Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Most people seem to like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, but they qualify their praise with criticisms and reservations.

Well, I have almost no criticisms. This game is simply the bomb. For me, it's a near-perfect blend of horror, wartime action and - very occasionally - gritty realism. The graphics are lovely, and the game simply has a cool aesthetic. I've always found Wolfenstein games to be much more attractive and engaging than, say, Doom, which usually takes place entirely in a dark corridor.

This version of Wolfenstein has a nice variety of missions, too. You fight Nazis in castles and chateaus, undead in gloomy catacombs, and robotic supersoldiers in a top-secret lab. Some missions are reminiscent of the ultra-tough WWII game Hidden and Dangerous, which involved lots of sneaking around and careful gameplay, whereas other missions are all-out slugfests. For me, the game's fairly frequent shifts in tone, pacing and emphasis aren't a weakness, but a strong selling point.

I also love the far-out villains. The armored undead are creepy, and thankfully not nearly as revolting as zombies from other games. But I particularly love the leather-clad babes with machine guns - they're a little sexist, I'm sure, and somewhat tacky, but they're also entirely appropriate for a game like this.

Sure, Return to Castle Wolfenstein has some flaws. The cutscenes are boring, and the dialogue is a little corny. But hey, I didn't expect a good script from Wolfenstein. I expected fun (and carnage), and I got it. It's prime stuff, and very hard to stop playing.

It's still a class game I absolutely love it The best shooting game I played

While Return to Castle Wolfenstein may have some good level design, good weapons, good graphics, good sounds and very balanced gameplay, there is nothing in it that one would'nt have seen before in other games. They've tried to squeeze in a proper story for the game but at the end, the story becomes pretty useless and is entirely predictable. But as far as fun alone is concerned, it just falls slightly short of being a classic. There is unfortunately not much long term appeal and there would'nt be much of a multiplayer following for it either. Worth giving a try if can pick it up cheap. While it does have several shortcomings, it is still more fun to play than most games today.

Whoever created this game was a genius... It had a good story plot and had some cool graphics and some action and adventure and some great elements that has added onto this game...

Also... The enemies are hard but it was still fun after all... And some power guns that you can also use them to shoot...

This game is like a Shoot, Think and Run genre... 1st level was so hard that everyone would took time to play it but it was still fun though....

So save your money for the other wolfenstein[Enemy territory is fun]or this if you want to....

10/10

All these years later, Return to Castle Wolfenstein offers a very fun single-player experience.

The level design is generally intuitive, and grows stronger as the game progresses. The areas you occupy in-game are made more immersive through immaculate attention to detail and period-appropriate decoration.

Certain aspects of the game's visual presentation have aged particularly well, for instance characters' faces and the weapons.

There's good feedback in firefights - you'll usually be able to tell whether you've hit your enemy. However, hitboxes aren't very accurate. Spend enough time using a sniper and you'll realise that many of the shots you clearly miss in fact hit the intended target. It's better to wrongly register misses than not recognise hits, I suppose!

The stealth can be frustrating. It's almost as if AI detection works using RNG instead of a coherent pattern. Sometimes you'll be spotted half a mile away through a dark mist; sometimes the soldier you're sneaking up on will have no peripheral vision whatsoever.

It took me a while to adjust to the absence of an aim-down-sight ability for most weapons in the game, but as your arsenal expands you'll find something that works for your play-style.

A slightly frustrating component of the game is its tendency to use a start-of-level save instead of your latest quicksave for its automatic reload.

There are probably fixes for all of the issues I've raised in this review, but nothing in Return to Castle Wolfenstein agitated me to the point of caring to seek out mods or patches. Take the game as you find it and you'll still be having fun most of the time.