Everyone who's ever watched an Indiana Jones movie knows about Nazis and their passion for digging up powerful artifacts. It wasn't always like that, however, and once upon a time, only a select few knew about the Third Reich's obsession with ancient occult mysteries. Fortunately for gamers, the makers of Castle Wolfenstein are in the know, and they wove this information into a ground-breaking and extremely successful first-person-shooter franchise.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War™ is id Software's latest visit to the dreaded Nazi stronghold of magic and mayhem. Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War is both a retelling of the basic Wolfenstein story and an expansion of it. It introduces new locations, characters, and plot points, while providing more detail on the existing story and game elements. The history of the game goes all the way back to some of the original eight-bit game consoles, but the story's history goes back considerably further.
Snow-storming the castle.
It's quite true that Hitler, Himmler, and other top-ranking Nazis were fanatics when it came to magic and mysticism. They blended German folklore with real history and made up their own Aryan mythology for the propaganda machine. In their real effort to conquer the world, Nazis scientists experimented with rockets, chemical weapons, and other methods of mass destruction that were ahead of their time. Nazi scholars also researched ancient texts and objects of power, hoping to present Hitler with a devastating weapon that was based on magic, instead of science.
In Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War, Himmler is attempting to access the power of a long-lost race of god-like beings called the Thule. By combining terrible genetic, robotic, and mystical forces, Himmler plans to create an army of super-soldiers that will win the war for Germany. Players take on the role of Army Ranger B.J. Blazkowicz, a military operative for the U.S. Office of Secret Actions (OSA). B.J. and his partner, Agent One, must investigate some strange happenings in 1943 North Africa, which eventually leads them to Castle Wolfenstein and the horrors that lie within.
How do you say "don't eat my brains" in German?
To make matters worse, the plane carrying B.J. and Agent One is shot down over the castle before the OSA men have a chance to investigate it. Agent One is captured, beaten, and tortured to death. B.J. is saddened by his partner's fate, but he's too busy to mourn … too busy fighting to stay alive and too stunned by the nightmare he's uncovered.
Himmler's Paranormal Division has already succeeded, you see—at least partially. The castle is riddled with zombies, mutants, and other hell-spawned horrors (as well as an army of Nazi soldiers, officers, and scientists), and all of them are hunting for the American in their midst. The project is not yet complete, however, and B.J. quickly realizes that there is no time to call for back-up. If he doesn't shut Castle Wolfenstein and the Paranormal Division down now, the Nazis will win the war, and the forces of darkness will prey on the entire world.
Say hello to Herr Machinegun.
Xbox owners can continue to play as Agent One in the Xbox-exclusive Co-op mode, but otherwise, it's just B.J., a horde of Nazi monsters, and a boatload of powerful weapons. In addition to the era-appropriate rifles, shotguns, machine guns, and grenades, B.J. can pick up and use devastating tools like the WWII flamethrower, Panzerfaust rocket launcher, and the futuristic Tesla cannon (which shoots out a stream of electricity that can light up a whole room full of enemies at once). With the exception of the Tesla cannon and Venom gun, all of these weapons are based on actual period weapons, with the same strengths and weaknesses as their real-world counterparts. (For the record, Tesla technology did exist during WWII, but it was hardly ever used as a death-ray.)
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War will draw and keep gamers with its sharp graphics, exciting gameplay, and detailed, interactive environments. The story is steeped in a mixture of myth, history, and fantasy that makes for one of the most engaging and immersive first-person-shooter experiences available. Evil comes in many forms, and some of the most terrifying can be found in Castle Wolfenstein.
