Game Pass could soon see the arrival of the best Wolfenstein game ever to hit PC, as the classic, World War 2 FPS, built using tech from Doom, Quake, and Rage creators id Software, becomes available for Xbox Insiders to preview for free.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein originally launched back in 2001, forming part of a wave of World War 2 shooters, like Medal of Honor: Frontline and the first Call of Duty, which stormed to prominence after the success of the film Saving Private Ryan. Based on the 1981 stealth game Castle Wolfenstein, though much more in the spirit of id Software’s revolutionary FPS reboot from 1992, RTCW, as it’s affectionately known, drops you in the boots of BJ Blazkowicz as he uncovers a characteristically nefarious Nazi plot to raise the dead using arcane magic. The guns sound fantastic — especially the scoped FG 42 — and the environments range from a gloomy, mediaeval castle, to bombed-out European cities, and a sleek research lab for the V2 rocket. Even by today’s standards, it plays with incredible smoothness and speed, and strikes a tone somewhere between the traditional, camp horror of old Wolfenstein, and gritty plausibility of the 2014 reboot and its sequels. This is definitely one of the best FPS games on PC.
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Game Pass could soon be getting Return to Castle Wolfenstein but if you want to try it out now, for free, you can join the Xbox Insiders preview program. All you need to do is sign into a Windows PC, download the Insider Hub app, sign up, find the previews tab, then join the preview for RTCW. And if you fancy some more World War 2 action, you should take a look at our guide to the best war games on PC. Or, if you’re after something more modern, there’s also our comprehensive list of the best battle royale games.