I read about this new episode of the Wolfenstein saga and decided to play it, even if my nearly 5 years old PC only barely meets the minimum requirements.
When your hardware only just passes the requirements, it means you'll miss some of the graphics and can't expect to have a totally smooth gameplay even on a low resolution. My machine and the graphics card Nvidia 6800GT loves the "Quake 4" and "Doom 3" and "Prey" games which all runs on the same "id tech 4" engine. This new Wolfenstein uses that same engine, but it's been very heavily modified, and it doesn't run so smooth on my machine.
The game itself is fairly straight forward without any difficult puzzles and the enemies are for most parts also fairly easy. It has some pretty cool scenes especially in the hospital, but also some of the crossfire in front of the Nazi headquarter and the Zeppeliner as well. You'll also get to visit good old Castle Wolfenstein. It gets quite crazy and funny at times almost reminding me of the old Half Life games when they got very far out. The ending of this Wolfenstein game is however ridiculous and very disappoiting. It simply doesn't do the game any justice.
The ability to use 4 special force powers gets lame and boring after a short while, and the fact that the game has been ported from console games is very obvious and somewhat annoying both to the look and feel and to the game control.
Another story is that the only way I could even make the singleplayer game run on my system, was to install a cracked version of the "Wolf2.exe" file. It wouldn't run any other way. I communicated a hell of a lot with Activision's support desk on this issue and they concluded that a cracked version would be an okay solution for me. I didn't and still don't agree and I find it comical that they didn't try to solve the problem instead. So now you are warned if you plan on buying this game. Don't expect too much help from the helpdesk!
Obviously this game would have been more satisfying on a newer and faster machine. But I saw enough of the graphics and the game to conclude that this is not a very great game, and even with better graphical details the gameplay and especially the ending will always be something I'll look back at with disappointment. Another problem is that all the characters speak english with bad accents. It would have been so much cooler if the Nazis had spoken german.
The game is not a complete let down since there is fun jokes and gameplay along the way, but it is nowhere as cool a game as "Return To Castle Wolfenstein" was when it came out in 2001.
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Content Type: Game Review
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Updated: 2009-09-16 19:40
Created: 2009-08-29 17:38
