Return to Castle Wolfenstein could be called one of the most unheralded first-person shooters of its time. Developed by Gray Matter under the supervision of id Software, the game was released in November 2001 to excellent reviews - but it was ultimately overshadowed by both Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (released just two months later) and its own multiplayer spinoff, Enemy Territory.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein was both a resurrection of id's iconic Wolfenstein 3D (1992), and a thoroughly modern first-person shooter. Remarkably, the developers succeeded in both paying tribute to the "grandfather of first-person shooters" and fully absorbing the lessons from the games that followed in its wake. As a result, RTCW captures the thrill of both old school and modern shooters, and retains tremendous appeal over 15 years later.
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Roughly every couple of years for about the last decade, I've returned to Diablo II. Blizzard's action role-playing game was released in 2000, and has been imitated many times but never matched. It's easy to see why so many developers have sought to make games that use the Diablo II formula: it is an addictive style of gameplay which is easy to pick up but hard to master; it can be adapted to different settings and game engines; and Diablo II itself was a tremendous commercial success. There are also a number of reasons why Blizzard's game has remained the gold standard for action RPGs after all these years. The developer's famed quality control is one reason, as is their continued support (the game has been patched as recently as March 2016). For me, though, the single biggest asset the game has is its thrilling sense of challenge and difficulty: particularly in hardcore mode. |
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I write about classic science fiction and occasionally fantasy; I sometimes make maps for Doom II; and I'm a contributor to the videogames site Entertainium, where I regularly review new games. Categories
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