Long before Brad Pitt even thought about hunting Nazis there was B.J. Blazkowicz. He wasn’t afraid to mow down the third reich and even kick around a German shepherd or two in the process.

Wolfenstein RPG ($2.99)

While I dabbled around a bit with Wolfenstein 3D, I can’t say I was really a fan of the game. In all fairness, however, I did give Return To Castle Wolfenstein a chance when it came out… still not a fan. Now we have Wolfenstein RPG for the iPhone, a port of the popular cell phone game, and after more than 15 years, I can finally say that I’m a fan of B.J. and his Nazi exterminating habits.

Presentation

Personally, I think Wolfenstein RPG looks great. I know there were some grumblings that it was just an enhanced pixilated version of the cell phone version, and while there’s probably some truth to that, I find that it adds to the charm of the game. When you compare it to a lot of the other “3D” offerings out there it still looks much better. Everything is quite detailed, and there’s a lot of personality to be seen in the different characters. Walls might be covered with vines or spattered with blood. Creatures react differently and sometimes amusingly when you punch, hit or kick them. Just wait until the first time you kick a chicken or punch the portrait of the guy who should have been Hitler. There’s no question that they put a lot of work into giving Wolfenstein RPG a visually rich environment. In fact, purists aside, I wish they would have applied these graphics to the re-release of Wolfenstein 3D Classic (or at least made them an option).

The sound effects are just as colorful. You’ll chuckle the first time you wolf down a helping of fried chicken, and you’ll certainly snicker each time you kick or fry a live chicken. It sounds cruel, but you just have to keep in mind it’s only a game. The weapons sound great, and ambient noises like the crackling of flame when you’ve been set on fire all work quite nicely. The one thing that’s missing from this package is music. I didn’t really notice at first, but the more I got into the game the more I realized that it really needs something playing in the background.

Controls

The controls in Wolfenstein actually work quite well. On the left side of the screen you have a virtual joystick that looks an awful lot like the D-Pad from the old Nintendo joysticks. Up and down move you forward and backwards, and left and right rotate you 90 degrees. To use your current weapon, simply click on the central area of the screen. You can switch weapons by clicking the weapon icon next to your portrait. To skip a turn, click on your portrait. Clicking on the heart icon brings up your inventory, and clicking on the helmet icon shows your available syringes. The main control mechanism I didn’t care for so much was strafing, which requires you to swipe left or right on the screen. It’s not bad once you get used to it, but it didn’t seem to fit with the overall feel of the control scheme.

On most occasions where you can move backwards within the menu structure there will be a little switch you can flip. Within the menus themselves there is usually an informational symbol you can click next to anything that requires more explanation. When scrolling is necessary there will be a little scroll bar to the right of the area needing to be scrolled, though in most cases they’ve thankfully provided an alternative method of navigation, because quite often the scroll bar is small and thin.

Game Play

First of all, we need to get something straight – this is an RPG. Now I realize that doesn’t mean it can’t be free movement based, but that also means there’s nothing wrong with it being “tile” based, and that’s just what they’ve done with Wolfenstein RPG. Personally, I like it that way. It takes me back to the good old days of Dungeon Master and Eye Of The Beholder. Plus, it puts a completely different spin on the whole feel of a Wolfenstein 3D era B.J. game. Anyway, now that that’s over, I return you to your regularly scheduled game play segment.

Oh wait, that was about game play, wasn’t it? Anyway, there’s a small back story, but the gist of it is that you are the leader of a group of soldiers sent to infiltrate Castle Wolfenstein, and now you must find your comrades and make your way to safety. To successfully escape the castle you’ll fight through soldiers, zombies, mutations and the occasional belligerent maintenance worker (hey, wrenches can be painful too). The game is played in a first person perspective, but as mentioned above, movement takes place in a turn based fashion. First you move, then any opponents that are around move. Unfortunately, the opponents have one big advantage over you. For B.J., anything is considered a move. Firing your gun is a move. Using a health pack is a move. Moving is a move (didn’t see that one coming, did you?)

