Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a first-person shooter video game published by Activision, released on November 19, 2001 for Microsoft Windows and subsequently for PlayStation 2, Xbox, Linux and Macintosh. The game serves as both a remake and a reboot to the Wolfenstein series. Return To Castle Wolfenstein - Xbox Game. Includes Microsoft Xbox original game disc in case and may come with the original instruction manual and cover art.
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Released back in December 2001 on the PC, the PS2 version of Return To Castle Wolfenstein has been a long time coming, but instantly distinguishes itself as the weakest of the three versions currently available, missing all the components that made it worth owning in the first place.
Set in various parts of the world during 1943, Gray Matter has attempted to revive the ancient Wolfenstein franchise with a fantastical tale of an occult obsessed group of Nazis, led by Himmler, who are attempting to create the ultimate killing machine by resurrecting a 1,000-year old dead warrior. Sounds laughable, but in the context of the game it makes a change from the usual vain attempts at authenticity, and gives the developer room to experiment with some superb concept weapons and hideous hellbound creatures. Doom meets Medal Of Honor? Not a million miles away.
Memory lane, where good ideas hadn't been invented yet
However, the single player campaign was roundly criticised on its initial PC release and again recently on its Xbox release, and the same criticisms apply to this version. In a nutshell, it's like playing an old pre-Half-Life era shooter, with none of the innovations that countless titles have featured since. That's not to say it's a bad experience, because it's patently isn't, but it's just been usurped in far too many respects to recommend to any great extent.
But despite this rather vanilla single player experience, the superb multiplayer mode made it a firm favourite with online gamers, and it is now arguably the finest game on the Xbox Live service. Even offline, the Xbox version offers split screen or system link options, so it's a major selling point for the game.
With this in mind, it's almost unforgivable that the multiplayer component has been stripped mercilessly from the PS2 version, the developer citing frame rate issues and other half-arsed excuses which go further to suggest that they couldn't be bothered than anything. The fact that the EA-developed PS2 conversion of Quake III two years ago managed four-player split screen is a moot point, especially when you consider that Wolfenstein is based on the Quake III engine. Yes, that's right; you don't even get two-player split screen. How very kind of them.
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Technical woes of the worst kind
And that's not all, PS2 sufferers. The lack of a 60Hz mode wouldn't necessarily be a big problem, but in this case we're presented with arguably the worst borders we've seen since Devil May Cry, which in this day and age is equally unforgivable. In addition, the lack of widescreen mode is embarrassingly noticeable during the cut scenes, which make the cast look like they've been eating too many fish suppers.
Aside from these visual faux pas, the game has been converted relatively faithfully, complete with the usual PS2 related jaggies, loading times and corresponding lack of texturing. Playing the game itself is much the same as the Xbox version, with the controls following the standard configuration, albeit without the simple ability to invert the viewpoint (infuriatingly you have to entirely reconfigure the controls manually to achieve this). At least the framerate holds up for the most part.
Despite this bizarre complexity in the controls department though, Raster clearly thinks that PS2 owners need leading by the hand, and has included a Medal Of Honor style hints system that gives you the choice of pressing select if you're too clueless to work out what to do. In such a linear game it's hardly necessary, but there you go.
To add the final nail to the coffin, the audio - such a strong feature of the Xbox version in all its 5.1 glory - has suffered a vile downgrade in quality, with a distinctly lower sample rate than usual.
Never Return
Even if you can forgive the technical cock-ups and lack of multiplayer action, all you're left with is a fairly uninspired single player campaign that'll take you all of 12 hours to finish. If you've got the choice, go for the infinitely superior Xbox version, or better still, get the PC version - it'll be cheap as chips by now.
5 /10
With no one exactly being all that pleased about Sony and Microsoft’s announcements that neither of their consoles would be backwards compatible, and with Wolfenstein: The New Order being announced not too long ago, I figured now was a better time than ever to dust off the old Xbox and give Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Tides Of War another go. After nearly a decade of advancement in the realm of first-person shooters, from structure to controls, how does the game hold up? Quite well, actually.
Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Tides Of War tells the story of American special operative William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, who is sent to investigate rumors surrounding occult rituals and strange science performed by Nazi Heinrich Himmler’s SS Paranormal Division. As the game goes on, B.J. makes stranger and stranger paranormal and scientific discoveries, while shooting quite a few Nazis, scientific experiments, and undead ghouls along the way.
The story really isn’t much to chat about, something that isn’t exactly out of place, but developer Gray Matter did use the loose framework that is the narrative to create an atmosphere I still to this day have never experienced in a World War II shooter. Mixing good old fashioned war fiction and espionage with a dash of horror, the RTCW will have your heart pounding because of a gun fight one minute, then because of an encounter with an out-of-this-world creature the next. I was actually spooked on multiple occasions.
Another unique element of the game is its relatively open-ended gameplay. With the levels being designed in a quasi-open-ended fashion, there is almost always a way to sneak your way through missions without being caught, though you still pretty much have to shoot anyone standing in your way. However, with many shooters forcing us down narrow corridors nowadays, this approach was refreshing, and made me feel like I was really carrying out these missions as I saw fit, though there were times that you were, by default, thrust into high intensity gun battles.
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Tides Of War takes full advantage of these wide-open levels not only to allow for stealth or a full-frontal assault, but to make them more than just shooting galleries. Each level has hidden caches of weapons or treasure stashed away, and the treasure can be turned in at the end of each level for a special bonus such as full armor going into the next mission or full ammo. I always found myself checking to make sure I got all the secrets, which the game conveniently made you aware of before the end of each level.
Not only are the environments in the game fun to explore, they are also, astonishingly, pretty easy on the eyes, too. Since the game is unchained from the obligations that history can put on games, this gave the developers the freedom to create a wholly-unique art style for RTCW that mixes science fiction, horror, and World War II history all into one. You fight through defiled churches, labs crawling with strange creatures crafted at the hands of mad scientists, haunted Egyptian tombs, and, of course, the titular castle, Castle Wolfenstein, in search of its many secrets. This game is a great example of how art style can lend a game timelessness where graphical fidelity cannot.
The game controlled pretty well on the Xbox Controller S, and it was not often that I was controlling the game and was made privy to the fact that this game is 10+ years old. This was definitely helped by the fact that the controls were fully customizable, so every player can find something that works for them.
I couldn’t test out the online multiplayer because, obviously, the original Xbox Live has been shut down. There is always a LAN option, however, and the split-screen co-op makes the campaign even more fun to play through. The only snag in the co-op is that it does not save your progress, so unless you have already beaten the game in single player mode and unlocked all of the levels, prepare to restart the game if you shut the game off after a few hours of blasting Nazi creatures with a pal.
As for adjustments that modern gamers looking to check this game out will have to make, there aren’t too many, but they are worth mentioning. Those that have grown accustomed to looking down iron sites in Call Of Duty will have to live without them, as it is all done via reticule, unless the weapon has a scope. Then, there is no recharging health, but health packs and armor pickups throughout the levels, meaning that you will have to be extra careful when engaging an enemy. Finally, if you are looking for Hollywood-style set pieces with entire cities crumbling to the ground and explosions rocking every set piece, you will have to look elsewhere. Tides Of War succeeds because of the mysterious atmosphere lent to it by the setting and the story’s occult concepts.
There were a few things worth mentioning that did indicate the game was old, despite all the highlights. For one, the game took a massive difficulty leap at the end of the game, and enemy types that weren’t so challenging before were all of the sudden dead-eye marksmen with MP-40s from 100+ yards. Then, there was the weapon selection. The game lets you carry every weapon at once, but with no weapon wheel to easily navigate them, quickly selecting the weapon you needed for a given situation was a mess, and I died multiple times just trying to get to the weapon that I needed to select.
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For those looking for something that most games this generation just plain don’t offer, look no further than Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Tides Of War. The game holds up exceedingly well, and the single player campaign harkens back to the day where it was a priority, not an afterthought tacked on with multiplayer.
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