In Wolfenstein 2009 you play the role of B.J. Blazkowicz and have to face hordes of Nazis. One of the main elements of the game is the magical Thule amulet which allows you to enter a parallel dimension and some kind of bullet time. Beyond that Wolfenstein focuses on old school shooter qualities.

Wolfenstein: id Tech 4 plus Havok
Like in Quake 4 (dt.) Raven Software uses the id-Tech 4, also known as doom 3 engine. This technical base has been upgraded with Post Processing effects, like Depth of Field and diverse lighting and blur effects. Additionally there are Bump Mapping, soft shadows and the id Tech 4 typical plastic look. The detailed Nazi zombies have a high count of polygons and well done animations. As physics are regarded Raven Software has integrated Havok Engine that allows destructible furniture and gravity simulation.

The modified renderer does not support Anti Aliasing (neither MSAA nor SSAA), but the engine benefits from additional third or fourth cores. But they are not necessarily required and even older dual-core processors like an Intel E6600 or an AMD A64 X2 6000+ combined with a Radeon HD 4850 or a Geforce GTS 250 respectively 9800 GTX can run the shooter. At this point we would like to note that Wolfenstein limits the max framerate to 60 fps. This can be worked around by adding "+set com_fixeditc 1” to the target of the desktop shortcut, but if you do so the character will either move and fire much too fast or much too slow - so we will have to stick with the frame limiter.

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Conclusion: Wolfenstein might not be on the latest technological level but it offers atmospheric graphics combined with fast paced sequences as well as massive music support. Gameplay varies from challenging to frustrating. Old School.