Return to Castle Wolfenstein best online game

Return to Castle Wolfenstein came out in November of 2001 and has been kicking ass every since. If you have played Wolfenstein 3D way back in the day then you know what RTCW is about. Basically you're an American soldier in WW2 out to destroy the Nazi Germans and find out what supernatural things they are trying to do. The single player portion of this game was good and solid but im not going to talk about that, i'm going to talk about the multiplayer part of the game. It has won many awards and at one time had a huge list of servers to play on and was even at Qcon for competition and winning money. Let's now visit it.

RTCW multiplayer puts you in the shoes of a soldier on either the Axis or Allied team. You can choose between 4 classes, these classes being a Lieutenant, Medic, Engineer, or a Soldier. The point of the game is an objective type mode where one team defends and the other is on offense. The team on offense has to do a list of task to win the game. It's a quick first person shooter that takes skill and quick thinking to keep up with everyone else. Each team has to set a time and the other has to beat it. The good thing about it is that each team has to work together because each objective usually needs different players and classes to win that obj. Let's dig deeper into the gameplay and the classes.

The classes are very important to each team, we'll first talk about the Lieutenant, or LT as the cool kids call it. He is able to choose between the Thompson sub machine gun, MP40 sub machine gun or the Sten. The Thompson has more power and sports a 30 round clip, but what it has in more power it loses in accuracy. It's not a horrible weapon just isn't as accurate and has a little bit less rate of fire then the MP40. The MP40 has a 32 round clip, fast rate of fire, good accuracy, but has less power then the Thompson. The last sub machine gun that most people never use is the Sten. It has the same power as the MP40 but a higher rate of fire with a silencer. The only problem is that it overheats very quickly and will leave you waiting for it to cool down before you can use it again. It has very little recoil though and the accuraccy on it i would say is about 90% at what you're aiming at. At long distances this gun is deadly with short burst. They also each carry a pistol, that do the same amount of damage and have the same accuracy. The Allies carry the Colt 45 handgun and the Axis have a 9 mm luger. Although different caliber sizes, they still have the same traits. Lt's can only carry one grenade at a time and also sport a trusty knife that kills people in one hit if you hit them in the back. So now we know what kinda toys he has, let's talk about his unique traits. The LT is able to call in airstrikes, fire for effects, and drop ammunition. By switching to his smoke can the LT can throw this can of colored smoke in an area and an overhead bombing comes in and blows up whatever in its path. This is nice when you have a bunch of bad guys on another side of a wall and you can drop a can and either blow them up or they will run away before it hits them, either way it clears out the area. Second they can call a fire for effect where the LT uses his binoculars to find an area and smoke the area he is looking at. A ploom of smoke rises and then for 10 seconds that area is hit by bombs. This is nice to keep people blocked off for a little it. Each character has a small meter on the side of their screen which tells them how much of their special ability they have. When you have a full bar you can call a FFE, if you have half or higher you can drop a airstrike can. If you have 1/4 of higher you can drop an ammo pack for each 1/4 you have. The LT is very important for a team because without him, your team can't get anymore ammo unless they find a gun on the floor from a dead body, or you pick up an enemy ammo pack. Also the air strikes and FFEs are great for clearing out bad guys and keeping them back.

Next is the Medic class that can only have a Thompson or MP40 depending what team they are on. They spawn with only one clip of ammo, one grenade, knife and are able to revive fallen teammates and give out health packs. Also they are able to go above 100% life. When a teammate dies they will fall to the ground and go into limbo. Limbo is when you are out of life but haven't been gibbed. Gibbed is when after you run out of life your body gets blown up or shot. It's kinda like if you got shanked by a gangster and you are bleeding. If you keep bleeding you die off completely, if you get medical attention then you will live. So if your teammate is in limbo you can go over and poke them with a needle and they will get back up and keep fighting. If your teammates are hurt you can drop health packs which will refill 20 points of life. Medics are a huge part to the team and sometimes the most important because if you need to get somewhere and you keep dying then you can be revived and keep going without having to travel all the way back. They can often times mean the difference between a winning team and losing team.

