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Buy This Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

While playing through the game I kept saying "Wow I got to remenber this level and go back to it". But then I would say the same thing while playing the next level. The AI is excellent so watch out for those dang enemy soldiers, they will try to flank you.

Castle Wolfenstein has a very good single player game with a multiplayer component that is heads and shoulders above most. Unlike some recent FPS releases this one is plenty long enough. A guy gets his money worth! Great Christmas gift for your 16 year old or even a gray-hair like me.

Take Gaming to the Next Level!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: January 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is an all out World War II game that has high-quality gameplay and graphics. ID software created this game so no wonder it's a hit. Return to Castle Wolfenstein has great single and multiplayer games! So after you play single player try out the multi player for an even more intense battle. Single player is very fun, but kind of short. You shoot down enemy soldiers and dark beasts such as zombies. It has a fantastic storyline, great variety of weapons, extremely talented voice acting, and of course, sweet 3-D graphics that'll keep you on the edge of your seat begging for more! Multiplayer is very different from single player. You are either on the Axis or Allied team. You must get past the enemy to complete your objective in order to win a round in multi player. You can choose from four different soldier classes. They are Soldier, Medic, Luitenant, and Engineer. Soldier class is your main firepower class with heavy-duty weapons. If you choose Medic you get a choice of limited weapons to choose from and you have to run around on the battlefield risking your very own life to save your teamates who have been severely injured. Luitenant has a nice limited of weapons. His job is to call air strikes and ground assaults infantry. Engineer class has two jobs. He goes running around blowing stuff up that blocks your team's way. His other job is to repair mounted guns, so the engineer is a very important person to have on your team. On multi player you can see bullets flying everywhere, and when you are on the beach of normady blowing away your enemy, it actaully feels like you're in a real battle. This is such a high-performanced knock out game, so why not take your gaming to the next level?

Addiction at it's best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I don't know what the guy with the 1 star is smoking, but this game is just awesome. When you have all the eye candy turned on, it's a visual treat. Details are amazing, from the air strikes, and the constant shaking of the ground because of them. (the flame thrower....fire is so real and beautiful). sort of like being thrown back in time.

If you like team based shooters, this is it. running around bunkers, defending, or storming enemy strong holds and it's all classic stuff (weapon wise of course). another thing, the objectives for each team are pretty clear and i think it helps the team based. i haven't played one game yet where it doesn't require team work to win. sure it's not quake 3 but hey it's using a more refined engine and who here has not heard of WWII.

try out the test release - demo. it will give you a feel for it, but when the final release is out....some of those maps are going to rock.

See For Yourself!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: April 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have a link so you can download a video clip from last year's E3 show, showing footage of the game's 45% completion. From what I saw, the game looks VERY interesting. Instead of just "shoot-to-kill" action, it seems that this DM type game has some strategy elements in it. when was the last time you got to shoot out a bridge full of machinegunners using a stationary machine gun held down on sandbags? Also, notice most games open doors without seeing a hand open them? In the video, the game's hero, B.J., kicks a door open. Check it out! http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?search=Wolfenstein&scope=645§ion=645&file=56432

Could've been a contender...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: November 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

First, let me say the graphics are fantastic. However, most everything else about the game falls short for me. It mostly has a 'been there, done that' feel to it. For example, there is a scene where you ride a gondola down a mountain. No One Lives Forever had that, and it was far better. In Wolf, you pretty much just ride it, where as in NOLF you had helicopters attacking you. In Wolf, you spend most of your time battling demons and zombies, not Nazis. This was a bummer for me and remided me of some of the levels in Thief where you had to fight zombies. This was fun for a bit, but it gets very tiresome and I longed to unload on some Nazi troops. The levels are very linear and rather booring. The biggest challange is that the zombies require a LOT of bullets to take down, and you'll find yourself in some tough situations where you have almost no amunition and no health. This means you'll replay something over and over to find a suitable solution, which can be fun but borders on repetitious. The plot is thin, and basically just gives reasons for all of the undead you're fighting. There are a number of weapons, but for most of them ammo is in very short supply so you'll only be able to use a small set of weapons most of the time. I've played many FPS games from beginning to end (such as Half Life, No One Lives Forever (my favorite), and Deus Ex). I love the genre, and I had very high hopes for this one. I'm very dissappointed with this product.

Incredible

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: September 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have spent many hours playing the Multiplayer Beta of this game and I have only had it for a few days. It is incredible! It uses the Quake 3 graphics engine, so the game has beautiful environments. Return to Castle is very fun, and I am going to buy the full release. Single player is supposed to be incredible. It is supposed to have better graphics (especially for you NVIDIA owners), its going to be richly detailed with a great storyline, and will be a very long game. I promiss you that you will be playing this game for months at the least...

