Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War

"Pseudo German strikes again!"

Well I got this game when it came out on PC and to say the least I was very happy with it. I couldn’t believe how good of a remake they came up with for this game. Wolfenstein 3D was on of the best games of all time. And it was just mind boggling how they could think of remaking it. But overall I think they did a very good job.
When I heard it was coming to Xbox, I knew I had to have it. Even though I beat the game on the PC and played it online for, oh 5 months, I still felt the Xbox live community had a lot to offer this game.

Story:

Wolfenstein's story is the core of the game play. When I first got the game I was immensely surprised with how good the story was. Due to the fact that Wolf3d had little of no story at all I was impressed.
The story is well told though out the game but cinemas and dialog between characters. If you take the time to read the notes throughout the stages then those give you a little inside too.
One little thing that bugs me is the fake German they speak. The say thinks like ''Herr!'' and ''Bitte!'' or ''Danke!'' but then it’s followed by English. Use one or the other next time.
(9/10)

Gameplay:

Wolfenstein has a great backbone of game play features. The ''Single player'' has 8 massive mission spanning about 25 stages. Including on whole new mission that wasn’t in the PC version. The Multiplayer has been added a ton of searching features. Which I really like.

Single Player:

The Single player aspect to this game was very well designed. it was tested very well and every thing was very fun while playing it. While the game is a little short, and easy. There are secrets littered thought-out the game (about 3 per stage), which add tons of replay to the game. When all the secrets are collected for a particular stage you get a treat at the end (mostly ammo of weapons). Another thing that bugged me about the Xbox version is the bosses were SUPER easy, on the PC they were near impossible with out codes (and that’s the way bosses should be).

Multi-Player:

There is no Deathmatch without 'live'. Though there is a coop mode. The one thing I really like about the Live on this game in the search options they give you. They let you really look for what you want to play. I'm still waiting for a ''ping' selector option though. The Deathmatch is only team Deathmatch. There are many options however.

Objective: This is where one team has an objective to reach or capture and the other team has to defend.

StopWatch: Same as objective but you switch teams after a team wins and you have to beat that other teams time to get the objective.

Elimination: Standard team Deathmatch

Capture the point: your team needs to capture the points to win.

There are dedicated servers in this game so that’s a plus. and a few options for Friendly fire and Optimal server search settings. The online play is done very well.
The coop is nothing new, mostly standard stuff but you can’t beat the game in coop mode it wont let you save your progress. so you can beat it and stuff but you wont get anything.
(10/10)

Graphics:
Ok. I mean it is using the quake 3 engine. And that’s not exactly new or anything. But I think this is about the best you can get the Q3 engine to work. And for that I give it a..
(7/10)

Sound:
Great, they made HUGE improvements from the PC version. The Lugar in the PC version sounded like a squirt gun. and most of the conventional firearm just didn’t sound anywhere near real. But they made that better. The music is still the same great low harmonic stuff.
(9/10)

Replay:

I can’t think of a FPS off the top of my head that has more replay then this game. There are secrets 4 difficultly and if you beat the game in single player you get WOLFENSTEIN 3D!!! How badass is that. Oh by the way did I mention Xbox Live.
(10/10)

Overall:

Pros:

+ Fun
+ Live
+ Sound
+ More replay value then you can shake a stick at

Cons:

- Old graphics
- Old Game

(9.5/10)

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/03, Updated 05/19/03