Wolfenstein: The New Order - PC

I agree with those saying this is a great shooter. My son and I both have the dreaded AMD systems so it took a little research to make the graphics look decent - thank you Steam forums and PCGamingWiki. The lack of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering options is disappointing but not a deal breaker because you can bind keys through the console to set them as high as you like. I am playing on Ultra, binding keys to +r_multisamples "16" & +vt_maxaniso "16", with slight hesitation on loading and some graphics pop-in. My son has 2 7870s so he can't do Ultra but I don't see much difference. I will play the game again, based on a timeline choice made early in the game, and like when RAGE was released there probably will be driver updates so the next play through will look even better. I'm six hours in and am impressed with BJ Blazkowicz as a character. The writing gives him depth and the NPC characters are done well. The switch from paranormal to high tech in the Nazi enemies makes the game more immersive. The fact that you have to press a button to pick up weapons, armor and ammo is annoying at first but you just start mashing after a while and it's not a big deal. Six hours in and so far the boss battles impress as well. Shear fire power will take down all enemies so far but strategy is also an option. I PC game for the graphics and would give 5 stars if I could remove all jagged edges. I liked the in game play of the classic Wolfenstein but won't spoil when that happens - oh the memories. Other than Stick of Truth this is the best game I've played this year. The only really annoying thing so far is that the AI enemy will wait for you to stealth kill a comrade before he engages you but that could be because I'm playing on medium difficulty. As a PC gamer who has been playing since the original I am impressed with this reboot - best so far.MOBO - Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev.3CPU - AMD FX 8350 4.2GHZGPU - Radeon 7970 x2, driver version 14.4OS - Windows 7 Ultimate 64bitSound - SB Recon3D Fatal1ty

To begin with, I am not a computer novice. I have been building desktop systems since the early nineties and using them for games and internet services since before there was an internet.I have also been a big fan of the Wolfenstein games from the earliest versions to New Order, which I have just purchased and have been unable to make execute.Right out of the gate the installation of steam failed. After making some changes to my firewall setting steam finally installed and updated itself. But every time I try to run WTNO it always fails after about twenty seconds with the same message about a “corrupted file”. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Wolfenstein with the same result.I have gone into the properties menu in steam to try to turn off the automatic update starting up but it always ends with the same result, which would seem to be a shortcoming of steam itself.Revised 03/13/15By removing the wireless adapter from the desktop system and plugging it directly into my router the program completed the update process and is now working.

Received Wolfenstein: The New Order this morning. Installed (which took over an hour). Waited until steam reported complete. Tried to start program from within Steam. Failed with message "Steam - Error Failed to start game (missing executable). See the Steam support site for more information".Okay, went to the site. Followed instructions to delete the appcache folder. Shutdown anti-virus program (Vipre) and verified none of the applications on Steams LONG list of verboten apps were running. Tried again. Same result.I tried every combination I could think of - including several reboots and running Steam in Admin mode. Nothing worked.To release a program that doesn't launch is inexcusable. How do I get a refund?----------------------Addendum. Discovered the fault was 99% mine. I installed the game onto a 32 bit version of Windows 7. I suspect I won't be the only person falling into this trap. Unfortunately the game does not warn you during installation that the OS is fundamentally incompatible, and the requirement is in very, very fine print at the bottom of the packaging. So the other 1% of blame is against the installation process which is too lazy to check the OS before doing the installation.On the game itself. I've just gotten to the second time-frame in the game (the first is set in 1945 and runs like a continuation from Wolfenstein). Overall the game is satisfying without being as addictive as its immediate predecessor. Game play is smooth although playing on less than the top setting (uber) isn't much of a challenge. I don't want to put any spoilers into this review, but suffice to say that for anyone who loved Wolfenstein this sequel is not a disappointment.Long term the correct solution to portability (not just for games but also for applications and even operating systems) is a "permissions" dongle that keeps track of your games. Lose the dongle you simply buy a new one (for a few bucks) and download permissions from a central resource. Each dongle would essentially contain a unique, embedded master key and communicate with an permissions authority using rolling "working keys" based on AES 256 bit and partial mac code transmission. A stolen, lost or damaged dongle would simply be deactivated from the permissions database. This dongle would allow you to game on ANY machine with a USB port (aka all of them) and would allow you to be machine type independent (provided there's a version available for the OS you are trying to use of course!). When you "buy" a game all that happens is that permission to play that game (or application), on your personal dongle, is updated accordingly. Steam is really a technology dead-end. Heck, for that matter, why not simply encode permission to your mobile? That way you don't have "yet another device" to carry around with you!

No patience learning curve