When I was assigned to review this, I was unhappy because I only knew the very basic premise: First Person Shooter game in World War 2, which I have long since grown tired of. What I didn’t know was that Wolfenstein adds some interesting twists to this idea, and they do a lot to make this game fun. As a result, Wolfenstein is a competent FPS both in its singleplayer campaign and multiplayer matches.

The singleplayer campaign starts off typically enough by putting you in the role of B.J. Blazkowicz, hero of many previous games in the Wolfenstein series. As an Allied super-agent, he slips in to a major German city in order to disrupt their operations, discovering that they have begun research on occult powers. Thus what starts as a typical series of shootouts with WW2 guns such as MP40s quickly adds what amount to ’magic and super powers’ to the mix; the Nazis get to turn invisible and fling fireballs around, but you can project shields, slow down time, and spot enemy weak points; it works out to be a decently engaging campaign.

The campaign will probably keep you busy for around eight to twelve hours, and along the way you’ll regularly gain both new powers and new guns. Interestingly enough, you aren’t just dropped into a series of missions one after another; you have to travel through the city and treat it as your ’hub’ to the rest of the campaign’s levels. Along the way you’re encouraged to avoid Nazi patrols by going via rooftop or sewer, but I never bothered; I was more inclined to kick the door open so they knew I was there, then come out guns blazing; it worked so long as I was quick to take cover after my initial attack. You’ll also find plenty of secrets around the city, such as caches of gold that can be used to buy upgrades for your guns. Conventional WW2 weapons tend to get real-world upgrades; recoil compensators, larger ammo magazines, etc., while more whimsical weapons like the tesla gun (not too different from Quake 1’s lightning gun) gain suitably more unusual upgrades.

One other interesting part of the campaign is that the developers managed to make both the Nazis (and other enemies whose exact nature I won’t spoil) and allied NPCs have an incredibly life-like AI; they act exactly like real humans on a multiplayer FPS server do! That is to say, your allies will do things like block you in a doorway while you’re trying to retreat from a horde of Nazis, plant explosive charges in areas without notifying you, and otherwise do everything they can to get you killed through their incompetence. On the flip side, the Nazis occasionally fail to notice your activities as you rush up all of five feet away from them while they’re busy shooting at fleeing resistance members, and they sometimes blow themselves up with grenades. The folks at Raven deserve credit for this kind of life-like AI, I believe. Fortunately the AI isn’t always this dense, so the campaign remains decently fun throughout.

Wolfenstein’s campaign isn’t the only attraction, as it does offer competent online play as well. Primarily a team-oriented affair, multiplayer scales back your arsenal and powers in order to encourage a class-based system where players may serve as engineers (they build things and pass out spare ammo to allies), medics (they heal teammates), or soldiers (they use better weapons). The actual flow of play can include things like head-on battle, or be more involved with goals such as the resistance team trying to bring a cannon shell to a disabled Tiger tank the Nazis have abandoned; the cannon in turn can blast open a hole in the bank where the Nazis are storing mission-critical items, and from there it’s a battle to see whether the Nazi defenders can prevent those items from being taken. Notably, gold and upgrades from the campaign don’t carry over here; you have to earn a seperate pile of money here for that purpose, doing things like completing objectives and killing enemies in order to gain the cash you need.

In the end, Wolfenstein is a competent FPS both in its solo campaign and online deathmatch. While it does not truly innovate in any area, it is decent in just about everything it sets out to do. With that in mind, I think a player that plans to spend a fair amount of time with both the campaign and online play would walk away reasonably happy afterward.