Nostalgic, but uninteresting trip to Castle Wolfenstein.
Like in the very first Wolfenstein you play as B.J. Blazkowicz on a quest to stop the head of Hitler's secret service from acquiring ancient artifacts that have the power to raise a huge army of undead against the Allies. That’s about it, so the game is a some sort of weird mix of history and fantasy.
Graphics are not good, but they do their job and the level structure is linear, but not as linear as in Call of Duty for example. Sound design is not particularly good either, but they help to bring back old memories from the first Wolfenstein.
Single player campaign is in a word OK, but there is nothing to talk about after you’ve finished it. The enemy AI has an outstanding vision: I was crawling on top of a mountain in a raging blizzard in order to get s good line of fire for a sniper shot. In the second my head was lifted to look out in the open, enemies were alarmed, opened fire and my god: they actually hit me! I couldn’t even see the opposition let alone to shoot at it from that range and without looking through a sniper scope.
Controls work fluidly and the gameplay in general proceeds nicely, but in the end it’s just not that interesting. The main motivating factor for me to press forward was to see the ending cutscene, which is not very good, but still manages to raise some thoughts afterwards.
There’s also a change to play the game in co-op with a friend, but two things hinder it to be successful. First of all you can only play the levels you’ve already unlocked in the single player mode and you can’t save your progress in the middle of a mission.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War is a nostalgic trip to those who have played the original game so long ago, but even for those the experience is not that interesting or fun.