Wolfenstein is a classic game series, one of the progenitors of first-person shooters. You never forget the first time you got to shoot a cybernetic Hitler with a flamethrower. After languishing a bit in the early 2000s, it came back into glorious form with a soft reboot in 2014 with Wolfenstein: The New Order. It's the weekly giveaway on the Epic Games Store, and well worth picking up if you haven't played it already. Though The New Order preserves the straightforward, action-packed shooting action that the series is known for, it also has a surprisingly engaging narrative.

Starting Friday, subscribers to Xbox Game Pass will see a new wave of games from Bethesda Softworks, whose parent company was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion. In a statement Thursday, Microsoft said it will release 20 Bethesda games on Friday to Game Pass, the Xbox's subscription service providing access to dozens of video games for a monthly fee. The games span several Bethesda-owned properties, including Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Doom. A handful of games will feature FPS boost, which provides a significant increase to a game's frame rate per second, resulting in a smoother gameplay experience, says Microsoft. 'You're still on mute':One year into the pandemic, the mute button has been the best (and worst) at work Xbox Game Pass has surged in popularity as a more affordable way to gain access to multiple console games.

New'Wolfenstein: Youngblood' video game brings twin sisters to the forefront in the long-running alternative history battle against the Nazis. The storied video game "Wolfenstein 3D" is considered by many to have helped spark the first-person shooter genre, which spawned successors such as "Doom" and "Call of Duty." Ever since that first game, released in 1992, "B.J." Blazkowicz has been the hero of the series fighting Nazis in the game's alternate historical setting, in which Germany won World War II. But this latest game turns the action over to his twin daughters. Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 4, and PCs, rated Mature for ages 17-up), the young adult sisters, Jessie ("Jess") and Zofia ("Soph"), must search for their father who has gone missing.

Myst developer Cyan is running a Kickstarter campaign for a new game, Firmament, and Gearbox finally announced Borderlands 3. But that's just the start of this week's news, which also contained release date announcements for Heaven's Vault, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Observation, plus the announcement of a new Divinity: Original Sin spinoff tactics game, CD Projekt teasing not one but two games before 2021, and free copies of Morrowind to celebrate the Elder Scrolls anniversary. This is gaming news for March 25 to 29. This week's free game offer is near and dear to my heart. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda is giving away free copies of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, a.k.a.

In the early 2000s, game publisher Bethesda was best known for its Elder Scrolls series of technologically ambitious fantasy games. In the last 15 years, however, it has expanded greatly, snapping up several legendary video game franchises as well as starting an original series of its own. The company now produces the Fallout post-apocalyptic role-playing games; the iconic, hellish shooter Doom; tongue-in-cheek Nazi-killing romp Wolfenstein; supernatural steampunk assassin sim Dishonoured; and Rage, a Mad Max-style romp around a devastated world. At its E3 press conference last month, after showing new Doom, Rage, Fallout and Wolfenstein titles, Bethesda teased the next entry in its Elder Scrolls series as well as a new sci-fi role-playing game called Starfield. For both, 100 hours is a conservative playtime estimate.

It had just turned April when we declared that 2017 was a great year for video games. The post-holiday quarter is usually fairly quiet for new releases, but in 2017 it brought us legitimate contenders for game of the year in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn and Persona 5 -- and that's not to mention Resident Evil 7's return to form. Now the year is almost over, and we've had a stunning Mario game, another great Wolfenstein title and even an Assassin's Creed game that exceeded all expectations. Getting an entire editorial team to agree on just one game is tough, and ultimately not that fun, so we didn't try. Instead, we each picked the one game that stood out to us the most -- avoiding duplicates -- and then named the title we're most looking forward to for 2018. I never expected that an Assassin's Creed game would end up being one of my favorite games this year. But yes, Origins really is that good. I didn't think I'd have patience for yet another massive open-world game, let alone one in a franchise that's embodied the worst elements of big-budget game development.

Wolfenstein has been around longer than I've been alive. What began as two innovative anti-Nazi stealth video games for the Apple II and Commodore 64 became id Software's famous first-person anti-Nazi shooter. The latest iteration is released this week and, for the first time, some people are offended by its opposition to Nazis. How on earth have we got here? Creators are increasingly crafting deeper, political stories, confronting issues of race, gender and sexuality in big budget games.

On October 27, three of the biggest videogames of the year arrive, all at once: Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and Nintendo's Super Mario Odyssey. Together, these three titles represent a cross-section of the big-budget gaming industry, from a family-friendly run-and-jump romp to a bloody rampage through a Nazi-filled alternate history. From power fantasy to primer on Ancient Egyptian architecture, this one day showcases much of the best of what triple-A gaming--the biggest, costliest games by the biggest, wealthiest publishers--can do. It represents enough money to balance the budget of a small country. Accounting for years of development time, bleeding-edge machines and software, and astronomical advertising budgets, these three games, all told, are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. None of this is new, of course.