Final Thoughts

While everyone will have their own take on Wolfenstein, it has to be said that the multiplayer experience is quite sloppy. The game just doesn't feel right to us, which is surprising given id Software's previous track which often set the benchmark for a superb multiplayer experience. It's hard to describe what is wrong with Wolfenstein, but to us it feels laggy, the movement is a little off.

Perhaps this unpolished multiplayer gameplay explains a few of the performance issues we encountered. Although it's very possible that the next batch of ATI and Nvidia drivers will solve many of these issues, we feel id still has some work ahead of them. The extreme contrast issue that we experienced with ATI cards will likely be corrected with the next driver set. That said, it could also be Nvidia not displaying the game correctly and we are only putting ATI at fault here because we prefer the less radiant visuals of the GeForce cards.

The one saving grace for ATI was the excellent Crossfire support which saw the Radeon HD 4870 X2 taking charge once AA/AF settings were enabled. Unfortunately for those with a GeForce GTX 295 graphics card or SLI setup of some kind, Nvidia's multi-GPU technology is disabled in Wolfenstein at this point in time. While testing we tried to create a profile and force the various rendering modes, but that just made things worse.

Those looking to play Wolfenstein in all of its visual glory with heavy AA/AF settings enabled should look to either the GeForce GTX 285, GTX 275 or the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Once Nvidia works out SLI support, the GeForce GTX 295 will become the pack leader no doubt given what we saw from the GTX 260 and GTX 275.

The Radeon HD 4870 and 4890 were a disappointment and we hope a future driver upgrade will improve their performance.

For now Wolfenstein appears to be a fun single player game (we yet have to play through it all) that provides an average multiplayer experience that will likely need a few bugs ironed out before we can really get excited about it.