Return to Castle Wolfenstein Platinum

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $44.94

Features:

• Supernatural World War II first person action thriller
• Includes original Return to Castle Wolfenstein and RTCW: Enemy Territory
• Play as an Axis or Ally in this squad based combat thriller
• Enemy Territory has support for up to 32 players online
• For 1 player

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. [Posted on 2005-12-06]
I've never had much use for WWII games. Call of Duty, Medal of Honor...they all looked the same to me. So when the word got out that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was making its big FPS return -- and that you'd be facing enemies other than Nazis only 20% of the time -- I wasn't impressed.

Well, who knew shooting down Nazi scum would be so much fun?

That's right, I finally figured out what all you WWII-ers have known all along; that until we get Imperial Stormtroopers to mow down, the Nazis will just have to do. And it's such a visceral rush, cutting down these goose-stepping murderous fanatics, that you won't really mind that other twenty percent of the time when you're not facing them. Oh sure, fighting the undead or '40s-era cyborgs each have their own challenges, but it's those Nazis most in the need of killin'.

The game's graphics are amazingly lifelike. Grey Matter -- the development studio -- reportedly took hundreds of research photographs while in Eastern Europe, and it shows. The textures are incredibly real, and the Nazi soldiers even have different types of uniforms and decorations; some of them are even wounded, with bloody bandages.

The sounds are so realistic, so layered, you'd think they were first recorded during WWII itself. Machine-gun fire, grenade explosions, the whoosh of flamethrowers...even the sound of eating food isn't just genuine, it evokes a reaction in you. Just listen to the sound of BJ eating a hot meal and tell me your own throat doesn't work on reflex.

But the story behind the game? Well, it's just outstanding.

In 1943, over a year before the Allies made the landing at Normandy Beach, there was a secret, joint-intelligence venture between the U.S. and Britain known as the OSA, or the Office of Secret Actions. Your character, U.S. Army Ranger Pvt. BJ Blazkowicz, is one of the OSA's operatives, who stumbles on a horrific plot being carried out by the SS Paranormal Division. They intend to use Nazi knowledge of the occult, robotics, and chemical warfare to spell ultimate doom for the Allies, and total victory for the Third Reich. I won't give away the whole plot, but let's just say that finding out how all these puzzle pieces fit together is just part of the fun.

Your objectives can vary wildly from one mission to another. For instance: In one, you must sneak into a secret Nazi installation without setting off any alarms. Once inside, you must scuttle a chemical warhead aimed at London and fight your way back out again. After that, you sabotage a Nazi radar installation, before finally reaching an airstrip and stealing an experimental rocket-plane. And that's all just in one mission out of the seven you'll be playing. Good times, folks. Other missions take place in such different locales as another occupied village in the dead of winter, dusty tombs infested with both Nazis and the undead alike, a half-demolished city that's just undergone 48 straight hours of Allied bombing, and a secret lab in the frozen wastelands of Norway.

While most of the weapons are, I'm sure, completely faithful recreations of what was being used by both sides at the time -- the MP40 and the Sten are two such examples -- the others are extrapolations of how such weapons could've been developed, like the Venom or the Tesla. Hell; this is also the first time I've ever played a game that gave me a CHOICE of sniper rifles. The Mauser, Snooper, and FG42 each have their own unique pros and cons that make them ideally suited to their roles.

One of the most compelling things about this game, though, is that it makes you wonder just HOW MUCH of all this was real? Was there really an OSA? Was there a real Kreisau Circle (the anti-Nazi German resistance in the game)? Did Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler -- both madmen, to be sure -- really look into such concepts as the occult or human experimentation as part of the war effort? Did the Reich really have an SS Paranormal Division? And did they really train women to be used as commandos?

Nevertheless, this game is worth it. It's fun, it's challenging, it makes you think, and it makes you feel so much better about yourself by putting hot lead into the most evil bunch of knuckle-dragging mass murderers this planet's come up with yet.

Now go give Jerry what-for!!

so realistic its scary [Posted on 2006-01-02]
this game is the most realistic ive played in a long time, well all time. The story line is amazing. you can pick chairs up and throw them at people. in each level there are secret places containing medic kits, ammo, etc. the AI is smart too. i went through a door and was being shot and i couldnt find the guy. he was hiding on the wall next to the door and shooting me from behind. multi player.... well ya. it sucks. the guns are unrealistic and i still cant figure out the plot of building towers and stuff. and an added dum part in multi is that people just stand around and shoot mortars everywhere. o yeah i accidentally killed one of my guys with a nade and got banned from the server. what is that??? the single player makes up for it though. overall 4.7/5

Still brilliant despite its age... [Posted on 2006-02-06]
Brilliant game! Creepy, atmospheric and adventurous - most things lacking from modern games. The game may be an fps but it has loads of puzzles and plots and sub-plots to make it compelling - as well as infuriating. This is kind of Indiana Jones meets Painkiller (but without the repetitious gameplay).

