Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Gray Matter Interactive, Nerve Software
This review was originally written in 2020, edited in 2024, and updated in 2025.
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| screenshots c/o Mobygames |
In the midst of all the remakes and reboots of classic franchises these days, (i.e. Doom) it can be easy to forget that such a thing didn’t used to be common… until Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Wolfenstein 3D put id Software on the map. They would go on to make two Doom games, three Quake games, endure a few staff shakeups, some lackluster releases, and eventually go quiet to work on what would become the Doom 3 engine. They needed another hit in the meantime. Enter Grey Matter Interactive, formerly Xatrix Entertainment (yes, the Redneck Rampage and Kingpin guys.) Kingpin, released shortly after the Columbine massacre and controversial for its violence, had shown that they were willing to push the envelope. And so they were the ideal choice to tap for a return to Wolfenstein. In their hands, Return to Castle Wolfenstein is not a throwback. Gone is the fast-paced action of careening around featureless hallways blasting Nazi sprites. What we get instead is an early 2000s post-Half-Life shooter that wears its Thief and Goldeneye 64 influences on its sleeve.
It’s March 1943, and Allied secret agent B.J. Blazkowitz has been captured by the Germans and being held in Castle Wolfenstein. His partner, the Brit known only as Agent One, is dead. B.J. manages to escape his cell, and now must resume his mission: find out what Himmler’s up to. It’s the classic method of introducing this new, modern (well, for 2001) take on the Wolfenstein mythos: escaping barely armed from a Nazi prison cell and shooting, stabbing and exploding the fuck out of every last Nazi in Castle Wolfenstein. Over the course of the game B.J. will investigate supernatural doings in the nearby town of Wulfsburg, chase down the evil scientist known as Death’s Head (B.J.’s own personal Red Skull) across Germany and Norway, and finally return to Castle Wolfenstein to stop a sinister ritual.
The game is divided up into seven chapters of around three to four levels each with their own objectives to be met. The gameplay is very much in the vein of Goldeneye 64 — stealth is a major component, but the primary focus is on action. The two mandatory stealth levels are… controversial. The first one has you working your way through some lightly forested hillsides as you try to find a way into the outer compound of a V2 rocket base. While the provided map does tell you the optimal route to avoid patrols, there’s always the chance you’ll be spotted. If someone manages to sound the alarm, that’s a game over. It can often feel like trial and error; Return, being a Quake III engine game, revels in its vast distances, and yet sometimes the AI seems like they have telescopes for eyes, spotting you from hundreds of meters away. The second stealth mission is much better, and the Thief influence is all too obvious. You must sneak your way through the village of Paderborn on the night of a sinister ritual to resurrect an evil former German king, the real-life (and probably not that evil) Heinrich I, and assassinate all the SS officers involved. (Fun fact: in this game, Castle Wolfenstein is inspired by Wewelsburg, the spiritual home of the Nazi SS and an SS cult site, and while the real Paderborn is much bigger than it is in-game, the real-life Wewelsburg village sits in Germany’s Paderborn district.)
While this game’s version of the Quake III engine would go on to be used in Call of Duty, do not mistake this game for the latter. The tight gameplay of Call of Duty is nowhere to be seen in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Enemies are often bullet sponges, with wonky hitboxes, and guns do uneven damage. The very worst have to be the Ubersoldats and their little brothers the Protosoldats, who do tremendous damage yet take an enormous beating. Just as bad are the “lopers,” monstrous experiments that move appallingly fast and can zap away your health in seconds.
Level design is generally linear to a fault, and doesn’t provide a lot of options. It’s almost as if going in guns blazing is expected; while this certainly is in line with Wolfenstein 3D, Wolfenstein has always been, on some level, a stealth series. Even Wolfenstein 3D had some vestiges of the early stealth focus that was excised during development. Considering the obvious influence of Goldeneye 64 (which itself had stealth elements) and Thief (which is nothing but stealth) it’s strange that the level design is so single-minded. It’s a shame, because stealth is often far less of a hassle than going in guns blazing, often because sneak attacks do somewhat more damage as well as the fact that knife attacks from behind are insta-kills. Given how wonky the combat is, this is all a blessing.
Another problem is the lack of subtitles. This game is comparatively more story-heavy than its predecessors in that it actually has a story, but much of it is almost inaudible due to a wonky audio engine where dialogue is drowned out by ambient noise. It’s frustrating. The audio in general is a mixed bag. A lot of the ambience is great — classical music playing on a radio or phonograph makes for a nice feel as you commit violence in silence, but the actual in-game music is generally pretty one-note and unremarkable throughout the game, with little variation. The voice acting is at least somewhat decent, though you get a lot of fake German accents in English as Nazi goons talk to each other when they don’t know you’re there. Though, again, most of the key dialogue gets drowned out, making the story basically pointless.
All these issues are a shame because graphically the game is quite impressive for 2001, with high-resolution textures and decent use of lighting. There’s a lot of potential to this game that I feel got wasted for crappy early 2000s FPS gameplay design tropes.
In 2003 the game was ported to PlayStation 2 and XBox with the subtitle “Operation Resurrection” and “Tides of War,” respectively. While otherwise unremarkable (and arguably mediocre) ports, they do feature a prequel mission set in Egypt, apparently based on some ideas that were cut from the main game. However, the mission doesn’t add much to the game. The gunplay in the console versions is even worse than the PC version, and the startling inclusion of B.J. talking (he’s completely silent in the PC version) feels… wrong. And anyway Wolfenstein arguably needs to start in a prison cell.
Ultimately Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a game that has aged like fine milk. It’s not a terrible game by any means, and by 2001 standards it’s a perfectly fine shooter, but we’ve come to expect more and better from our Nazi-murdering simulators. If you’re really hard up for supernatural Nazi shooting you’re better off with Wolfenstein: the Old Blood, which is basically a remake of this game's first two chapters with the gameplay of Wolfenstein: the New Order.
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| RealRTCW screenshot c/o Steam |
It's still more or less the same game; but short of a remaster from Night Dive or somebody, this is the closest we'll likely get. In addition, there's the option to install a lot of classic user mods, reconfigured for RealRTCW; there's even a single-player version of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory lurking around on the Steam workshop if you want that. All in all, it's a great way to experience this game in the modern day, even if I don't think it necessarily fixes some of what's wrong with the game.
-june❤
Living in the night
'Neath heavens torn asunder
You call on me to solve a crooked rhyme
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