Wolfenstein

Wolfenstein is one of gaming's founding myths. Castle Wolfenstein began as a 1981 stealth game, and Wolfenstein 3D effectively launched the first-person shooter as a mainstream form. This collection traces that arc from the id Software originals through Return to Castle Wolfenstein's early-2000s revival to the MachineGames reboots, which reinvented B.J. Blazkowicz as the lead of a sharply written alternate history where the Nazis won the war.

The throughline is simple and durable: gun down fascists in increasingly elaborate fashion. What changed is the storytelling, from pure arcade shooting to The New Order's surprisingly character-driven campaign. Everything here is a game, which fits a series whose importance is mechanical and historical rather than transmedia. Few franchises can claim to have helped invent a genre and then, decades later, deliver some of the most confident single-player shooters of their era.

The Wolfenstein franchise spans 9 games in the CrossBinge catalog.