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By Dan Blomberg on December 22nd, 2001
Introduction The year is 1943, and the Nazi War machine threatens to not crush Europe, but the rest of the world as well. Unknown to the general public, the fate of the free world often lies in the hands of a select few heroes, members of the Office of Secret Action. You are one of these legendary protectors of freedom, B.J. Blazkowicz. Highly trained in reconnaisance, infiltration, combat, and military tactics, it is your job to uncover the reason behind the Nazi’s activity around Castle Wolfenstein. The leader of the Nazi Paranormal Division, a General by the name of Himmler, has increased his activity in this area, and reports have come in that his group is experimenting in occult magic and horrific scientific experiments involving cybernetics and genetic manipulation. Presentation This game has one of the nicest HUDs (head’s up display) I have seen recently. It goes back to the simple here is all you need to know aspect of gaming. All the information is displayed nicely without interupting your view of anything. The menus are nicely done, simple, and that is nice. The game also uses a lot of quick keys, quick save, quick load. This makes it really fast when you die, or think you did something wrong. The game uses the old aspects of gaming mixed with new technology to make a very good user-friendly system.Graphics & Sound Well, the game uses a higly modified Quake 3 engine. It gives the game really good graphics. No weather effects though. The levels look very realistic, everything from the bombed out remains of a city to the Castle Wolfenstein. The only level that seems to not look realistic is the nature level. The gound it really plain, but no game has ever achieved good looking nature levels.The sounds are well done. Stereo speakers allow you to hear where people are, and who is talking. The gun sounds sound pretty realistic, even though some seem muffled. Walking on different materials has a different sound, as well as bullets hitting different things. One flaw, the german’s screaming it German is gone, now they scream in a german-accented english. Definitely a game with well done sounds, it adds so much to the enviroment.
Gameplay Well, you start out as B.J. Blazkowicz, who just happened to get captured. He gets put into Castle Wolfenstein with his buddy, who happens to be tourted to death. His mission is to escape from the prison, with nothing but a knife, and a lugar (pistol). One catch, making noise brings a lot of guards with big guns to you. So silence is neccesary. There are many guns that you get to use as the game goes along. Everything from silenced pistols to sniper rifles. Flame throwers to tesla guns.Anyway, the main objective is to find out what the Germans are up to with their secret project. They discovered an ancient invincible beast, that they want to use to their advantage. You get to fight not only Germans as you go along, but super-natural beasts too. The Germans are easy compared to the monsters, talk about riddling something full of bullets to find out its still alive... The multiplayer of the game is to say the least astounding. If you don’t like single player, buy the game just for the multiplayer. With three modes, capture the flags, assault, and defend. Each time you spawn you can choose between three different classes of people. The engineer who carries the dynamite neccesary for most missions. The soldier, who is just a guy with guns. The medic, who saves people, a very neccesary companion. The lieutenant , who can call in artillery and air stikes as well as have a gun. There can only one lieutenant per team. All of these type of people are needed for a team to be very succesful. The type of missions also enhance the need for a team to work together. Overall, gameplay is very very good, in multiplayer and in single player. Lasting Appeal There are seven single player missions, and each mission has several different levels in it. I have been playing for 3.5 hours on single player missions and I am on level 4, part 2. So the game isn’t exactly easy, because I am on the easiest level. Once you beat the game, just turn up the difficulty, more stuff, more guys, just a bigger pain in the butt.There are also multiplayer levels that are a blast. Ever wanted to be in the invasion of Normandy, have at, find out how much it sucks to be the Allies, and how good the Axis had it. Try to sink U-Boats, invade laboratories. Overall the multiplayer aspect of this game is what brings a lot of people to it, just keep playing it, over and over. Conclusion Well, this is defenitely one of the greatest games that came out in 2001. The sequel to the original 3D shooter Wolfenstein, this game is up to the par of what gamers should expect. My suggestion: get it now. |
