Where to even begin.. Wolfenstein: The New Order is phenomenal. I kept delaying purchase of this game despite all the praise it received. I had no desire to spend 50 dollars on a genre that I don’t even enjoy that much, but at 14.99 I feel like I outright robbed the devs.

Graphically Wolfenstein is stellar; I didn’t encounter a single muddled texture or janky pop-in. Animations are natural and varied. The gun effects are meaty and unbelievably deadly feeling. Sound design reflects this quality with heavy, forceful gunshots and chaotic combat chatter as you mow down nazi foes. Everything about the presentation is just perfect.

But every modern FPS is shiny, the problem is that they are all bland, stale, predictable, and just plain boring to play. Not Wolfenstein, dear god not this game. You are unnaturally quick, agile and can leap and slide about the stage whilst dual wielding assault rifles.When the game gives you guns, it wants you to go ape with them. On top of that, Wolfenstein goes back to the good ol’ days of magical bottomless pockets, allowing you to carry about a full arsenal of chaos to use as you see fit. Gunning down one room only to slide into the next stealthily tossing knives into the backs of any nazi whose back is foolishly turned is pure joy.

As if making a good feeling shooter in this day and age isn’t reason enough to celebrate, the storyline and character development is mind blowing. Sure the emotions won’t be running as high as your first time playing The Walking Dead, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t swept away into the struggles of the protagonist and his rag-tag group of freedom fighters. With some seriously dark and difficult topics hit on with such taste and creativity, when the cutscenes are rolling it’s hard to believe this is an old school nazi killing arcade. That is, until the tone switches to absurd 80’s action movie mode and you gather around the round table to hatch a crazy plot to mow down more nazis. When you can go from entering a concentration camp-witnessing all the horrors associated with a locale of that nature- to melting nazis on the moon with laser assault rifles and never breaking the flow of the narrative or gameplay then you have accomplished something magical.

I could harp all day on how each part of Wolfenstein is expertly crafted, but the pinnacle of achievement here is the inconceivably masterful balance between so many conflicting styles, themes and narratives. Wolfenstein: The New Order is by far one of the best games I’ve played in 2015.