Enemy Territory is the online game that comes with this version, though you can now download this game for free (legally! Try Gamershell). Even so it is still worth buying just for the `main event'. I got mine for nine pounds from Amazon uk a year ago - so you may get it cheaper from there.

Its an OK game, I never really got into it though.  [Posted on 2006-10-10]
Wow, I thought this game would NEVER end. And that is not a good thing. Some levels were pretty fun, but for the most part it was very repititive, and downright frustrating at times.

The graphics in this game were pretty good. Definetely not up to the level of Quake 4 or Doom 3, but being though this is a pretty old game, that is acceptable. It ran fine on my A64 3400 /w ATI 800XL 256 MB card. I also have one Gig of PC3200 Ram. There were no slowdowns whatsoever, however I did notice that the game it self was kind of buggy. Sometimes if you load a game your enemies would seem to be stuck in an invisible box and they would not shoot or move towards you even though you were right in front of them. However you still could hurt them. (More on this in a moment)

The sound was OK. The background music often times became very annoying however. The sounds that were done best in this game were the sounds of the guns and the enemy chatter. The "sniper" rifle sounded like a sniper rifle and even though your German enemies spoke in English it was very clear that they had heavy German accents which was a pretty nice touch. It would be very LAME for a game to have Germans speaking as though they are from Alabama or New York.

The gameplay is what warranted my sub par review. The first few levels were kind of fun and the enemies were not cheap and/or not "impossible" to kill. However after getting to the zombie level, all of that changed. Having zombies in a video game is already played out, but add to the fact that these things were virtually impossible to kill without having to empty over 50 bullets in those things made this game very frustrating. THEY JUST DON'T DIE!!! This is when the game started to turn into a chore rather than just a fun game to play.

After I got by the Zombie level things started getting a little better again until I encountered more enemies that just wouldn't die even though I would empty an entire clip into them. These two enemies are the female whatever you call them and the Paratroopers. The female enemies are hard to kill because all they do is flip around all over the place while being able to get accurate shots on you. The Paratroopers just won't die unless you continuously shoot them with the Paratrooper rifle about 10 shots will do the trick. Four shots to their heads with the "sniper" rifle does nothing and they will continue shooting you even though 4 bullets just went through their head. Very unrealistic and frustrating.

Another frustrating thing about the gameplay is the ever annoying trigger points. You observe an area below you and make sure that no enemies are hiding in the corners or behind pillars, but as soon as you jump down, enemies magically appear out of nowhere. Resulting in you having to constantly Save and reload your game to try again.

In regards to the save/load feature for some reason in the final levels, the Load feature no longer worked unless I loaded a game I saved 2 months ago first. If I didn't do this, then reloading a recent save game would result in the game locking, and kicking me back out to Windows. I tried the "repair" feature and even tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, but it didn't help. This really made the last few levels very frustrating beacuse after I got killed I would have to load an older save game before I could load the one I wanted to in the first place.

I thought this game would never end and the game just dragged on and on and on and on and on and on. Ammo was very scarce in the last few levels and yet the game makes you fight more yep, you guessed it, ZOMBIES. Whoopie. "Hey look at me I'm a zombie, and you can't kill me because you have to save your ammo for the final boss" LAME!!! Luckily I had some dynamite and was able to blow many of them to bits without wasting my ammo, and I needed every last bit of ammo I had left for the final boss.

The final boss fight was rather dissapointing as well. It was more cheesy than difficult. I finished the game last night and will not be playing it again. And since the load game feature does no seem to want to work anymore, I may end up uninstalling the whole game off my PC.

The original wolfenstein at the time was a very fun game to play. This game was a nice upgrade to that series graphically and sound wise, but to me it wasn't really that fun overall. May be partly due to the fact that I HATE hate seeing zombies in video games that just don't die and cheesy AI.

Like the original, but better [Posted on 2007-01-07]
Like many, the Original Wolfenstein was the first, first person shooter game that many of us played. This game has that same spirit, but with much better graphics, and amazing sound. Its very enjoyable, action packed, and a great game to play. I highly recommend it!

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