For the enemies, on the other hand, moving and firing are both allowed in the same turn. As a matter of fact, it’s not uncommon for some of the smarter elements to move in front of you, shoot, and then move back out of the way. This is, of course, if you move first. If, however, you simply wait – which is accomplished by clicking on your portrait in the lower bar on the screen – the enemy will move in front of you and shoot without moving away. I guess they’re trying to show respect for you skipping your turn.

To deal with the enemy you’ll have a variety of tactics at your disposal. Initially you have a shot gun, your fists and your boot. As you progress through the game you’ll pick up new weapons, the first of which is a dual shot gun. You’ll also discover that there are times that you can use your surroundings against your enemies. As for your fists and boot, they can even come in handy when you’re low on or trying to conserve ammo, though some enemies are hard to dispatch with a simple punch or kick. The nice thing about kicking an enemy is that sometimes they will fly back a square to put some distance between you and them. Also, when you use your fists you’ll hit the enemy in the face – you’ll learn why that’s significant the first time you duke it out with a skeleton.

In addition to killing enemies, you’ll collect items along the way to both help you in your journey and just for the sake of collecting items. After all, this is an RPG. You can get things like health packs and num num bars to refuel your energy when you’ve taken a beating. Ammo will keep your weapons in a useful condition, and helmets provide additional armor. Books will provide you with useless trivia, background information, and most noteworthy: stat modifiers. Yes, once again we start to see the RPG nature of Wolfenstein RPG. Your player has 4 stats that help determine how well you fare against the enemies. These include Defense, Strength, Focus and Evade. Quite often when you read a book it will raise or lower one of these stats. My favorite so far is the romance novels you come across, which temporarily lower your Focus stat!

One of the coolest innovations in Wolfenstein RPG, however, is the concept of the syringe. As you explore the castle you’ll learn that the Axis forces were experimenting on people, trying to create biological enhancements. In same cases you’ll come across syringes that are already filled with a particular compound. These compounds might do something like boost your Evade skill for 30 rounds. What’s really neat, though, is that you can also find empty syringes, and from time to time you’ll run across a mixing station. There are three colored liquids that can go into a compound, and a given compound is made up of three parts liquid. By mixing and matching various colors you can create compounds that have different effects on you. Be wary, however, as each mixing station only has a certain amount of each liquid, so random testing is not advisable unless you want to be continually loading your old saved game. You will find hints every now and again as to what combination of liquids might yield profitable compounds.

There are also two mini games that you can play from the main menu, at least one of which is integrated into the main game as well. War is a simple variant of the classic card game, where you and your opponent draw a card from a randomly laid out set. The higher card wins. The other mini game, which is much more amusing though entirely too easy, is chicken kicking. You basically have a grid of holes on the game floor, and your goal is to kick the chicken into the hole that awards you the highest number of points. Once you start each kick you will have two meters, one which determines the left / right trajectory of your kick, and the other which determines the power of your kick. Set each meter and watch the chicken fly.

I’m sure there are a few things I’ve left out, but these are definitely some of the highlights. For those that still question whether or not the iPhone is getting any “deep” game play experiences, I think you only need look at games like this and Resident Evil 4 to realize that the answer is “yes”. They still might not feel quite as fleshed out as PC games, but we are talking about small portable devices here.

Suggestions

Wolfenstein RPG is certainly not perfect, as I don’t think such a thing exists in the gaming world. However, there’s not much really “wrong” with it, either. Some background music would be nice, and swipe controls that fit more with the feel of the rest of the game (maybe diagonal arrows on the virtual joystick) would be cool, but neither are really necessary. It would also be great if there were more than one save slot. Nothing else truly functional comes to mind at this point, however.

Conclusion

I never thought I’d be so captivated by the adventures of B.J. Blazkowicz, but then lately a lot of iPhone games have surprised me. If you’re into all things Wolfenstein you probably already have this anyway, but if for some reason you haven’t clicked “buy” in iTunes you should. If you like RPGs, I’d strongly consider this one as well. It’s nice playing an RPG that doesn’t involve overthrowing an evil wizard and discovering the hero within. The game looks good, sounds good, and there’s plenty to do. I can’t really think of a reason not to recommend Wolfenstein RPG.