Those old gamers amongst you might just remember a game called Wolfenstein 3D. If you played it today you'd laugh at the pitifully crude nature of the graphics, the simplistic scenery and the relatively simple level designs. But, thanks to a bunch of very clever graphical techniques to fool you into thinking you're playing in a 3D environment, a groundbreaking new genre was born - that of the first person shooter. Yes folks, Wolfenstein 3D is the granddaddy of all first person shooters and so it is fitting that, at a time when FPS games are consistently reaching new heights, we should Return To Castle Wolfenstein.

To continue the history lesson, if you haven't heard of Wolfenstein 3D before, you will undoubtedly heard of its successor - the legendary Doom. With Return To Castle Wolfenstein coming from the geniuses behind the Doom and Quake games, you know you're in good hands. And although this new Wolfenstein is no Halo-beater, it's nevertheless a great game that FPS fans will thoroughly enjoy. And so to the story, which begins in the year 943 at the scene of a massacre. A lone druid arrives to confront the immortal evil that has slaughtered hordes of warriors, some sort of demon or undead soldier, casting a spell that traps it deep within the ground, entombed forever more. One thousand years later and those pesky Nazis are looking for every advantage they can get in their war against the free countries of the world. Herr Himmler's Paranormal Division is nosing around a digging site in Egypt and you play the American soldier ordered to go and find out what is going on.

The graphics in Wolfenstein are gorgeous - they are leading edge PC quality and look nothing less than super slick throughout, every area teeming with detail, intricate textures and style, with the scrolling remaining smooth at all times. Without doubt this game blows its competitors like Soldier Of Fortune II and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon out of the water in this respect. The cut scenes are beautifully rendered too, with the opening cut scene showing off wonderfully realistic animation, flowing capes, falling rocks and magical energy effects. The amount of facial detail on each character in the cut scenes is excellent too, although whilst the lip-synching looks spot on the mouth movements look a touch artificial and aren't quite there yet. Still, this is a significant step forward for animating characters in games that I don't think will be beaten until Half-Life 2 comes out - Halo's characters look quite basic compared to this, especially with their limited facial animation.

Unfortunately, despite the graphics being of excellent quality, the look of the levels can be quite samey and repetitive, especially in the first couple of missions of the game. Gloomy corridors and sparsely lit tombs feel almost too gloomy, whilst you spend a lot of time working your way through samey looking town streets and houses. After Egpyt you head to Castle Wolfenstein itself and so the next level again suffers from samey graphics with room after room of sparsely decorated stone walls, linked by bare corridors and steps. Of course, you wouldn't expect a castle to be bright and colourful and it's not as though there aren't plenty of signs and Nazi banners on the walls to shoot, plus you can destroy chairs, ornaments and even knock over suits of armour, which topple and smash in a very realistic fashion. The problem is that so much of this game takes place in gloomy indoor locations or at night that it can all get a bit dark and wearing at times. Still, there is plenty of variety in location and as you play through the game you will visit many different places, so I don't think this should be a big deal for most gamers. When you do get outside in the early morning sunrise, you'll be greeted with the most beautiful looking sky you've ever seen in a game - when you get out of Castle Wolfenstein for the first time and into the courtyard, the sky is simply breathtaking with a gorgeous range of reds and yellows casting their light across the sky, with fluffy clouds floating across here and there.

Wolfenstein's other problem on the graphics front, at least in the first half of the game, is the limited variety of enemy. You get to shoot Nazis, Nazis and, oh, more Nazis. There are very tough and agile female commando Nazis to kill here and there but it does get a bit boring at times. Luckily just when you feel like you've had enough of Nazis, you'll get some zombies to kill too. You see, the tombs that the Nazis are poking about in have curses that, once unleashed, revive all the corpses within so they can attack the intruders. The zombies aren't particularly agile or intelligent but they are tough and take a lot of shooting to kill. There is always a plentiful supply of ammo on hand (it's not Resident Evil!) and you can sit back and let the Nazis and zombies kill each other then mop up the survivors some of the time, which is a nice touch. Some zombies explode in a mass of bones and dust when they die, while ones that carry axes and shields just fall down dead. The shield carriers are tough and quick, plus your bullets can ricochet off their shields and hit you if you're not careful, so these can be trickier. Some zombies fire spooky skulls at you whilst others are on fire and blow volleys of flame at you - this is a lovely effect but keep your distance or you'll suddenly be on fire! Later on in the game you will come across several other more interesting and more deadly types of foe but I'm not going to spoil the surprise. Let's just say the zombies and Nazis are just the warm up act and leave it at that…

