Graphics

Wow. Wolfenstein is decidedly the nicest looking game I've ever seen. We've come to expect some nice eye candy from the Quake III engine, but the wolf team met and exceeded all of my expectations with this one.... Especially with their wickedly realistic looking flame and lighting effects. :) The textures are very well done, with tons of detail. Apparently some of the graphics guys headed over to Germany and toured around with digital cameras. They also used old photos as a source for their game art. Models (player and weapon) are extremely detailed and realistic looking. Characters even have teeth and tongues. Most excellent. :) The care put in certainly shows, and makes for the most realistic world yet created on the PC. The interplay of light and shadows on some of the maps is just.....well... Damned near real frankly.

Check out the screenshots section. A picture is, after all worth a thousand words.

Sounds and Music

The dev team's excellent and most tasty work is continued with the game's audio component. Music is excellent, haunting and fits into the situation you find yourself in. Sound effects are great. Rockets and explosions boom, rubble and bullet impacts sound very realistic. Your boots squeak on metal floors, and rattle on catwalks. Tons of attention to detail yet again. One thing that really grabbed me by the ying yang was the sound of spent cartridges hitting the floor as you fight. Different weapons have different sized cartridges. The 9mm submachine gun cartridge is lighter than the cart for the .45 cal Thompson.... And they actually sound different hitting the floor. Like I said, talk about attention to detail! Enemies also gurgle and gag when you kill them. It must just be the ghoul in me, but I like that.

Weapons

So. You want guns do you? Well, there's certainly no shortage of guns in your arsenal this time around. We've got little guns like Pistols and Submachine guns, we've got semi-auto battle rifles such as the Mauser '98 and German Paratrooper rifle, we've got machine guns, flame throwers, Panzerfausts (Rocket launcher to you Quake guys.), grenades of all sorts, dynamite, special weapons like the Tesla and Venom, and sniper rifles. It's a virtual cornucopia of Axis slaughtering fun! As I mentioned before, the weapon models in both third and first person are truly well done, at least as well as those in Counter Strike (And that's saying something!) Reload animations also look sweet. Weapon effects look very good as well, with the flame thrower likely being the most impressive weapon effect I've ever seen in a game to date. Nothing like the smell of roasted Nazi in the morning, I always say.

On an interesting note, if you move too much (hardly at all) with a rifle that zooms in, you automatically zoom out. :) Now more running with a sniper rifle, or strafing madly back and forth. Woot. Rifles also have sharp recoil when fired, so you have to readjust your aim after every shot.

Enemies

After reading some initial previews I was a little worried that the majority of the enemies I'd be running into would be the undead. I hate zombies. I don't know why it is, but it just seems that every game I play where there's zombie killing going on there's too damned many zombies, and not enough real (ex. somewhat smarter) enemies to kill. After I hit the catacombs/church level I was starting to think that my fears had been realized.... Zombies littered the levels like.. well... zombies... But 'twas a short level, and the undead were interspersed with soon to be completely dead Nazis. One of the nice things about the Zombies is that they will attack anyone. So it's rather amusing to sit back and watch them kill a pile of Hitler's jack booted thugs, then step in and finish off what's left. Same deal with the abominations.

Enemies you'll encounter in the game range from the aforementioned Zombies (Now in 4 or 5 tasty varieties!) cybernetic monstrosities, and of course a large variety of Nazis. The Nazis (and everyone loooooves beating on these guys!) range from wimpy little mechanics and doctors to elite paratroopers and killer babes in tight leather. (Roooowrrr!) Nice variety of people to blow up, burn, shoot and slice.