For a lot of old-school (and even not so old-school) gamers, the mere mention of the name Wolfenstein is sure to evoke a wave of nostalgia. Anyone who was playing games before the era of Quake can probably tell you when he or she first came into contact with Wolfenstein 3D, the great-great grandfather of first person shooters. Back in the early 90's, just about everyone had a copy of the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D and was gunning down Nazis left and right. Love it or hate it, Wolfenstein 3D is one of the few truly original genre-creating games, and basically created the landscape of gaming as we know it today.

Two years ago, iD decided to cash in on some nostalgia by creating an update to their classic, called Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I never got to play that particular game, as my computer at the time was (and still is, sadly) barely powerful enough to run any games worth playing. I’d heard good things, particularly concerning the multiplayer play, and I was fairly excited to finally get to play it for myself once it was ported to the PlayStation 2, under the name Operation Resurrection.

The general premise of Return to Castle Wolfenstein is that you play American soldier B.J. Blaskowitz, on a mission from the Office of Secret Actions (you’d think that a department in charge of secrecy would be a bit more discreet in its naming, but I digress) during World War II. B.J.’s orders are to chase down an elite squadron of Hitler’s SS. This squadron, the SS Paranormal, is up to no good, searching out archaeological dig sites for something awfully nasty to unleash on the Allied forces. The story is told through a handful of cut scenes and mission briefings, but it’s really nothing special or compelling. Really, the story is mainly a thin premise for you to run around shooting at Nazis. In other words, Half-Life this isn’t.

As far as gameplay is concerned, RTCW is basically a standard FPS. There’s nothing overly revolutionary to be found here. You’re given a few vague objectives at the beginning of each level, which are generally accomplished either by entering a specific room or by blowing something (or someone) up. Other than that, you simply progress from the beginning of the level to the end, killing anyone who gets in your way. The levels are fairly straightforward and generally short; aimless wandering around in search of an objective aside, few of them take longer than fifteen minutes to complete, and are often easily cleared in between five and ten minutes (dying and restarting notwithstanding, of course). The problem with this, however, is that the game feels extremely choppy. While many of the missions might have functioned well as one big level with checkpoints, they are instead divided into bite-size chunks that seem like they should flow but don’t. Especially since the game does (mercifully) give the player the ability to save at any point, the short levels really do the game a disservice.

Actually progressing through the levels, however, is fun, at least for a while. I’m usually not a fan of console first person shooters, but RTCW kept me captivated for quite a while when I first started playing it. Even on the easiest difficulty level (namely, “Can I Play, Daddy?” RTCW retains the same names for the difficulty levels as its predecessor, adding a nice dose of nostalgia), RTCW provides a nice challenge, with enough soldiers to shoot to keep things interesting, but not so many to overwhelm. There is also a nice variety of weapons, though most of them except for the machine gun and sniper rifle become obsolete after a few levels. Some of the weapons are just ineffective as well, like the super sniper rifle with night vision scope which is extremely difficult to use in daylight, or the grenades, with too small a blast radius and too much bounce to be of any use in most situations.

Enemy AI is an issue as well. Individually, enemies can occasionally be smart enough to pursue, run away, or hide long enough to reload a gun. In groups, however, the enemies don’t behave believably at all. One particular example that sticks in my mind involves two soldiers in a shack. Upon opening the door and shooting the first guard near the door, the second guard, who is out of the player’s sight at the time yet in full view of this scene, decides to just stand there instead of pulling out his gun and shooting. The second guard does not, in fact, begin to shoot until the player actually turns toward him and starts shooting at him, as though he needed an engraved invitation to defend himself. Guards also seem to be confined to the room in which they are found, instead of pursuing the player through a level. The only exception to that rule seems to be when the intruder alarm sounds, which then sends some guards out of their rooms to see what is the matter. As a result, certain strategies like opening a door, firing a few shots, and then lying in wait behind the closed door are basically just a waste of time, because the enemies will just wait for you to come back in the room. To say the least, the AI leaves much to be desired, especially given that the designers had nearly two years since the initial release to tweak it.

Of course, the poor enemy AI might not be quite as noticeable if there was a robust multiplayer aspect to the game. However, shockingly, there is no multiplayer mode to be found in Operation Resurrection at all, online or otherwise. This is extremely disappointing, given that the multiplayer aspect of the original RTCW was, by far, its biggest draw, and the Xbox version of the game has Xbox Live support in addition to standard split-screen multiplayer. PS2 owners clearly got the short end of the stick here. The single player missions are entertaining for a little while (and the designers tossed in an extra prologue mission and a few extra levels to compensate), but multiplayer is the reason to buy the game, and its absence hurts the game’s replay value tremendously.

The game’s control, often the worst part of first person shooters that have been ported to console, is remarkably easy to pick up after a bit of practice. In my experience, console FPS controls are generally about as easy to grasp as a greased watermelon at the bottom of a swimming pool, but Operation Resurrection’s controls are tight and about as intuitive as you can get with the PS2 controller. There are several different configurations, but the default uses the two sticks to move and look, the shoulder buttons to shoot, jump, crouch and kick, and the face buttons for switching weapons and opening doors. I think would have preferred moving the activate button (X) to the shoulders, replacing it with the rarely used kick button (R2), but I also could do that myself in the custom setup mode had it really been that important to me. There is also a decent auto-aim feature (nearly crucial for the less-precise gamepad control) that is nice, when it works. Circle-strafing generally tends to kill the lock, though, which makes it less than useful. The only other complaint I have is that I’d like an easier way to invert the Y-axis on my free-look stick than manually switching up and down in the custom control screen, but I guess inverted Y-axis guys like me are a dying breed nowadays.

Graphics came over fairly well to the PS2, but still don’t look as good as they could. A lot of the PS2 trademark jaggies are present, which makes spotting enemy soldiers at a distance difficult. There are also some showdown and framerate issues sprinkled throughout the game. A lot of the environments are also extremely dark, so much so that it’s often hard to find small switches or ladders, even with the brightness setting turned all the way up. In general, though, despite these complaints, when the game is running as it should, nothing really looks bad. A few more textures wouldn’t hurt to keep all the areas looking more or less the same, but there’s nothing visually offensive about the game.

Sound is equally decent. There’s a good background score that changes as action around the player heats up or cools down. These tracks are good, but there are only a handful of them, adding to the feeling that every area is more or less the same. There is a decent amount of voice acting, but what killed the suspension of disbelief for me in this regard is that the German soldiers, instead of speaking to each other in German, speak in English with fake German accents. It is done fairly well, but generally you don’t care about what the soldiers have to say unless it’s a death rattle anyway. One of the best things about the original Wolfenstein was the downright comical things the soldiers would say when you shot them like “Ach! Mein Leiben!” Unfortunately, this all-in-good-fun attitude is missing from this game. Sound effects are also good, down to the scraping of a chair across the floor or a silenced machine gun.

Overall, I liked Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Operation Resurrection at first, but the repetitiveness of the game got to me quickly. With similar level designs, background music, and graphics, the single player mode made me feel like I was playing the same three or four levels over and over again. With multiplayer, I think the game probably would be enough fun to warrant a purchase. As it stands, however, the single player mode provides enough fun for a rental, at best. Sure, you can play through the game on each of the four difficulty levels, but I honestly can’t see myself wanting to play through Operation Resurrection more than once. If you’re looking for some Wolfenstein nostalgia, go get the original for GBA for $10. If you’re looking for a good first person shooter for PlayStation 2, return Castle Wolfenstein to the shelf and look elsewhere.