seem churlish to make a request or two, but if it's ever possible in the future I'd love to see a Deus Ex and/or a Divinity: Original Sin 2 'thorough look' and I know many would also love that. Thank you so much for this great video.
Amazing amazing amazing. Once again, you make my work day easier to get through, Noah
Keep up the great work, Noah. Your channel is a treasure. I admire your hard work and dedication.
Amazing video, very well done!
At first I was a bit disappointed with his game, I liked it and all (I finished it yesterday) but you helped me see it differently, like another perspective.
I think I should re play it sometime in the future, I still want to play on the highest difficulty
The hardest working man on UA-cam continues to one-up himself.
N-Noah.
This is too much, you're spoiling us!
The New Colossus definitely plays better the second time, but I still liked The Old Blood much more, it was better integrated and tightly wrapped with a storytelling that was better fitted for a game like Wolfenstein. The cinematics in The New Colossus get a bit annoying after a while.
My take on those clan members talking to that German Soldier about language was literalization of an old turn of phase.
We were seeing a literal grammar Nazi here! And part of the joke was he's nicer about it than most "grammer Nazis" in real life
Old Blood already did that joke though, and way better at that
@@zevorothrappaleano58 maybe it's a running Gag?
I STILL NEED TO FINISH THE DEAD SPACE ONE TAKE 'ER EASY THERE SPORT
This game fell on it’s face for me multiple times but man, I always gotta forgive it just for the fact that it tries so many things that any other big budget game wouldn’t even think of attempting.
Even Rockstar, who have the clout to do literally anything in their games, didn’t dare use the n-word when an entire chapter of the story took place in the early Jim-Crow South. New Colossus drops it in the first hour, said by your character’s dad, who you later butcher with a hatchet before being held prisoner for weeks and executed on live televison in a Washington DC covered in Nazi flags. The balls this game has…
3 Noah's videos in such short amount of time?!
*Halo "Wait. That's illegal" meme *
Just discovered your channel, and I have to say: Wow, you are really good! The connections you draw are really enlightening and matter far outside the video game sphere. Thanks for doing this!
How did we get 2 videos in not even a week. Never stop Noah you make UA-cam interesting
Love how much effort you put into these videos.
Boi you are on a roll right now, why have you blessed us so?
This guy deserves way more Subs.
After reading all those negative reviews of New Colossus I was convinced that its at best an average game - this video conviced me to give it a chance anyway.
If you like story, you'll like this. I felt folks were way too harsh on the game, it's not a masterpiece but I was left scratching my head as to where such violent vitriol was coming from - it's a minor step back from the previous two titles - but it's not something like Dead Space 3 or some other sequel which completely flopped. I learned when I saw people shitting on the new Red Dead game as if it were some huge disappointment, that sometimes a lot of folk are just into this hobby to hate-fuck the new releases and be angry all of the time like the industry itself let them down. Idk about them but I play games to have fun, y'know?
Fuzzy Dunlop
Red Dead 2 was amazing, but people are mad that Rockstar used the same mission structure it uses for just about all their games. Years and years of developing games and they stick to the tried and true, especially for a game as ground breaking as Red Dead Redemption 2. For all it’s graphics, gameplay, storytelling, and world building, they couldn’t think of a more fluid structure than go to this location, follow your partner across the map to a different location and listen to their dialogue, shoot these guys, run away across the map again, rinse and repeat.
A UA-camr names NakeyJakey made a very nice video all about this subject.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 The story was not good enough. Quite the opposite. It spit on the strengths of the previous Wolfenstein. It literally did everything wrong.
@@arthurwild6563 I'm listening.
Noah, you're surpassing your limits man. Great 3 videos.
This much videos at once?
You're the best.
I remember watching ArchWarhamer playing this game... it flew over his head. He saw it as leftist propoganda.... I believed him to... God I hate how I use to be...
Thank you!!! I have no idea where this idea of it being leftist propaganda came from.
It's not like Horton or Grace were even heavy-handed in their 'political' actions(Less than a handful of a woman's perspective regarding the old America's patriarchal society and Horton's accusation of how the powers of old weren't that different from Nazi Germany) and in a lot of ways were shown to be something of hypocritical assholes.
Grace treats her fellow resistance members as tools rather than friends, even to the point of being called out as acting like the very fascists she fights against. She has a strong personality that threatens to clash with other members of the resistance.
Horton tries to immediately put you into some sort of alcoholic coma despite him needing your help to escape, with the suspicion that only the super body you have by then being the reason you don't die or remain knocked out. He also nearly refuses to join the 'Revolution' because he has (somewhat valid) fears that nothing will change even if B.J. is successful.
All of this shows off how their individual perspectives are muddied by their personality flaws. It doesn't necessarily praise or condemn the things they say outside of comparison to said Nazi's, but that's probably why some doofballs got upset when the "Radical Communist Preacher" wasn't somehow proven wrong or something during a bombastic shooter game about killing a bunch of fascists.
Well, it is leftist propaganda in the literal sense that the game ends with a call to action against fascism.
for a lot of gamers though it seems any time the status quo is changed you just have to cry “leftist propaganda! woke!”
This is the first coverage of the game that seems to get the 50 health 200 armour!
I think my biggest problem with Wolfenstein 2 was that I came into it thinking it’ll be as grand a shooter as the first game in the series, but the game itself flipped the script, so to say, and it turns out it’s actually a cinematic romp. I was so focused on the gameplay that I didn’t pay enough attention to the story. I was too upset that the gameplay to cinematic ratio of the game was something like 40:60.
