![]() ![]() They're also smart enough to run away from grenades, and they'll occasionally even kick one back at you. Rather than charge right for you, they'll often find cover and stick to it, waiting for you to come flush them out. Soldiers exhibit a real capacity for self-preservation. However, it's certainly not bad, and for the most part it's impressive. To reuse a phrase that has appeared in or been implied by every shooter review since November 1998, the AI is not as good as the AI found in Half-Life. The less said about that unfortunate decision, the better.but the team-based multiplayer mode steals the show. However, Wolfenstein traditionalists will be horrified to learn that Gray Matter has replaced Nazis screaming at you in German-a trademark of the series since the original Apple II version-with Nazis screaming at you in German-accented English. The game's soundtrack is understated but effective. Wolfenstein's sound effects are generally good, from the dull "thock-thock-thock" of bullets striking the wooden table you're hiding behind to the appropriately varied noises made by footsteps on different floor materials. One particular type of skeleton enemy is especially eerie as it creeps toward you through low-lying fog, its eyes glowing. The game's zombies-who look more like mummies than traditional rotting undead-move with a convincing disjointed shuffle. You'll often delay your assault on guards just to sit and watch what they do. ![]() For instance, at one point a guard patrolling the deck of an icebound submarine stretches, lights up a smoke, takes a few puffs, then drops the butt and stubs it out under his heel. Though the conversations between the guards may not be terribly interesting, the guards' idle animations are great. In what may be a first for the genre, the models actually appear to have lips that operate independently of the teeth behind them. As it did in Kingpin, Gray Matter used a system that permitted it to mix and match pieces of each model, creating a lot of variety among the Nazi soldiers. The weapon models, the character models, and the animations are also first-rate. The quality and detail of the levels' textures and lighting are uniformly excellent. The levels alternate between expansive outdoor scenes, such as a Nazi camp with a good deal of hilly terrain surrounding it, to interiors that range from cramped tombs to massive, ornate castle chambers. Wolfenstein's 27 levels are spread across seven missions and feature a good variety of environments. Armed with the Quake III: Team Arena engine, Gray Matter has lived up to the precedent it set for great visuals with Kingpin, the most beautiful and unique-looking of all the Quake II-powered games. While the execution of the story, which involves your attempt to stop the Nazis from creating biomechanical zombie super soldiers, is a bust, Wolfenstein's graphics are a rousing success. The between-mission cutscenes are especially tedious they're long and visually and dramatically uninteresting. The overheard conversations never manage to rise to the level of humor displayed in NOLF, and the game fails to create any memorable characters-not even the game's own hero, B.J. Unfortunately, the dialogue in Wolfenstein is not nearly as sharp as that of NOLF. ![]() It also features enemy guards engaged in conversations as you approach them, a largely defensive AI for those guards, and between-level cutscenes that recount meetings between your superiors back at home base. Like NOLF, Wolfenstein is primarily a run-and-gun shooter with some stealth sections mixed in. Wolfenstein borrows much of its structure from No One Live Forever, last year's best shooter. Wolfenstein's single-player mode is good. But with the faint-praise damning out of the way, you'll be happy to hear that the multiplayer game is outstanding. Now that the waiting is over and the game is out, it can be stated for the record that Wolfenstein's single-player mode is good. All these factors contributed to some perhaps unreasonably heightened expectations. The first team, Gray Matter Studios-which, under the name Xatrix, had previously produced Redneck Rampage and Kingpin-was hired to create the single-player campaign, while a new development house, Nerve Software, concentrated its energies on the multiplayer component. Return to Castle Wolfenstein's development actually involved two separate teams, both overseen by id Software. It's a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D-id Software's first-person shooter that defined the genre-which was itself a follow-up to the beloved Apple II classic Castle Wolfenstein. As the year has worn on, and more and more big-name PC action games have slipped into 2002, Return to Castle Wolfenstein has emerged as the only triple-A shooter likely to be released in time for the 2001 holiday season. ![]()
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