This is how you take your schlock seriously. Not with fake guilt or thematic cleverness applied to familiar mechanics. But with big-ass guns to shoot Nazis who’ve taken over the world.

And what a world it is. The New Order commits to its fiction through its spaces. Levels expand beyond mere shooting galleries and offer relief from the usual mayhem by articulating a monstrous alternate history. Perhaps most surprising, the women in its world are strikingly diverse, believable, even adult.

This is not a game that transcends its genre – it fulfills it. This Wolfenstein knows itself, and its confidence shows.