Coming onto the weapons, there is a good range of WWII guns here, authentically recreated for your enjoyment. Lugers and a pistol with silencer are available, then there's the MP40 machine gun, the silenced Sten, which overheats after about a dozen shots, the powerful Thompson, the Mauser rifle (with sniper scope), plus German and Allied grenades and some dynamite, for blowing up walls or decimating troops. The sound effects in this game are excellent all round, every weapon sounds meaty and authentic, the sound of the bullets hitting wood, stone, glass or anything else are totally convincing and you'll often hear bullets zing and whiz past you as they ricochet off walls. There are also a number of conversations to listen to if you approach Nazis sneakily, which more often than not have relevance to your current mission. The voice acting is very good and the accents are top notch, especially the four heads of the Secret Service that you work for - their briefings are always entertaining as the contrast between the two Americans and the two Brits is hilarious, not just in their accents but in the things they say. The German accents all sound very good too. The music has a good orchestral feel to it and the spooky noises and strange ghostly sounds in the tombs create quite a tense atmosphere. Whilst the music does complement the gameplay well it can be a little samey at times and a few more themes wouldn't have gone amiss.

You can tell that Wolfenstein has been designed by veterans of the genre because every level is outstanding. One of the best things about the levels is that they are packed full of secrets to find and whilst some are quite obvious others will have you scratching your head for a long time. Some are secret rooms, revealed by pulling a book jutting out from a bookcase, pressing a raised stone or a twisting a candelabra on the wall (a hand appears when you are next to something you can manipulate). Others are found by destroying pictures or banners that hide cubbyholes with treasure or by smashing through damaged looking walls (again a cursor appears when you get close to something you can smash). There are so many different kinds of secrets and they are so well hidden and varied that you'll always have to work to find them, your reward for finding all secrets in a level being some goodies like grenades or a weapon.

Making your way through each level can be a little confusing at first and although the levels are fairly linear they don't feel that way, as there are alternative routes to be discovered, doors to be unlocked from the other side and corridors twist and turn so much that it can feel like a real labyrinth at times, although you rarely get totally lost or have no clue what to do next. The levels become increasingly bigger and more complex and the challenge each one brings is always enjoyable. Indeed, it can be quite hard to tear yourself away, as the story progresses well and you always want to find out what's coming next. The enemies are reasonably intelligent - they will back off and take cover while reloading then jump out to shoot at you some more, whilst other very accurate and deadly snipers shoot at you from high windows. The AI varies too, so some enemies are tougher than others and so it feels like this is because some are more experienced soldiers than others, which is a good thing.

Wolfenstein has a very strong, enjoyable and challenging single player campaign to play through and it's very big, with eight missions in all, each spanning several large levels. The addition of a co-operative mode is a big bonus too, as this throws in a whole new dynamic to the gameplay. As with Halo, with a friend at your side you can outflank the enemy by splitting up or concentrate your fire together, plus with Wolfenstein's secrets and switches you can split up to get things done faster too. All this would be enough to justify a purchase alone for FPS fans, but the real icing on the cake is in the form of an excellent multiplayer mode with full system link and online play.

Here the game holds its own against such excellent online titles as Ghost Recon, Counter-Strike and Unreal Championship. If Ghost Recon is a bit too slow for you and Unreal too hectic then Wolfenstein should be just right. With support for up to 16 players in each of the 13 massive and intricate levels (with 3 extra so far to download for free), there is scope for some serious fun. Every level is designed perfectly with plenty of routes, key locations (some with stationery guns), cover, hiding places, sniping positions and so on. The character classes come into play online, with soldiers able to pick from a range of weapons, lieutenants that can give extra ammo and order air strikes, engineers that can fix stationery guns and plant dynamite and finally the good old medic, the only source of healing in multiplayer. Having a balanced team really helps and a nice touch is that once you're down you don't die until you are blown up or voluntarily join the respawn queue (with a delay of up to 20 seconds), meaning that a nearby medic can heal you if he gets there in time.

There are four modes of play, all of them based around two teams of Allies versus Axis. Elimination is the standard team deathmatch where you generally only have the one life per game (unless the session's creator specifies otherwise), Objective gives the teams one or more objectives like destroying a key location or stealing valuable documents, with the opposing team aiming to protect that location or those documents, Stopwatch is like Objective but at the end of each round you swap teams and must beat your opponents' previous time and Checkpoint sees six flags scattered across the level, all of which must be captured to win. There's a great variety here and the modes offer something a bit different to regular shooting for shooting's sake. Wolfenstein is tremendous fun online; it's fast, the shooting feels accurate, there is plenty of scope for team tactics and the levels are a joy to explore and run around. Communicating with your team mates and getting a good strategy going is very satisfying and particularly essential during the flag-based matches if you're to capture all six flags in the level. Without doubt it's one of the finest Xbox Live experiences available.

Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Tides Of War is a triumphant return to the game that started it all and a more than fitting tribute. It looks and sounds gorgeous and the challenging and substantial single player campaign will keep you going for a while and warrants playing through with a friend in the co-op mode. Those of you online will get a lot of fun out of the multiplayer mode too and it's on a par with the finest Xbox Live shooters. This is a must for FPS fans and one big reason for everyone else to discover how much fun you can have with a gun.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).