Next we have the Engineer which often times is needed for the whole round or at least part of the round. They spawn with 2 clips of ammo and carry a Thompson or Mp40 depending on their team and have 8 grenades. Their special abilities is that they can plant dynomite and blow up objects that usually are an objective that needs to be completed to win the game. For example, on the map Beach there is a wall that you can't jump over and there are two breach points that only an engineer can blow up to gain access to the main complex and steal the documents. Also on the map Assault there is a tower that the Axis team needs to blow up and without an engineer they can't blow it up and will never win the round. So the Engineer is a big part of the game and teams often times try to find a balance to where how many engineers they need to have a higher chance of not getting killed and balance that out with the need for other classes.

Finally we have the most diverse class of all. They are the soldier class, they sport 4 grenades, a pistol, knife, and can have either a Thompson, Sten, MP40, Venom, Flame Thrower, and the Panzerfaust. The ability to have these weapons really make the Soldier class unique. Most people don't use anything other than the Panzer because the other ones aren't that useful but i'll still tell you what they do. You know what the sub machine guns do so ill talk about the Flamer, Venom, and the Panzer. The Flamer is well.... a flame thrower. It shoots a steady stream of fire about 10 feet in front of you and can burn the bad guys very quickly. Although it has a lot of power the fact that its short range makes it hard to use again people with long range guns. The flamer is good for close range maps and small spots. Next we have the venom which has a 500 round clip. It is just a big machine gun that has a fast rate of fire with big stopping power. The cons are that it overheats, take al ong time to reload, needs to warm up briefly and has very poor accuracy. The best way to use this gun is to be in a hallway where you can just spray down it and they cant run away. It's nasty to use them in combination with the panzer. The panzer is a rocket that you shoot basically. You can carry up to 4 and it can blow up crowds up people in a single shot. The cons are that it takes a while to reload, is single shot, and takes a full special bar to use. This means after you shoot it you have about 25 seconds until you can shoot it again. In that time you only have your grenades, pistol, and knife. I personally love the panzer and have mastered the art of using it. I have taken out whole teams with one shot and a panzer is important to any team out there because if you kill a bunch of people as a team, they can still be revived. The panzer is great for finishing off the bodies and killing the medics that go to revive them.

So now you know how the classes work, lets talk about the maps and the gameplay. The gameplay is what makes this game so great and unique. Each map has objectives that the team on offense needs to do to win. In some maps you will need to blow up walls then steal an objective and take it somewhere to win the round. To do so though you'll need an engineer to blow up blockades. Then medics to revive them if you get killed, then an LT to give out ammo to the medics and call in airstrikes to clear out the dynomite area and then the panzer to get the bad guys that are waiting. As you can imagine this takes a lot of team work to work right. I'll give you a run down on how it could work. On Beach you blow up two walls with engineers but a lot of times the bad guys hang out there to defend it, if the LT calls and FFE in the area the Eng has time to run up and plant the dyno while the bad guys are blocked off from the FFE. At this point if one bad guy manages to kill the engie, they can be revived and finished planting. After the walls are blown you can drop the engineer and have one of them go panzer. Then you all rush down the axis complex to steal the documents that you need to take to the transmitter. At this point the Axis usually are all defending one area. The panzer can run in and blow up a few guys while going on a suicide grenade run before he gets mowed down by the bad guys. Then the LTs will follow in front of the Medics and shoot at whoever is in the way. As they get killed the Medics can be behind them and pick them up and carry on the fight. As you can tell this is a big mess. After all the bad guys are dead the Allies take the documents to the transmitter where all the Axis who died have respawned after waiting for 40 seconds. They allies have two ways to run it which one is long but safe, and the other is short but deadly. The way to win this is to get a panzer to blow up a bunch of the defenders and then just make a big team rush with the objective carrier in the back so he doesn't get killed. After all of this you switch teams and the team that was on offense, is now on defense, and the team on defense is now on offense. The team on offense now has to beat the time that the other team did it in. This can make for some nail biting moments and quick thinking.

As you can tell RTCW is a fast paced teambased game where you have to work together to do objectives to win. Killing doesn't win the game, teamwork does. This is what makes RTCW so unique to other online games because it's the fast paced first person shooter that everyone loves with teamwork that makes it really fun and addictive. I recommend anyone who likes good action games to buy this game. It's only 10 bucks and will run on most computers with ease because it is an older game. There is competition for this game where teams are made and compete in matches each week in a tournament to be first place. I have a team right now and we are in competition and have a lot of fun playing and talking to each other. We use a program called ventrilo where we can talk to each other on headsets while we play, this makes for good team work and funny moments.