Return to Castle Wolfenstein Preview

What is your first association when you hear: "Wolfenstein"? I can tell you it takes me back to the good old days when I used to play good old games... All up till a game that was slightly different appeared. One that had a hand... MY HAND... at the bottom of the screen - holding a gun! WTF?

I'm in a German prison, I'm trying to escape, and soldiers and dogs are attacking me... I fight, I shoot... I cannot say I was too thrilled because the graphics never impressed me too much (because I was obviously too stupid to realize that I was sitting in front of a mere 286), still after I completed the first level I said to myself: "Lets go for another one..."; you can imagine the rest... The bad ass William J "B.J." Blazkowicz became one of my favourite characters. That's when I first heard of iD Software...

Some 9-10 years later (I cannot really remember what year it was when I first played Wolfenstein, I just remember it was about the time I got my first ridiculously expensive Sound Blaster) and after some semi-legitimate lame attempts to design a sequel, Activision finally declared that it's going to take care of the project. We'll have the opportunity to hang around our favourite American secret agent once again, as he returns to Wolfenstein he escaped years ago. This time the Nazis have gone too far, and B.J. will have to kick general Himmler's ass and stop him before he succeeds in creating a Nazi super army by raising the dead using the occult and horrific genetic experimentations.

No one is even mentioning Apogee Software anymore, Activision and Gray Matter Interactive Studios (guys who used to work for a Quake add-on publisher, Xatrix) are now in charge of the project and, of course, there's the Quake 3 Arena engine that will take care of the rendering. In comparison to Arenas idiotically motley and colourful terrains, the levels here will look much more serious and realistic. The first level that I saw at this year's E3 was ominously reminding me of Mortyr.

The textures are very detailed. The walls of the castle are decorated with pictures of the Fürer und andere solche dinge...(sorry, I got carried away). Anyway the designers created the castle interior using authentic photographs of German castles. The authors claim that the environment will be highly interactive. That basically means that a lot of objects would be "shootable"; i.e. when you shoot at them they react to it in a certain, interesting way. You will be able to break boxes, destroy some walls and barricades with Nazis behind them, oil tanks can be burs to make the oil flow out of them and make the floor slippery (of course if you shoot at oil tanks too much they will burst in flames). Peaces of furniture can also be used as barricades or in some cases even as weapons. The enemies don't disappear after being shot - their bodies remain lying about the castle reminding you which direction you came from.

Just like Wolfenstein 3D (and most of the similar games that appeared in the meantime) the levels here are rich with secret places containing energy, weapons and ammunition. The developers decided to go for the authentic WWII weapons so you will get to use Luger guns, old-looking machineguns and grenades. There will also be stationary guns and cannons that B.J. will be able to use.

I just mentioned that the game reminded me of Mortyr. That defiantly doesn't go for AI. Return to castle Wolfenstein probably has one of the bet AI scripts. Each Nazi will have an IQ, and the smarter ones will surely give you a hard time. They won't just stand in front of you and shoot (like they did in the original Wolfenstein), they'll run around you or run for cover in order to shoot you from its safety. When you find cover, they will usually try to sneak up to you from your back. The thing I liked most (no, that's a lie - I didn't like it at all!) was that they can even return your grenades if they have the time. The same goes for Blazkowicza who got the honor to be the first FPS hero who can get tired from running. That was my old wish - an FPS game in which you won't be able to have "auto-run" always on. B.J. has "running energy" with which he is capable of running not more than a couple of seconds, after which his energy is drained, only to be recovered in time.

The enemies are intelligent ant there is too much of them; in fact they come in infinite numbers. I'm not sure if the players will appreciate the idea of respawning monsters. It always irritated me.

I can hardly wait to see what the game will look like once the game (or at least a demo) officially appears. I hope the developers will pay special attention to preserving the atmosphere from the first part. As I already said, I never liked Wolfenstein 3D for its graphics, I adored the atmosphere... This will probably prove to be the biggest problem of them all, but I am sure that people in Activision understand that. Activision president Ron Doorninka said: "Wolfenstein 3D is one of those games that instantly bring back great memories whenever you hear the name".