One of the things we need right now is more media where Nazis are handled in the one way that they should be. I’ll let you determine how. ProbablyMonsters‘ recently announced Nekome: Nazi Hunter is adding to the Wolfenstein rotation but doing so with personal storytelling inspired by Nazi hunting cinema.
Nekome: Nazi Hunter isn’t necessarily following in the lineage of existing titles, but it is picking up on the storytelling and violence that made films like Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and Jalmari Helander‘s Sisu the action hits they have become. In Nekome: Nazi Hunter, you are out on a path of vengeance, and every kill is personal.
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During GDC, we got the chance to see a hands-off pre-Alpha demo of Nekome: Nazi Hunter, with the game’s director, Jeronimo Barrera (who is also ProbablyMonsters’ General Manager), explaining the story, gameplay focus, and goal for the title. Nekome: Nazi Hunter, a third-person action combat game, isn’t about gunplay and mass chaos. Instead, the game’s primary form of combat is hand-to-hand, modeled on WWII military tactics.
ProbablyMonsters’ Nekome: Nazi Hunter is aiming to make everything personal.
This doesn’t mean you have only your fists. As you fight, many of your takedowns are done with a small knife. As you pick up items in the world, you can use them as weapons. Improvised weapons all come with their own custom finishers that aim to capture the violence that marks current action cinema. Additionally, when a Nazi guard drops an item, you can use it against them.
This does mean that while gunplay isn’t the combat focus in Nekome: Nazi Hunter, you can pick them up and use them. However, based on historical research, guns can be a gamble. Known to fail and way less accurate than modern military weapons, a gun can have one bullet or six; you just don’t know until you fire. That element is used to immerse the player further into the game’s world and story.
The combat itself is bloody and stylized, leaning away from hyper-realism, and it works extremely well, with a film grain filter applied to finishing moves to give them a personal touch. But all of the violence is done to create a story, and one where every moment of the visceral combat feels personal and meaningful.
But to create that meaning, we have to look at the story in Nekome: Nazi Hunter. In the game, you play as Vano, a Romani man whose entire family has been killed by the Nazis. One of the underrepresented groups that faced genocide under Hitler’s regime, Vano’s story is less told but a perfect fit into the world of the genre.
As Vano, you will turn the “hunter into the hunted” as you stalk a vile group of Nazi soldiers across Europe to claim your revenge. A globetrotting story, the pre-Alpha demo took us through Tripoli, North Africa, with Barrera explaining the goal of taking the player through the war-torn continent.
Nekome: Nazi Hunter’s mission structure is a highlight for its storytelling, but also ProbablyMonster’s attention to the growing need to be able to pick up and put down a game in concise pieces. Each mission begins in the enemy’s backyard with players stalking Nazis, assassinating guards, and carving their path of revenge through the enemy. Each mission allows the player to choose stealthy approaches, thin the herd, or just Rambo into the space. With each being more beneficial depending on the situation, some will have a higher chance of success.
At the end of each mission, you will get a breakdown of your kills and challenges before transitioning to the next mission. This helps break the game down into neat sections that you can understand, the growing need to tackle games in sections when you have time, and the importance of ensuring you never forget your place.
Nekome: Nazi Hunter’s cinematic appeal makes it a standout, as does its mission structure.
That said, combat is all about strategy when it comes to movement and choosing when to fight and chase down fleeing Nazis or choosing to let them go. Melee combat features a parry system that makes an impact as you play, but the combination of bare-knuckle boxing, grappling, and quick stabs sticks out in a genre that just wants to create mass carnage. The close-quarters nature of the combat pushes the player to see their actions as vital to Vano’s revenge and, in that way, embodies cinema more than games.
The last remaining element of Nekome: Nazi Hunter is that Vano’s notoriety and the fear he induces in Nazis grow as the story continues. Much like the Bear Jew in Inglourious Basterds of Aatami Korpi in Sisu, you are becoming a force of vengeance, and the more you kill, the larger that spectre of revenge will impact the people you are hunting. You can see this in real time. After you kill a high-ranking officer, the lower-level grunts will respond fearfully, go fetal in that fear, pee their pants, and run away. It’s a moment of satisfying humiliation and also something you can reinforce as you burn Nazi propaganda every chance you get.
Nekome: Nazi Hunter is easily one of my most anticipated games after this GDC preview. It has the cinematic flair to capture any audience, an exciting attention to action detail, and the focus on making everything personal, crafting a different spot in the genre. Nekome: Nazi Hunter stands out sharply and has the potential to offer the catharsis that has kept WWII action films thriving.
Nekome: Nazi Hunter does not currently have a release window but is being developed for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
