Play Wolfenstein If You’re Angry At The World Right Now

Hey, everything sucks right now. There’s no getting around it, and we’re going to have to live with the consequences of this shit for the rest of our lives. So, if you’re feeling angry about things, like say, the rise of fascism in America, why not grab the Wolfenstein games and kill some Nazis?

I need a break from all of this. I need to entertain the notion that I have some power. I need to remember that fascism is a loser ideology and that it can be dismantled, and I will gain all of this by replaying Bethesda and MachineGames’ Wolfenstein games and literally tearing men-turned-monsters to pieces. If I can’t have the real thing, I want to virtually preside over the rotting husk of fascism in Wolfenstein, which is widely available on platforms but is specifically on PlayStation Plus’s Games Catalog (at the Extra tier or higher), Xbox Game Pass, and, by extension, PC Game Pass.

In case you don’t know, Wolfenstein is a series of first-person shooters following B.J. Blazkowicz, an American soldier who effectively goes missing during World War II. In Wolfenstein’s version of history, the Allied Powers lose the war and the Nazis conquer the world. Their ineptitude and hate creeps into every facet of life as far as the eye can see. Though the first game in this rebooted series, The New Order, largely takes place on the European front, the sequel shifts focus to America and beyond and interrogates how such an ideology could fit a country that once swore to combat it.

Nazis have been the de facto villains of a lot of stories both inside and outside of games, but the Wolfenstein reboots were the first games I played to take them deathly seriously. Perhaps The New Order was just a little ahead of the curve, but The New Colossus landed in 2017—mere months after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville—and met the moment head-on, depicting fascism in our country as though it were baked into our very being. Who am I to argue with that assessment now?

Besides its lofty interrogations of Nazism though, the Wolfenstein series is also well known for its gritty gameplay. Like its earliest incarnations, these shooters did not feature regenerating health, instead offering armor and health as pickups to be found around the map or in combat. Much like the DOOM reboot of 2016, this inspired players to push forward and be aggressive in order to survive, a tactic that sounds all too good right now. Wolfenstein forces you to be scrappy, and the skirmishes that arise from the tension of scrambling under such duress are among some of the genre’s best.

I’ve always described Wolfenstein’s action and gunplay as punchy. Its guns have a tremendous kick to them. They communicate an overwhelming, almost frightening amount of power, which makes it oh-so-good to point said weapons at literal Nazis. Over the course of the games, B.J.’s armory expands, but he also becomes a proper Nazi deterrent. Through means that I won’t entirely spoil, the man essentially becomes a hulking tank capable of smashing, slashing, and otherwise ripping fascists to shreds. Describing it now, I’m almost giddy to jump back into the games in the days to come.

I don’t know, y’all. That’s all I’ve got for you right now. I’m a ball of pure seething anger, and I can only really safely project that into a false reality by playing Wolfenstein at the moment. Otherwise, I’m feeling as defeated as many of you. The rest of my life was just decided for me overnight, and I could do little to stop it. Things are going to happen, exceptionally bad things, and I’ll be helpless to stop most of it. But I can shoot some Nazis in Wolfenstein, rally, and get back to the real fight as soon as I can.