Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Additional Screenshots

Most World War II shooters are pretty good. Most of them are pretty straightforward. Go in, kill some Nazis, play with weapons, and come out alive. Return to Castle Wolfenstein however, adds a new twist. Zombies. That's right; your favorite creatures from the dead will be some of the enemies you will encounter in this interesting WW2 twisted shooter.

The Opening Story

You are B.J. Blazkowicz sent to investigate a German scientist named Himmler who seems to have opened a crypt containing dead evil zombie things from a long time ago. As you start the game, you first must infiltrate a Nazi castle, and gather some information to the whereabouts of the crypt. So OK, everything is going good… you have your nice machine guns, pistol, and even the nice little kick function to destroy the hanging Nazi flags. You wipe out a few Nazi soldiers through the castle and a village, and suddenly come upon a crypt. Luckily, there is a box of dynamite right behind the stone structure, so you just equip a couple of packages, place them by the front, run like hell, and KABOOM!

In Total, a Good Single Player Campaign

After jumping right in (literally, jumping) you get to watch some petty Nazis get obliterated by a few zombie monsters. HAHA! Now it's your turn. Start shooting off your Sten until you run out of bullets, and eventually these zombies will collapse and you can move on. I must say, moving through this deserted crypt is a little freaky, especially when these zombie things just pop out of nowhere. One type of zombie has a pretty pathetic attack; it looks like it is summoning something, and then shoots ‘air skulls' at you. These are easily dodgable, because it's basically air coming at you, but I think this attack could've really been improved. Overall, the single player campaign is very imaginative and interesting. Even though it's not the best we've seen, it still provides a great experience.

AI is Good Enough

Throughout the entire game, AI is fairly decent. Zombies always attack when appropriate, and since they never run away, you will always have to be ready. Nazis are fairly decent. Their placement is nice; having snipers on high ground and ground troops surrounding you. When you shoot at them, they will return fire, and sometimes run away. Sometimes, you will shoot at a group, and then run away so your Sten can reload. During this time, you would expect them to run around the corner and shoot holes into you, but they don't. This is to your advantage, but still not very realistic.

I NEED A BIG MAC

One thing I liked was how you can gain back health. Of course you can pick up your typical health packs, but since a lot of the time you will be in Nazi bases, there will be a lot of spare food for you to consume. I mean think about it; if you go into a Nazi base, there should be food everywhere! I mean no offense to German people, but there should be a few beers lying around in the corner with a big fat chicken. And in RTCW, there is. You can gain health by eating hot meals or cold meals; hot meals of course giving you more health. If you eat a whole meal, you can get 30 hit points back! I like this aspect a lot, because I have never seen any game do this before.

We <3 Multiplayer

Multiplayer is probably the best part. Team based objective gameplay my friends; at its best. Complete objectives on either the Allied or Axis team, and do it all in great maps using awesome weapons. One map in particular I liked was when the Allies had to use dynamite to breach the Axis base. Everything goes BOOM, and then you watch as the Allies flood into the base. Now breaching was one of the objectives we had to complete, but another was capturing German war documents. So as everybody runs around like crazy through the trenches, small groups huddle together and plan an attack. Eventually, hordes go in, and the documents are captured, and we win! Multiplayer is probably what really makes this game stick out. Even if you have Battlefield, this multiplayer is something you should really try.

Overall

In all, RTCW is a lot of fun. The single player campaign is great, and the multiplayer is even better. A few AI bugs, and not having the best graphics are the setbacks, but overall, this one is a keeper.