Return to Castle Wolfenstein

"A thin line between good and average..."

Retutn To Castle Wolfenstein is a FPS developed by Grey Matter and released by Activision. Based on ID's FPS pioneer Wolfenstein 3D, it has some same plot elements but is a whole different game that used the “Wolfenstein” title only to sell a few more copies than it normally would.

Story: 5.5/10

The whole story revolves around the Nazi's during the WW2 and their secret operations whose purpose is the creation of the ultimate weapon. The story starts with you, a captured American spy. After a brief scene where you escape from your cell in a totally stupid way, you try to escape from castle Wolfenstein itself, but before you do, you'll have to get info about what the Nazis are doing over there. It appears that they are involved in the occult and have managed to raise some EVIL stuff from an excavation site. But just where the plot gets better the HQ say, “Ok, stop that mission, we will send you to other missions involving secret weapons and secret labs where strange experiments and taking place”. These missions are extremely typical and are nothing to Wolfenstein's main plot, but after completing them the HQ goes again like, “All these stuff, like bio-weapons, super soldiers, etc, are all connected to the big stuff, the occult thing you encountered in the very start of the freaking game!!! So go back there and stop that”. What I try to say is that the main idea of Nazis dealing with ghouls and ghosts, (no, not the game), is quite good and well executed in RTCW but the other missions totally distract you and make the main quest look just like any other secret military mission.

Graphics: 8/10

RTCW has great atmosphere and that because of its very good graphics. The game uses an enhanced version of Quake 3's graphic engine and boy does it work. Everything looks very good and has a lot of detail, especially the skins of your enemies. All characters, from the simple soldier, to the sexy female elite guard, to the fully armed super soldier have extreme amounts of detail, which unfortunately in order to see you'll have to kill the enemy and that because most of the time you'll have to kill them from a great distance. Apart from the great skins of characters, we have very good level design which isn't something great but gives the right feeling to each stage, for example the crypts of castle Wolfenstein have that eerie feel of ancient dungeons, other places show the marks of war with heavily bombarded buildings and German villages look like… well German villages, (duh!!!), all in all great detail. Finally we have great special effects like flamethrowers, Tesla energy fields, smoke, explosions and many more. The only thing I didn't like at all where lighting effects which are very average and don't flatter Wolfenstein's graphic quality.

Sound: 8/10

RTCW has a great, almost cinematic feel to it due to its great action symphonic music, which although very repetitive gives the right atmosphere. Good ambient effects help improving the atmosphere a little more too. Voice acting is quite good but I just cannot understand why we have German Soldiers speaking English with German accents, why not have some nice subtitles along with the real thing? Weapons, from the weaker to the stronger sound very powerful and realistic, (especially snipers and silenced ones). Enemies shout the same, typical, Nazi soldier stuff, “Halt!!!”, “Intruder!!!” and stuff like that something that makes them very repetitive. Other, more… unusual enemies make better sounds but aren't something great.

Gameplay: 5.5/10

Forget Wolfenstein 3D's pure FPS action since RTCW is heavily based in sniping and hiding in order to ambush your foes. I don't have a problem with sniper action but RTCW isn't very good at doing that. First of all enemies even in the easier difficulty mode, are expert shooters who the moment they see you they will shoot at you. Also it's almost impossible to dodge bullets in close combat since enemies rarely miss. Also many times you won't know where the bullets are coming from even though you'll have searched the area with your scope making you loose precious HP before finding and killing the one that is shooting at you. Finally a certain enemy is so fast that makes it impossible to avoid damage and that enemy needs a lot of firepower to die! All in all the game apart from some problems is quite good and fortunately, apart from all that sniping stuff we have some pure shooting action too.

Before each mission you get a small briefing about what you objectives are. Mission objectives range from simply moving on to the next area to finding items or killing enemies while avoiding the sounding of the alarm. Typical missions that have nothing exciting about them. Enemies are a bit dumb although quite lethal due to their shooting skills. They just crouch a bit, run while shooting like you and hide behind a wall once in a while but generally don't expect any special AI. The weirdest thing in the game is the Elite Guard which is made from groups of highly trained women that are very fast and extremely capable of shooting at you while avoiding your bullets and hiding behind walls. They look so good that it is almost ridiculous since instead of wearing typical military uniforms they have tight leather clothes and high heals making them look like S & M girls. The funny thing is that their beauty along with their skills makes them one of the most dangerous foes in the game since you'll probably spent a second or two to stare at them, (they are the most detailed characters after all), and take a lot of damage while doing so!!! Apart from human enemies, undead and other strange creatures have the simple FPS AI, they run towards you and hit you with all they got.

The game is very linear since each level has only one way to complete it and quite repetitive since most missions only involve going from point A to point B and shoot stuff while doing so. Also the game is extremely short. 5 hours are more than enough to complete the game and find all secret areas which are nothing more than areas with more ammo and armor and some treasure items that have no use at all.

Positives:
-Great, highly detailed, characters and levels

Negatives:
-You'll use the quicksave and quickload functions very often!!!
-Very short and linear
-The main storyline was totally destroyed by the other sub-missions

Also Play:
-Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault (PC)
-Quake 4 (PC)

Overall: 6.7/10

Its not a bad game, I repeat, its not a bad game, but it could be a lot, lot better if the developers have tried making it longer, more easy to avoid getting damage and with a better use of the main plot idea.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/07

Game Release: Return to Castle Wolfenstein (EU, 11/30/01)