'Wolfenstein' Remake to Release August 18

A new Wolfenstein game has been in development for quite a while now, but it wasn't until recently that I realized how close it was to completion and also how much it was going to be like one of my favorite games of all time - Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Wolfenstein 3D was the first first person shooter (FPS) ever released by id Software. People were impressed by it's 3D engine but it wasn't until id Software released Doom that people truly took notice and the FPS genre began to take the world by storm. Well, fast forward a few years through the various Dooms and Quakes and then you will see id Software going back to the Wolfenstein series by releasing another game. They updated the graphics, created a new storyline, and gave it the name Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RtCW).

It was a success and the public's interest in the Wolfenstein brand was renewed, but what truly placed RtCW apart from the other FPS's of the time was it's innovative multiplayer. When playing online, the maps were not just battlefields where the side with the most bodycounts at the end of the match won. Instead there were objectives to each map and your team had a "mission" to perform. Also, players could choose between 4 different roles that had different impacts on the game. A medic could heal other players, a lieutenant could drop ammo supplies and call in air strikes, an engineer could set explosives, and a soldier could use a rocket launcher. It was only made better on Xbox Live with voice communication.

In RtCW, one of the favorites of players (and my favorite) was the beach map *picture below* where the objective was for the Allied players to assault the Nazi fortification (ala Normandy Beach style) and steal some documents then run to the radio room to transmit them. The Nazi's of course were there to do everything they could to stop them. The strategy of having multiple routes to enter the fortification as well as the multiple classes the multiplayer mode offered meant many, many hours of online gaming was enjoyed by this blogger and his friends.



This is not all good news though. Since RtCW, a lot of FPS's have tried to incorporate a "class system" within their game and all have been met with limited success. The Wolfenstein series itself released a follow up to RtCW called Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (W:ET) for free but only on the PC. It was praised by the gaming community but it was not really known about outside of the PC market. So, then id Software decided to develop a true multiplayer-only experience following in the steps of RtCW and W:ET by releasing Quake Wars: Enemy Territories. This was also praised by gaming critics everywhere, but it didn't appear to take the online world by storm the way that I remember RtCW doing so. (I'm sure this may have had something to do with the game being released around the same time as Halo 3.) Looks like the new Wolfenstein game is going to be their next attempt to recapture the RtCW audience.

The bottom line... I think that everyone will enjoy having another Wolfenstein multiplayer game for the current generation of consoles. The problem is that the videogame industry is a different world now. There are already many games out there that offer a RtCW "feel" and unless they find a way to balance the classes (which many current games appear to be incapable of), then the new Wolfenstein will just be another game that failed to live up to the nostalgic expectations of RtCW. Most "class based" online FPS games find themselves with one class that is over powered and everyone ends up playing that particular class (ala rifleman in Battlefield 1943). All the support classes sort of "fall to the wayside". Then again, you never know. Maybe the new Wolfenstein can fix the problems that plague the current crop of RtCW games. Either way, we will soon find out.

Wolfenstein is scheduled to be released August 18, 2009.

Videos for the new Wolfenstein can be found here.