7/8/2003 10:16:56 PM
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War Xbox ReviewBy Mark Diller
What would the entertainment industry do without Nazis? If Hitler had not founded the National Socialist Party Hollywood might have been forced to invent it, because generations of heroes have won their stripes by gunning down legions of Brownshirts and Storm Troopers. Likewise the game industry has repeatedly drawn on the same source, and the Wolfenstein franchise has been a notable example. The latest episode, Activision's update of the id's award-winning PC title "Return to Castle Wolfenstein: The Tides of War," brings modern gaming technology to the table, but the familiar elements remain the same: Nazis, horrors released from beyond the grave, and plenty of bullets whizzing overhead.
The story behind "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" isn't going to win any awards for originality. You play as a WWII American operative charged with infiltrating a Nazi outpost deep in the Egyptian desert, where rumors claim that the Nazis are attempting to bring an ancient evil back to life. (The earlier PC version started out with you imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein; this first scenario is an add-on for the console version.) To get to your objective you'll have to kill dozens and dozens of Nazis and Nazi sympthasizers who mysteriously speak English, but you can spot them by their cheesy German accents. Once you've made it down into the ancient tombs you'll have to fight your way back out again through wave after wave of zombies as well -- and that's just in the first mission! It's kill or be killed, as is only right and proper in a shooter, so it's a good thing you're the most heavily armed soldier this side of Arnold in "Commando."
In campaign mode the gameplay is entirely linear: you need to get to a certain lever that opens a certain door that allows you to collect certain objects along the way to your objective, and meanwhile you're shooting, knifing, or blowing up anything that moves. Some very useful objects are hidden behind features of the terrain that can be removed, broken, or destroyed, so it always pays to take a look around a new room to see if there's a big red button for you to push, or a panel hidden behind a work of art. Luckily Nazis apparently made a regular practice of leaving ammunition, health packs, and food and wine lying around, so as you proceed you'll be shoving stuff into your pockets as fast as you can.
The controls should be familiar to anyone who's played a FPS on the Xbox. You move with the left thumbstick and control the camera with the right thumbstick. The buttons are reserved mostly for your items and weapons: reload with the X button (and you should make a point of doing this often), change weapons with the A button, and equip items such as the binoculars with the Y button. Clicking the left thumbstick will cause your character to crouch, which can be useful if you're trying to sneak up on someone. Clicking the right thumbstick activates an environmental object, such as to use a radio or pick up an object.
Graphically the game is quite solid -- there is a bit of a clipping problem, most evident with dead bodies that fall through walls or hang suspended in mid-air, but otherwise the environment is carefully modeled and the colors and details of terrain really help to evoke the world you're navigating. "Wolfenstein's" graphical highlight are the dramatic cutscenes, which are truly first-rate and in some details approach photo-realism. The sound, meanwhile, is also of high quality, from the campy voice work to the soundtrack, which is the sort of military-style classical score that John Phillip Sousa might have composed if he was really, really angry.
AI is also a strong point. Enemies will dodge out of the way when you fire at them and will use terrain as a shield. When you're confronted with multiple enemies, all dodging and weaving and attacking furiously, you can find yourself in a firefight that's quite a bit hotter than you wanted it to be. There are a few weak spots -- the occasional enemy will fire directly into a wall, or packs of bad-guys will sometimes rush one by one to their doom while you stand around a corner, shooting them like ducks in a barrel -- but on the whole the AI is definitely up to the task of making this a fun and challenging game.
Last but certainly not least is the Xbox Live component. Seasoned shooter fans will probably tire of the single-player experience fairly quickly, but the multiplayer arena makes up for that and more. Up to 16 players can take part in arena combat using four different character classes (soldier, lieutenant, engineer, and medic), and the game does a very nice job of tracking in-game statistics and breaking down scores into weekly, monthly, and overall categories. Every multiplayer mode is based on team play, from team deathmatch to various permutations of the assault and capture the flag game types.
All in all "Wolfenstein" is a solid shooter, not particularly ground-breaking but still a good, enjoyable example of the genre. If you want strategy or stealth there are other games you should play, but if you just want to blaze away until nothing is left standing, "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" might be for you.
Ratings (1-10):
Graphics: 8. A strong effort lessened only slightly by distracting errors.
Sound: 8. Let's assume that they wanted the German accents to sound that bad.
Gameplay: 8. The action is unrelenting.
Story: 7. Those pesky Nazis!
Replayability: 8. Multiplayer can keep you busy for quite some time.
Overall: 8. A winner for shooter fans.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War Xbox Review