That’s not to say the story was bad, I enjoyed most of it. I especially love BJ’s portrayal in this game as a broken man, tired, beat up, against unwinnable odds, but he still finds the strength to pick up a gun and fight for his family, friends, his country, and for a better world overall. I liked how they even deviled into his childhood and showed us what it was like for BJ growing up.
I didn’t care for the new characters at first, however. I flat out did not like Grace. I couldn’t stand how much of a jerk she was, I hated her personality, she was just an all around, unpleasant bully and she was supposed to be Grace’s successor? Super Spesh I thought was unredeemably obnoxious. I know the writers were going for levity, but c’mon! A toilet joke in the middle of BJ pouring his heart out? I thought it was tacky, to say the least. And I didn’t like BJ’s dad either. His whole evil schtick comes off as overly dramatic to the point of being a caricature. He wants to teach his son to be a man, so he has him shoot his dog? He hates Jews, yet he marries one anyway? I don’t think they explain that one in the game. He comes off as forced, in my opinion.
But, after watching your critique, you do bring up a lot of good points with Grace’s character. I don’t think I ever noticed those smiles when she was fighting with BJ and Sigrun and even if I did, I doubt I would’ve come to that conclusion. It’s something so small yet so important for me to understand her nature. I still think Super Spesh is obnoxious, but I did like his Roswell scene (before pulling a gun on BJ and exclaiming ALIENS!!) and I did like his scene where he pretended to be BJ’s lawyer (until he brought up the aliens again).
I guess I can understand BJ’s father trying to toughen up BJ up, but his methods are so extreme. One minute he’s shooting dogs, the next he’s trying to teach his son to face his fears, a scene I thought was so touching for someone so unrelentingly cruel, which I get, that was the writers humanizing him, but he’s at two ends of a spectrum and it just doesn’t gel with me. It comes off as comedic. And I still don’t understand why he would marry a Jewish woman even though he hates Jews with a passion. Why? It doesn’t make any sense.
As far as the gameplay goes, it was nice enough. A lot of the locales were just dull, though, especially since the last game had the moon, the London Nautica, the Gibraltar Bridge, they even had you go through a concentration camp. Wolfenstein 2 had ruins, ruins, and more ruins. And if it wasn’t in ruins, it was a narrow, linear bunker or industrial complex. The only stand out levels were the courtroom and the final level on top of the Ausmerzer, incidentally the hardest levels in the game. Even the hub world, Eva’s Hammer, was so poorly designed. I remember getting lost there every single time, the map was useless, the guiding arrows were useless, the level structure was all over the place and at the same time it all looked the same. I hated Eva’s Hammer, but I liked it in the first game! Level structure overall suffered in this game.
The weapons were nice, I didn’t like how some of the alt fires were relegated to their own weapons, though. Keeping the grenade launcher on the rifle could’ve reduced some inventory clutter. Also, what happened to the sniper laser? Why did we need a sub machine gun when we already had an automatic rifle? Some of these weapons could’ve been dropped in favor of newer, crazier weapons, something like the sniper laser. The shotguns were excellent, though. I think they vastly superior in design to their New Order counterpart even if they’re functionally the same. Duel wielding different weapons was interesting, but ultimately complicated a system that was already kinda wonky. You leave yourself open for far too long when fiddling with the menu trying to get your desired combo.
Graphics were wild (in a good way), audio was great, the ending could’ve used a final boss but the fight itself was challenging enough so I could forgive it. Environments could’ve been a whole ton better, I didn’t play the DLC, the special trinkets you get like the battle stilts were neat but very situational, and I’m looking forward to what this series has to show me when Young Blood comes out and eventually Wolfenstein 3 to finish the story up!
Caught my attention the moment you dropped the Tom Lehrer reference! Dude's awesome
Holy shit, I am aghast there you said there were bunch of posts talking about how they hate grace. She's a fantastic character, but I shouldn't be surprised.
It's been a happy couple of days, thanks you Noah!
THANK YOU NOAH
I think the most ironic things about your analysis is that the developers in most cases did not take into account the aspects of the game that you did.
A year after this went up I finally got to play the game and come enjoy your video!
We all know after all these videos so close together we probably won’t get another one for a couple years now 😂
Oh god knock on wood 😂
Judging by those outro segments, the Polar Vortex did at least one good thing. Filled my sub box with some sweet game critique.
An interesting perspective on this as always, but I think my biggest disagreement with this one(And there were many, but not enough to keep me from watching it, as always, a thought provoking video), is Grace's character. I hated her, and almost found her suicidal. Because she's not just like that in the quite moments, or to people who are on her side, she's always like that. Always pushing buttons, sometimes at the worst times, and while you could say she's doing that to make people stronger, she's not going about it the best way for a cell of guerrilla fighters
At best, she's going to end up shot in the back of the head during one of the missions, and everyone's going to be so sad, and then move on. She makes people hate her, and in a way that's never, ever going to let them feel good about her ever again, and that's not the way a leader works. Oh, you can hate a distant leader, a captain when you're the bosonsmate or cabin boy, but Grace is too close to those she commands, and their hate will, not might but will, make one of them say screw her at the worst possible time, making things dangerous for everyone.
Good god, you crank‘em out recently! I cannot keep up!
The game made for a very enjoyable movie, but the higher difficulties held the gameplay back from reaching the stories level. That being said, running through the game on easy with a shotgun in one hand and a dmr in the other was quite fun
That line about this game taking mortgage for the others sharpened critical response to this in a big way for me.