Return to Castle Wolfenstein

This game is actually a pretty good vision and rebooted sequel to a legendary first person shooter "Wolfenstein 3D". It gives you a completely new visuals, characters, possibilities, weapons, gameplay, atmosphere, music and enemies. Now, all mentioned above... is pretty cool in the game. The graphics are excellent, and remember, this is 2001 we are talking about. Id made a quite good step with this one and they gave us a faithful sequel to the "Wolf" fans and upcoming game playing generations. There's nothing much to say for my side anymore, but there are several good things I'd like to mention. The plot is terrific, again as Agent Blaskowitz, here to fight Nazis and merciless ghosts and demons. The game is pretty dark and has this scary atmosphere, combined with eerie music, which is good, while in old game we had quite a colorful themed levels. While you fight Nazis, the atmosphere is reasonably different and it is followed by high voltage music score and very dynamic action. There are also few levels which contains only Nazis and certain nazi bases without ghosts, so it's good to have some balance there. It is very enjoyable and fun. Take my word for it and play it.

It's still a class game I absolutely love it The best shooting game I played

This game has picked up loads of awards for it's graphics recently, and it's not hard to see why. Even on a medium-spec PC, it looks pretty amazing, with excellent lighting effects, decent character animation and impressive level design (my favourite being the secret Nazi airbase). But where id have pulled out all the stops for the visuals, it seems that they gave the writing team a day off for this game. I gave up caring about the plot after first running into the zombies (which were v.cool), as it wandered between Indiana Jones-esque fantasy, with eerie pagan rituals and undead hi-jinx, and more realistic Hidden & Dangerous style missions, such as capturing the experimental plane and picking your way through the rubble of a bombed out factory. In fact, I wish they'd have put more thought into the overall plot, as the fantasy elements of the game are rather weak and let the side down a little. Sure, the first time you bump into the Uber-Soldat's, you can't help jump in shock, and the excellent 'Lopers' add a real horror feeling to one of the missions, but they aren't used enough, and the level designers seem content to pop them in as mid-level bosses after their initial appearance. Then we go back to running around mansions, shooting plain old Nazi's. Why? Why not more freaky creatures? Why not a more involving plot? Castle Wolfenstein itself is little more than a bit part in this game. It's a shame to see such a well known license squandered on what is little more than an exercise in programming. The end of the game seems to tail off, with more and more empty levels dotted with the occasional enemy. And as for the final boss? Well, it's like id are stuck feet-first in 1994. I'm hoping some decent mission packs surface for RTCW, as the one-player game provides little sustenance for the likes of me. To be fair, I'm just disappointed that they didn't have Cyber-Hitler make a return! Oh, and the multiplayer game is fantastic. Simple as that. Taking part in a 32-a-side war with airstrikes, artillery barrages and flamethrowers. This IS war. Get it right next time id, and stop employing 6th formers to write your plots...

While Return to Castle Wolfenstein may have some good level design, good weapons, good graphics, good sounds and very balanced gameplay, there is nothing in it that one would'nt have seen before in other games. They've tried to squeeze in a proper story for the game but at the end, the story becomes pretty useless and is entirely predictable. But as far as fun alone is concerned, it just falls slightly short of being a classic. There is unfortunately not much long term appeal and there would'nt be much of a multiplayer following for it either. Worth giving a try if can pick it up cheap. While it does have several shortcomings, it is still more fun to play than most games today.

All these years later, Return to Castle Wolfenstein offers a very fun single-player experience.

The level design is generally intuitive, and grows stronger as the game progresses. The areas you occupy in-game are made more immersive through immaculate attention to detail and period-appropriate decoration.

Certain aspects of the game's visual presentation have aged particularly well, for instance characters' faces and the weapons.

There's good feedback in firefights - you'll usually be able to tell whether you've hit your enemy. However, hitboxes aren't very accurate. Spend enough time using a sniper and you'll realise that many of the shots you clearly miss in fact hit the intended target. It's better to wrongly register misses than not recognise hits, I suppose!

The stealth can be frustrating. It's almost as if AI detection works using RNG instead of a coherent pattern. Sometimes you'll be spotted half a mile away through a dark mist; sometimes the soldier you're sneaking up on will have no peripheral vision whatsoever.

It took me a while to adjust to the absence of an aim-down-sight ability for most weapons in the game, but as your arsenal expands you'll find something that works for your play-style.

A slightly frustrating component of the game is its tendency to use a start-of-level save instead of your latest quicksave for its automatic reload.

There are probably fixes for all of the issues I've raised in this review, but nothing in Return to Castle Wolfenstein agitated me to the point of caring to seek out mods or patches. Take the game as you find it and you'll still be having fun most of the time.