The story follows a similar path to the original Wolfenstein. The Nazi’s have taken on to the idea of manipulating science and the occult in a desperate bid to end the war in their favour. You start in castle Wolfenstein, the focus of these experiments, as a special agent of the US army that was captured by the Germans. You have to escape from the castle and then are sent on missions to find out what the Nazi’s are up too, which gradually ends up with you returning back to castle Wolfenstein to stop it.
Now, this type of story has been done many times before with bad guys making ‘super bad guys’ from experiments which go wrong etc. But I did actually enjoy the story. Ok, so it isn’t great but it equally it doesn’t get on your nerves. It never tries to throw it in your face and say “Please give me a chance, even though I know it’s pathetic”. It’s simple, to the point, and doesn’t get in the way of your blasting fun. Everything an action film lover enjoys!
It must be noted though that the cut scenes to tell the story use the games graphic engine, and are nice to look at and very impressive if you do wish to view them.
Missions consist of your usual FPS style affairs. Start here, kill this, and go to there. Now while other lesser games you would instantly say as “boring” and “unimaginative” you don’t have time to think that! Missions have the clever disguise of throwing in action everywhere, nice visuals to gawk at and adding elements to the mission that cover up the simple nature and structure underneath. But it works very well as missions are great fun and make you feel like you are in a war zone fighting for your very own life.
A.I
However any game can throw hordes of opponents at you to pass off as ‘action packed’, what makes Wolfenstein different? Well it tells you on the box; “Ferocious A.I.”. This isn’t your usual false claim we come to expect from game companies, as this time you do have a serious fight on your hands!
I am actually really surprised by the amount of reviews I have read on this game already, and how many of them say the AI is really poor. What?? I don’t know how they define what “good A.I.” is, but I can tell them now it isn’t always how accurate the enemy are at shooting you, nor is it how much they outsmart us mere humans. That’s just how difficult the games A.I. is! In my mind it also is about how an opponent acts and behaves when fighting, to make for more interesting and realistic play, rather than just blindly charging you as though they don’t have a life to lose in the process!
The A.I. is actually very quite noteworthy, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but a move forward from other games these reviewers believe have “exceptional intelligence” like ‘Half Life’. Come on, please! This is perhaps the best attempt I have seen in a long while. Nazi Soldiers actually DO duck, crouch low, and can use cover properly for a change (rather than falsely claim it like other lesser games)! They even back off, regroup, hide, laying suppressive fire, checkout the area when fallen comrades are found rather than walking around oblivious, and even stopping to reload and recover etc. It’s fairly good and does set the pace and sense of war tactics of the era we are dealing with.
Of course there are problems (which is what these sceptic reviewers dwell on), such as the usual ‘soldiers sometimes getting stuck behind doors’ trick etc. But no game has ironed out these problems to date! One problem I personally don’t like about the A.I sometimes is that occasionally soldiers can sense your presence and pick you off so accurately, it’s just a little unbelievable to be honest! Their accuracy is quite frustrating, but if it helps make it harder I suppose it isn’t such a bad thing. But overall my opinion is that this is the first FPS game in a long while to actually get A.I. correct, and is a shining light to all developers in the future.
Difficulty
BUT despite the constant obstacles thrown in your path, the game you get in the box is still very much on the short side. Again I tried, like ‘Max Payne’, to pace myself and not glide through it quickly. I also put the game on the highest difficulty setting from the very start to deter my advancement from being that swift, but have still completed it rather quickly. Some parts genuinely are really hard, and I did get stuck at certain bits/levels at times. But on the whole, playing it on normal mode will not be too much of a challenge for some. It’s harder than say ‘Max Payne’, but it will still leave hardened gamers begging for more. This doesn’t make it a bad game, as many other titles of recent years have all shared this common problem. But what you do get is totally enjoyable. Plus once you finish you are always left with Multiplayer…
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is also a great gem in Wolfenstein. How many times have PC gamers had to cope with getting a game that was poor in single yet excels in multiplayer, or vice-versa? Not in RtCW you don’t. Multiplayer, although devoid of a Death match mode for all those who prefer all-against-all games, is fun and very stable. Missions are capture the flag or objective based and are all very well put together and enjoyable to compete in. It must be said that it’s disappointing no other teams were included (Only Allies and Axis to choose), but perhaps it would have been to overly complicated? Also the variety of missions that come with the game for the chosen teams is a little unfair, with most Axis missions being about defence rather than offence.
However one problem with Multiplayer arises more from the gaming community itself than the actual game. Multiplayer is based on the ‘CounterStike’ idea of team classes, such as medics, engineers etc. So therefore every team class contributes something to successfully completing a mission. This means missions require one key element to successfully operate; teamwork. So how fun a game experience can be is largely restricted to the people you are with and against. There is nothing more annoying when one team is working in perfect harmony and winning constantly, when your team is not helping each other.
