Wolfeinstein II: The New Colossus

[Malaphax]

Quote

America, 1961. Your assassination of Nazi General Deathshead was a short-lived victory. Despite the setback, the Nazis maintain their stranglehold on the world. You are BJ Blazkowicz, aka “Terror-Billy,” member of the Resistance, scourge of the Nazi empire, and humanity’s last hope for liberty. Only you have the guts, guns, and gumption to return stateside, kill every Nazi in sight, and spark the second American Revolution.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/612880/Wolfenstein_II_The_New_Colossus/

I enjoyed this game and it felt very similar to the previous "new" wolfenstein games (The New Order and The Old Blood).  Gunplay is solid, story is good, voice acting is very good.  I would point out that your playstyle will be affected by your difficulty choice, I played on "Do or Die" which is 1 notch above normal difficulty (there are 6 difficulty levels).  On my level of difficulty, stealth was heavily encouraged, especially in certain segments with many large/powerful enemies and multiple commanders that call for seemingly endless reinforcements.  The first game had moments of absurdity, like traveling to the secret nazi base on the moon to acquire nuclear launch codes - so this game you need to kidnap an actor, impersonate him and travel to the secret nazi base on Venus to acquire the defense codes of the large nazi airship.  There are also elements of social commentary present in the game, I did not find them particularly overbearing but they were rather obvious at times.  I did run into some graphical issues that I believe were caused by the most recent Nvidia drivers, nothing game breaking but rather annoying.  My performance was solid at 1440p with just about everything maxed I was mostly in the 120fps range.  However, due to vulkan renderer being the default, I was unable to stream this game with OBS - I don't know if/when this will be fixed. 

The gun selection was small but decent, some were crap and a few upgrade options felt like garbage, thankfully you can toggle certain upgrades on/off.  I think the pace of the game was quite a bit slower than Doom, but some of the action sequences still feel fast and ferocious.  The stealth feels mediocre, mostly trial and error pathing but there are lethal options for eliminating most enemies without noise.  The dual weilding guns is useful for large waves of enemies or larger/heavy enemy types, but I did find the weapon selection for this was a bit annoying to use.  The game doesn't shy away from gore and most melee eliminations are absolutely brutal - however you aren't invincible performing these attacks, which got me killed a few times. 
The upgrades you get to choose from aren't all that interesting and add very little to the gameplay.  There are also passive perks that you acquire through standard gameplay, 20 stealth kills gives you increased movement speed while crouched for example. 

The story is absurd and frankly it jumps the shark, then proceeds to ride the shark like a surfboard. 

Spoiler

Halfway through the game you are publicly beheaded and your companions take your head, put it in a jar, futurama style, and then reattach your head to a super soldier nazi body. 
There's also a scene where your pregnant wife massacres an elevator full of nazis while being topless and covered in blood. 

I think the voice acting was very solid and the main villain is incredibly well acted, in fact without her incredible voice work I wonder if the entire tone of the game might shift.  The main characters almost sibilant whispering used for inner monologue is well done and contrasts to the more emotional speeches he gives.  They also do manage to present an interesting backstory for the main character and portray trauma in a fairly restrained manner.  There's some minor branching storylines present as a holdover from the first game.  I wasn't thrilled with the character I selected to save, and while I have no interest in replaying the game to see the subtle differences I might check some youtube videos to see what the alternate branch looks like. 

tl;dr The game is good, but I'd recommend playing on normal difficulty if you want to play more aggressive.