BUY RETURN TO CASTLE.. ITS GOING TO BE A GREAT GAME!

GOING TO BE BEST GAME OF 2001/2002

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 22, 2001
Author: Amazon User

What can I say. I've been paying the demo now for a couple of months. Today (11-21) that game finally hit the store near me. I rushed and paid the otrageous price but it was all worth it. The game doesnt seam to have any flaws yet which I can see. Installing it went fine, and the game runs great on my 1ghz, 512 ram, 64 Nvidia2...AWESOME GAME!! go and pick it up today

Review of SINGLE PLAYER game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm a die-hard single player only type gamer, so this review is based on just that aspect. I've never tried the multiplayer. To briefly explain, I bought my first PC so I wouldn't have to socialize with other people. I've tried some multiplayer games, and even had fun doing so, but nowhere near the fun I've had playing a good self-contained single player game. Hey, if you love multiplayer, more power to you. It's just not my cup of tea. That said, on with the review.

No doubt, this is a fine looking game. My system is a Win 98 home-built Athlon 1.2 ghz with a geForce 2 32 meg video card and 256 megs of system ram. It ran fine for the most part, but I did experience fairly frequent lock-ups, possibly because I hadn't yet updated my video card drivers. The first several levels almost put me to sleep, having seen environments just like them in No One Lives Forever. However, I hung with it and was rewarded quickly with some much more interesting level design. Gameplay was immersive, with enemy machine gun fire ripping up the floorboards in front of me on several occasions. Enemy AI was decent, but nothing really new or spectacular. I was disappointed with the relentless linearity of the game. Most doors are locked and can't be opened, so you are led along a path that the designers obviously want you to follow. I much prefer a more open-ended design. I love to explore, and this game didn't allow for much of that. Even the original Wolfenstein 3D allowed you to explore everywhere. But this is my own personal preference. Some may enjoy the linearity of RTCW. Also, I'm a little tired of enemy 'bosses', though this feature helps the game remain truer to the original. Also, this game seemed a bit on the short side. By the time I was battling the final boss, I figured I was about halfway through the game. I'm just estimating here based on my gut, but it seemed about half as long as Half Life or No One Lives Forever. The game is fun, no doubt, or I wouldn't have given it 4 stars. It just didn't blow me away like I figured it would. Possibly my expectations were too high.

Guilt-free genocide

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I suppose if there are two groups whom it's acceptable and almost encouraged to slaughter, it would be Nazis and zombies. It's the only time a defendant could be on the witness stand and confess to his own benefit "Your Honor, they were really asking for it." Which is what makes Return to Wolfenstein so much fun. It's a historically accurate gothic WWII supernatural FPS. One of those rare combinations you throw in a blender and it comes out all yummy.

I'll briefly echo all the other compliments here: nearly photo-realistic graphics; pinpoint control, targeting, and collision detection; silky smooth operation in XP. Voice acting is believable. Weapon and explosion sounds are appropriately metallic and jarring. And the undead are scary as hell. I've played many of the good survival horror franchises, and none except Silent Hill 1 freaked me out like the zombies in Wolfenstein. It was a rare stroke of genius to introduce the Nazi grunts as sympathic victims of the undead hordes, showing scenes of your enemy's enemies devouring them alive. This creates a real hesitation and apprehension about the player's role that exacerbates the fear. In other words: me scared, good job.

So, if it rocks so hard, why not five stars? Well, this little revelation hit me about halfway through the game: instead of being the best Castle Wolfenstein it could be, id decided to make a very good cross between Medal of Honor and Wolfenstein. Which is a very good thing, but remember what set the first Wolfensteins apart from the rest were the exploration and "secret area" goodies. RtW would have been great if every level had been more like Paderborn (the best stage of RtW): more dungeon crawling, deeper and more inventive secret areas. I'm imagining innovative and useable secret goodies that enhanced gameplay, hidden by new concepts of concealing secret doors. You know, play to your strengths rather than copy someone else.

As it is, Return to Wolfenstein is a fun, pretty, and often scary offbeat shooter that's just a hair below the best of the more traditional WWII FPS.

Return to Classic Wolfenstein

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It doesn't take long for humans to become nostalgic about the good times in their lives. Likewise, it doesn't take long for a PC game to be considered a classic. Id Software and Apogee's *Wolfenstein 3D* became one of the most revered PC games in the last decade.

