Return to Castle Wolfenstein
In my house, there is this room.
My room.
Over the summer I try to avoid this room as much as possible. The sun shines directly through the blinds heating the room to obscene levels and with no ventilation you wind up sacrificing privacy for breathable air.
I have spent a lot of time in this room so far this summer, and a lot of that time is because of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The rest of that time is because of porn.
For those who aren't familiar with ID's lesser known, but no less ground-breaking title. It takes place during World War II placing you, B.J. Blac(I ain't spelling this shit correctly)owicz on a desperate mission to uncover the secrets of Castle Wolfenstien. Which happen to be zombies and undead things. Yes the plot does border on ridiculous but some how, some way it is enough to hold your attention throughout.
Originally I had downloaded the demo from Gamespot's confusing yet sassy download/spyware service and given it a shot on the old PC. The demo consisted of the prisoner castle level, and to say the least, I wasn't terribly impressed.
So when I had the opportunity to play it on my Xbox after a chance encounter with a friend scored me a pack of cigarettes and free rental on a friday night from Hollywood Video, my postion on the matter bordered somewhere between less-than thrilled and unhealthy indifference. My opinion on the game itself didn't improve the first time I played it again either.
But Return's single player mode is that special kind of game experience that simply gets better the more times you play it, but will never be fully appreciated unless you bother to tough it out with a friend. Y'see the single player mode by itself walks a very fine line between hectic, pulse-pounding battles, and repetitive garbage. The inconsistency of the game itself and its (for lack of a better word) shitty A.I. seems to magically disappear when you tough it out with a friend. Whether its getting to the radio to Transmit documents, or getting to a radio to find out your next mission (transmitting documents), a buddy can only make that much fun even more fun.
I kid you though, because playing through the game with a friend is truly a blast.
But after you've played your way through and sent your buddy packing, something truly spectacular happens. Well, if you spent $49.99 on an Xbox live kit.
Online Multiplayer.
The meat of this particular feature is, shall we say, from the thickest part of the bull. Customizable game types galore, astoundingly fun maps, and a refreshingly creative scoring system that doesn't just score you on how many peeps you kill, but how well you fill your role.
Now considering Joe Gamer's newfound obsession with global rankings and all in one online gaming identities, this is a very cool approach to the issue of balancing the game out to make it as enjoyable to the newbie as it is to the seasoned vet. More than that though it is nice to find a better way to score someone than how many people he can possibly kill with a sniper rifle while perched 2.7 miles away from the actual battle.
You get to choose from four classes, Medic, Lieutenant, Soldier, and Engineer:
-As a medic, you get to revive wounded (not blown to bits, but wounded) soldiers before they respawn and heal those low on health. You have next to zero ammo though, and no choice for a main weapon.-
-The Lieutenant is the class everyone is gonna flock too in the beginning because of the wonderfully useful ability to give out ammo to other's and themselves, and the wonderfully annoying and downright nasty ability to call in airstrikes on outdoor positions. You can't beat that with a stick.-
-The soldier has access to the most weapons, including a panzer rocket launcher, and a truly evil flame thrower which is just brutal in close encounters.-
-Finally the Engineer is the man with the plan, capable of planting dynamite and fixing turrents all around the battlefield. Most missions cannot be completed without proper use of this class, so make sure you team always has one.-
The multiplayer maps are all objective based, stopwatch round havens that reward teamwork and the ability to play your role instead of playing the sole hero. The play itself is far from lag free, but it has gotten substantially better from the games initial release.
Graphics are not that impressive. The designs actually aren't bad at all, but the animation leaves a bit to be desired. You get so used to creative death animations in first person shooters that when you blow up a dude and he just slowly keels over the same way every time, or randomly explodes into body parts, its kind of underwhelming. The backgrounds, textures, and art though, are all well-above average. The game does get bonus points for atmosphere.
The music and sound effects, however, are near-perfect. The score reminds me of a John Williams score for an Indiana Jones movie that never actually got made. Yes, it is that good. The sound effects, while nowhere near Medal of Honor standards, get the job done. Gunshots sound like Gunshots, and the sound of an impending airstrike is a sound not unlike Britpop that you will learn to fear.
All of these elements come together to form a completely average single-player game and a truly astounding multiplayer game. This is probably the best your gonna get on the Xbox till Halo 2 folks so take the dive, lose an arm, jump on a grenade, and strap yourself in for the mind-numbing multiplayer fun of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Campaign- C+
Multiplayer- A
