Review: Return to Castle Wolfenstein

By: L33tdawg

For those of you who know me well, you’re probably aware that I don’t play games, for the simple reason that I suck at them. That being said though, I’ve recently gotten back into the swing of not sitting here spending my time coding endlessly and instead managed to sneak in a couple of hours per week of just game play. Let’s cut to Christmas 2001 – I received a copy of Return to Castle Wolfenstein courtesy of my cousin Adrian (incidentally, he’s ended up playing the game more than I have, which makes me wonder whether buying it for me was a ploy to get to play it as well *grin*). Anyway, here’s my review of what I perceive to be perhaps one of the best games of 2001.

As most of you would undoubtedly know, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is the sequel to Wolfenstein 3D -- ID Software's first-person shooter that defined the genre, launched way back in 1993/4 (if memory serves me correctly). Wolfenstein is primarily a run-and-gun shooter with some stealth sections mixed in. It also features enemy guards engaged in conversations as you approach them, a largely defensive AI for those guards, and between level cut scenes that recount meetings between your superiors back at the home base. Personally, I initially found the cut scenes to be particularly interesting in it’s story telling, however after a couple of stages, it tends to get a little bit tedious -- they're usually long and visually and dramatically uninteresting. Further to this, I also found that the sound quality of the dialog to be a little too bass heavy for my liking. Indeed this could be due to my stereo setup, however, this was certainly not evident in other games I’ve played on this machine.

What’s the story morning glory?

The story starts out with you escaping from Castle Wolfenstein only to return in an attempt to stop the Nazis from creating biomechanical zombie super soldiers. Return to Castle Wolfenstein features 27 levels, which are spread across seven missions and feature a good variety of environments. The levels alternate between expansive outdoor scenes, such as a Nazi camp with a good deal of hilly terrain surrounding it, to interiors that range from cramped tombs to massive chambers. On the whole I found the quality and detail of the levels' textures and lighting to be pretty excellent.

The weapon models, the character models, and the animations are also first-rate. Though the conversations between the guards may not be terribly interesting, the guards' idle animations are great. The game's zombies move with a convincing disjointed shuffle. One particular type of skeleton enemy is especially eerie as it creeps toward you through low-lying fog, its eyes glowing.

Wolfenstein's sound effects are generally good, from the dull "bullets hitting wood" sound as you seek shelter from the bullet spray behind a wooden table to the appropriately varied noises made by footsteps on different floor materials – which actually reminds me of Thief: The Dark Project. Although the sound quality in Return to Castle Wolfenstein is at least 2 notches better than Thief, there are still elements that provide a little bit of nostalgia. The AI of the game is certainly not bad, and for
the most part it's impressive. Soldiers exhibit a real capacity for self-preservation. Rather than charge right for you, they'll often find cover and stick to it, waiting for you to come find them. Most of the more annoying AI traits that appear in Counter Strike (when playing with the bots), for instance, counter/terrorists running aimlessly in a circle or not noticing when a buddy gets his brains splattered on the wall, don't occur in Wolfenstein.

Ultimately, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a pure shooter. As such, the core of its appeal lies in its gunfights and the variety of different ways that bullets interact with objects in its universe. Though the character models are well animated, their reactions to being hit with gunfire are far too subtle. Often, you'll riddle a soldier with bullets and receive no real visual reaction from him other than the fact that he'll eventually fall over dead.

On the whole I’d say Return to Castle Wolfenstein is well worth buying, and should provide for several hours of mindless hunt-down-and-kill action.

1.) Design Concept for a Strictly Anomally Based Web Intrusion Detection System - spoonfork
2.) The 2nd Annual 20 Worst People, Places and Things on the Internet 2001 - Archfiend
3.) NetStat - An overlook at market locked out commands - Kn¿ght
4.) The Acorn PC - logik
5.) The new iMac: Symbolic of what is wrong in technology - Dietcoke
6.) Interview: The Womb - A digital rebirth of sound - L33tdawg
7.) Review: Return to Castle Wolfenstein - L33tdawg
8.) Two years and still kicking - L33tdawg
9.) Of broadband gimmicks and the like - biatch0
10.) The Real McCoy - Dinesh Nair