For the two or three readers who don't know, *Wolf* launched the first-person shooter game from a gimmick to a genre back in 1992. It offered what every person on Earth wanted to do: run around a maze with a Gatling gun and mow down hordes of Nazis. Nine years later, Gray Matter took this title off the mantle and carried it into the 21st Century. With id Software's blessing, *Return to Castle Wolfenstein* is a sports car of a game, and a complete remake of a classic.

Obviously, then, *RtCW* was hyped. For example, the December 2000 issue of Computer Gaming World offered an "Exclusive first-look at the hottest shooter since Half-Life". It continued with "two years and counting after Half-Life, and the single-player shooter bar is about to get raised again". The overall impression was that of a story-driven WWII adventure.

Within the Walls

But *RTCW* isn't what it's cracked up to be. Computer Gaming World scooped a considerably more epic and intricate game than what actually shipped. CGW described, in step by step detail, a *Medal of Honor* style amphibious assault as the opening of the game. The player character was reported as taking an epic journey across Europe. CGW reported that friendly A.I. would fight alongside the player character, that bosses and enemies were vulnerable only at certain times with certain weapons, and that enemies would not spawn and would fight most intelligently, such as recognizing that your gun is bigger than their gun. Since CGW strongly implied these points to be expected in the final release, I foolishly lowered my guard and accepted the hype.

This was, after all, before anybody knew that id software would delay *RtCW's* release by a full year and have it redesigned. None of the attributes I cited above appeared in the released version of *Wolf*. Instead, *Medal of Honor: Allied Assault* would adopt the epic WWII mantle, while RtCW turned out to be another weekend shooter.

This should be no surprise, considering id software has always been about speed and violence. But I have to admit I'm getting tired of the current deluge of ten-hour titles, and id software's formula offers no respite. RtCW's story is pretty incidental for all of its cinematic air, as little more than shooting and explosions occur during play. Between levels, an orders update shuttles the player from one killing ground to the next. Most of the levels are your standard maze full o' monsters, only much simpler and easier than those found in previous id titles such as *Quake* and *Doom*. All enemies are vulnerable to guns and rocket launchers, and with no hit location, most levels are solved with your standard circle-strafe-and-a-machine-gun trick. Rarely will the player need more than a suppressed Sten gun and a Mauser K98, and rarely will the player need to do more than kill people and find the exit. Expository cut scenes stitch it all together.

Don't mistake me-all of this stuff is fun. I just don't like it when a game hyped as a *Half-Life* competitor turns out to be another run-and-gunner beat in two days. I especially don't like it when said game is an A-list title from A-list developers.

Return to Quake III

But let's give credit where credit is due. *Wolf* certainly competes with big-time shooters on the media front: this game looks and sounds great. The Quake III engine gets a work out with photo-realistic textures and lighting, while the snarls of zombies and undead warriors echo down stone corridors and into the marrow of the player's bones. And while circle-strafing is often the solution to beating enemies, their A.I is smart enough to take cover while reloading and to strafe-fire back at the player. I have to admit, from the flamethrower to the smoke to the late afternoon shadows, I find RtCW's effects gorgeous. Best of all, it runs smoothly even on my antiquated AMD 900 processor.

Finally, RtCW has a few nice features to liven up the play:

1.Ladders have cages to reduce those annoying "ladder deaths".
2.Helpful icons pop up to tell the player what to do, so he or she isn't banging away at every wall looking for secrets.
3.Venom soldiers are invulnerable to the weapons they carry, so don't get into a flamethrower fight with one.
4.The leaping Lopers charge no matter what players throw at them, though a Venom gun or a rocket launcher will make short work if the player is quick on the draw.
5.Humorous messages and orders litter the Wehrmacht bases and labs.
6.And, of course, plenty of Hitler portraits hang about for the players to vandalize.

In for the Kill

But make no mistake, this is an id software game; big on style and short on substance. If players want to kill a weekend chasing Nazis in a maze with a Gatling gun, *RtCW* is a good-looking, scary-sounding, smooth-running choice. If players want a little more meat on their first-person Nazi shooters, they need to boot up the *Medal of Honor* series.

Nope, in all the hype I was hoping for a game much more involved than it turned out, particularly since id and Gray Matter were remaking the granddaddy of first-person shooters. Still, Return to Castle Wolfenstein satisfies on other levels, and it will probably be as fondly remembered as its progenitor. It's no *Half-Life* killer, but it can kill some time while waiting for *Half-Life 2*.

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