Return to Castle Wolfenstein Ships

Screaming Lunatic writes "Woohoo, Return to Castle Wolfenstein has finally shipped. Check this story out at Yahoo. You should be able to buy it at the regular gaming shops. I highly recommend buying it rather than hacking it, as noted in Graeme Devines .plan file." CD: I am seriously flashing back to the Apple II game with a similar name, hope this doesn't suck like daikatana.

Comments

I don't envy the developers

[rcs1000]

It must be really hard producing a sequel of such a classic game after such a long period. They will be judged against people's rose tinted rememberances of the original Wolfenstein 3D. And no matter how good it is, people will say 'Ahhh I enjoyed the original more.'

It's also hard, because the FPS genre is not new anymore. Can RTCW be a better game than Deus Ex or Counterstike? Maybe. But whatever it is it will be hard for it to be revolutionary.

That said, I'm sure I'll buy it as soon as it hits the shops. Just as soon as I finish Civ 3 that is!

*r

mini review... minimal requirements...overall feel

[Cosmic Cow]

For those of you who are wondering the minimal requirements, it works fine here on both my Tiger K7 and my trusty old BP6 with 366Mhz celeron and geforce2MX 400, I can play at 1024x768 with compressed textures, high details, but I've putted the display to 16bits (anyways, it's not like you'd notice a big difference from 16 to 32 in a fast-paced game). It's smooth, it rocks...

Of course if you're planning on joining a 40 people server you might want a bigger cpu than a Celeron 366mhz :) but for single player and 10-20 people it works okay... worse case scenario, you reduce the resolution from a notch.

As for the graphics, it's about like Q3A (same engine) but there are a lot of visible changes, one that you will notice right away is the details on the characters, and also all the motion, probably John will step in and talk about some of the aspects of the design, it looks like motion capture applied to the characters. The graphics aren't a big step up like from quake 1 to quake 3, but the overall mood and gameplay is really good. When I first played the demo, I thought that game would really suck because of the respawn time and the choice of weapons, but when you get to know it and get a well-balanced team that knows how to play, the level, and use special habilities like medic, or engineers defusing,etc.. it's really starting to get addictive. So to anyone who didn't like the test, do like I did, play it a bit more, and if you like the quake style and the RTS style, wolf is a good balance of both.

The single player is good, when I read the interviews, I was expecting a "max payne"-like story line in between each level, it's not as good, but the mood is really there and the levels are really nice. Like I said, it's not a Revolution, but it's an evolution. It's worth to buy if you're into that kind of games.

Hope this is useful to anyone out there :)

On CD keys, etc.

[Alpha State]

I can't be the only one here who uses cracks of my favourite games (that I've already bought) just to avoid having to swap CDs all the time. In fact I have a laptop without CD drive and this is the only way I can run games on it.

The CD-key is similarly annoying. I can see the point if they are going to check for online gaming, but why do they insist on needing it for single player games? (I rarely game online at all) Even for online gaming, they can only block 2 people trying to connect to the same gameserver with the same key - they could do this just by storing a serial number that the game uses on each CD, avoiding the silly mistake-prone key typing.

I can't understand why they keep using these methods of "copy protection", when they obviously don't work and the games sell huge amounts (the good ones anyway).

(BTW, I'm sure the game is great, I can't wait to relive the glory days of SS impersonating and grenade throwing I used to have in school.)

Re:On CD keys, etc.

[loosenut]

The CD-key is similarly annoying. I can see the point if they are going to check for online gaming, but why do they insist on needing it for single player games? (I rarely game online at all) Even for online gaming, they can only block 2 people trying to connect to the same gameserver with the same key - they could do this just by storing a serial number that the game uses on each CD, avoiding the silly mistake-prone key typing.

Once the game is installed, it shouldn't bother you. It's a single, one-time key entry, and any mistakes you make typing it in will be picked up immediately. It also seems lot easier to have a CD-key than it is to produce serial numbers for CDs. I could be wrong, but I thought they were all exact copies. Otherwise CDDB would be ineffective, wouldn't it?

It is also a very effective form of copy protection. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem letting friends copy my game. But, now, if they want a copy, they need a key. They could either randomly generate one with a keygen (and risk screwing someone else over) or use mine, in which case we wouldn't be able to play together, or even on different servers at the same time. The readme says that the keys are checked with a master server.

And that's what makes it such great copy protection. You don't need the CD once the game is installed, and you can copy it easily enough. But you won't risk losing functionality!

Allow me to post a portion of the readme:

Some Common Sense About Your CD Key: It's important to remember
that your CD Key is unique. No other copy of the game will have
that key code. You need to treat that code as something valuable -
protecting it from loss or theft. Without it, you cannot
reinstall the game, or play on-line. You may not be able to
replace the key without some difficulty and expense. Think carefully
about allowing someone to borrow your CD Key. The Return to Castle
Wolfenstein Multiplayer Master Server will not allow duplicate
keys on-line at the same time. Don't be fooled by claims about CD
Key generators. Not only do they not work, but many "create"
additional CD Keys by stealing and transmitting the keys of gamers
who try to make new keys.

[pirate voice] I'm sooooooo scaaaaarred!