Half baked, half assed, and a half measure when compared to The New Order.

The story and dialogue are absolutely atrocious, feels like it was written by a 12 year old with a hard on for the most P.C./Virtue signaling cast and script they could possibly muster. They kill off a long loved character from the get-go hoping it will spur on your anger and cause the player to be more invested in the narrative but as always this doesn't work at all and was really just an excuse to bring in the strong feminist black woman anyway (because of course). Obviously we need more racial representation in the industry but killing off or changing existing characters and replacing them to seem more inclusive is cheap and sends the wrong message. Ultimately, the writing is forced and the characters are forced and it makes it hard to care about either.

The graphics of the character models are hit and miss but the environments are soooo lazy, at one point you're high above a city and it's just made of gray squares (not kidding) and the various maps that sound exciting and interesting to visit end up being a lot of walls, alleyways, and hallways, with weak ass backdrops. A lot of it is surprisingly ugly and it doesn't matter how high your graphics are turned up, mine were on ultra and it looked as described.

Somehow the gameplay is worse than the predecessor's? IDK how you mess that up but indeed, this sequel feels clunky and in pretty much no way fluid. The sliding is abrupt and pointless, you get caught on doorways and crawlspaces, your melee button is the same as your throwing button which gets old REAL quick, in vents you'll try to drop down on an enemy and just float over them, seemingly stuck on nothing, etc. The weapons are mostly good, they ruined the Laserkraftwerk (Laser cutter from the previous game) so that now instead of the innovative ability to cut specific shapes in walls or fences (you know, like a laser would do), you now just shoot at a sheet of metal and it completely evaporates... fun stuff.

The cutscenes are long and often painful but the game overall is actually very short and open ended, almost to the point where you'd think it was unfinished or maybe a lengthy demo and believe me, I took my time over the last month to enjoy and stretch this one out as much as possible but oh my God does it just end abruptly and unsatisfyingly. After the God awful cringe cover song and credits finish rolling, they drop you back in your base and leave you a bunch of targets to kill on the same dull and poorly designed maps you've already been through, sort of like how (coincidentally) they do to you in Fallout 4, with endless, tedious settlements for you to help. Very cool.

B.J.'s inner monologue is still great for the most part and the ending line drop he delivers is so good it almost made the whole game worth it but then all the new characters you don't care about overshadow it and dog pile the screen; yelling at you, trying to make you care about them and their cause. I could go on but you get the idea. There was potential here but it was squandered for the sake of an agenda. Not uncommon but sad all the same.

New Order garnered a strong 9/10 for me, New Colossus gets a very generous 5/10, it wasn't really a good game, it had some cool parts, maybe even a couple of great parts, but mostly it's a failure and it gets this high of a rating almost solely because of how much I love this series, like this game sucks.

Bottom Line- the formula for a game like this isn't a difficult one to nail and neither me nor most the fans understand how you could miss the mark on this so badly. Hopefully the third installment will bring it back on track and one day we'll get a dope new school DOOM / Wolfenstien / Duke Nukem (Wolfendookem?) crossover that will melt our faces and leave us speechless for the rest of our lives <3

If you've come this far, well thank you for reading and be sure you're staying hydrated.

2024 update:
This game still ♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks and I'm still mad about it. In retrospect, they wrote the game all politically charged like that because it was just easier than using their brain and also people know N*zi = bad so buy game and defeat the bad which I mean, looking at the brainless positive reviews kind of worked and that kind of also sucks bc it encourages more brainless games design. Now I am sad.