Fun but SLOW co-op. Nobody really plays the awesome multiplayer online anymore.
The XBOX version is hardly different. The single player is generally the same lame game it was on the PC. Basically, the player is by himself THE ENTIRE GAME, except for one brief fight where two AI who look like Germans without helmets stand perfectly still and shoot at enemies whilst the player has to help them protect some scientist against, like... Ten enemies. Plus he gets this tank that doesn't really do anything but get blown up.
The only interesting thing that ever happens is that sometimes the AI will fight eachother. This is rare, and even when German soldiers are alone and stranded in a tomb full of nothing but flesh-eating zombies that want to kill them, the Germans will STILL shoot at you on sight! They generally have no idea who BJ is or that he's even American but their first reaction to a NON-zombie in the evil zombie tomb is to shoot at him. I'd ally with the first person I saw, even if he was wearing an enemy uniform, though BJ's uniform is so vague (he doesn't even have a helmet) that it's hard to argue that maybe the Germans can instantly tell who's side he's on.
Anyway, the single player sucks is what I'm saying. The XBOX version does add some decent levels to the beginning that perfectly preludes the rest of the game's story by explaining how BJ had a run-in with Helga before the game started, and how he got captured along with his fellow spy guy, who never actually helps him fight anyone.
It's still extremely lame, and the only thing that makes the campaign any good is the co-op mode. The game actually is a lot more fun with a fellow player, because not only is a teammate but it's also a pal in real life rather than a lifeless AI.
Still, even though the co-op is able to make the absolutely dreadful single player campaign much more fun, it has flaws. Firstly, they don't change the context of the cinematics. Player 2, who plays as the guy who dies in the beginning of the PC version, is like "OKAY BJ LETS SPLIT UP! I'LL LEAVE NOW AND CONTACT YOU BUT NOT HELP YOU!" But of course in the co-op mode they stick together and FIGHT ON. When you get to the part where the PC game starts, originally BJ's spy buddy never gets a single line and dies as a generic guy that nobody ever cares about. But in co-op mode, they skip that cutscene, not really explaining how the two players escape the prison (but there's still a dead German in the prison cell) and the scientist goes "SERGEANT WHEN I TELL YOU SOMETHING YOU DO IT!" which makes no sense in co-op since he didn't tell anyone anything. Also, the table he electrocutes player 2 on is suddenly empty, but the paper on the wall still says that player 2's character died.
It's kind of weird how this guy who does nothing but die on a table in the PC game suddenly has a part in the beginning of the XBOX version, and acts as player 2 on co-op mode. Since the rest of the game assumes that the guy is supposed to be dead, he's not in any more cutscenes. I bet that makes player 2 feel good.
Anyway, aside from those superficial problems with the co-op, the REAL problem with the co-op mode is that the framerate is atrocious! The framerate isn't all that great most of the time with just one player, and when you have two it rarely goes fast as often as it goes slow. It's bearable, but sometimes it will literally be like one frame per two seconds. Enemies, however, are totally unaffected by framerate and can still kill you just as easily as ever.
Why couldn't they fix it? Star Wars Battlefront 2 lets you go up to four players on the XBOX just by lowering the graphics settings with every player that joins! If RtCW had bothered to maybe lower the graphics quality in two-player mode, it wouldn't go so slow.
Still, despite poor framerates and weird plot problems, the two-player mode works out pretty well. Players can easily stop eachother from going through doors, but that's about where the problems end. Enemies are able to shoot at both players, rather than one at a time or something weird like that, and it can be fun to run into a room and have a big battle with both players against a bunch of AI. Players have to learn to share, but luckily if they die they just instantly respawn at the last checkpoint. I dunno' if that's difficulty-based since I was playing on the lowest difficulty, but it still encourages self-preservation because it sucks having to walk all the way back and you'd rather just not die.
The actual XBOX Live multiplayer, which sadly only goes up to one player on a single console (though it'd go freakin' slow if it went any higher anyway), is as awesome as it is on the PC. You have four classes of high variety on two teams which have to complete varied objectives, which makes the game a lot more fun than just two teams with four varied classes doing nothing but shooting at eachother.
The problem is, the game is limited to 16 players. The levels are huge, and I'm so used to having like 50 players in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory that 16 players doesn't seem like much. It can still be fun, but not as amazingly epic.
Though the REAL problem is that, just like the PC version, nobody plays the XBOX version anymore! I don't know if anyone EVER played it because I never played RtCW on the XBOX until today, but that's not the point!
I would blame the death of the PC version on the release of Enemy Territory on the PC, a totally free and improved version of the original multiplayer, taken from the cancelled sequel to RtCW. They decided that they wouldn't continue their crappy single player campaign (THANK GOD) but knew that their multiplayer was tops. It's hard to market a sequel that has no single player component, so they made the expansion's improved multiplayer TOTALLY FREE! HOORAY! That pretty much made Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer on the PC, which you have to pay for (not for the multiplayer but for the game itself), totally worthless in comparsion.
Enemy Territory didn't get released for free on the XBOX, but now that the 360 is out nobody really plays obscure XBOX games online anyway. Even though you can totally play RtCW on the 360, JEEZ!
I actually found ONE game, and it was just two players in a game that had a limit of 8 players set. Yeah, lowering the limit from 16 to 8 is just like saying "Please don't join this game". I still joined because it was the ONLY game I'd EVER seen, but it was just the two guys teamkilling eachother a lot.
Ultimately, the game could be worth it if you have two players and can find it for like less than five dollars, because the co-op is kind of fun, but there's not that many people who play online and even if they did, the player limit is 16 which kind of sucks since the PC version could go as high as the server wanted, and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is 100% free and has been out for years so it runs on pretty much any computer and is just way better in general. Playing with a controller on a TV is more fun than playing on the PC in my opinion, but some of the best games can only be found on the PC.