Backlog Beatdown: Stoning Wolves (I think) with Wolfenstein 3D

Over the last few months I’ve re-discovered GOG.com, which promotes and sells older games as well as some newer titles. I’ve found a lot of games on there that I enjoyed when I was younger and are for the most part a pleasure to go back and play now. One game that I had been aware of and had never played was Wolfenstein 3D, and when it came up as part of a special offer, I thought I would try it.

These Blue guys were the SS, and took a lot of
shooting to drop - they also had automatic weapons.

Wolfenstein 3D is fondly regarded as the Grandfather of First Person Shooter games, and with good reason. First Person games existed before it was released in 1992, but this was the first time it had featured fast-paced action and thrills. It was a piece of innovation by id Software, who were at the top of their game in terms of pushing design, hardware and conceptions. Set in the era of the Second World War, you play as B.J. Blazkowicz, an Allied spy who has been captured in the titular Castle Wolfenstein, and your mission is to run and gun your way through the castle and complete crucial missions against the Nazis.

What this amounted to was running through the levels and shooting all the enemies; there were nine levels to each episode and each episode had a boss. The version of the game I downloaded had six episodes in total, the latter three being prequels, so there was plenty of content. But with a game this old, the question must be: Does it still hold up?

Zombie mutants packed a
surprising punch...

And the answer is this: Yes it does, but you have to consider what was going on at the time it was developed and released. Military shooters are ten-a-penny now, and even at the time it didn’t take long for this craze in game development to begin flooding the market with what were (perhaps derogatively) called Doom clones, but in 1992, nothing like this had been done before. Five different enemy types, three different weapons and levels designed on a flat grid might not seem like much these days, but at the time, exploring these things in a 3D environment was something new, exciting and fresh. Also, using Nazis as your principle enemies might have seemed like a straightforward choice, but the addition of Nazi symbolism and propaganda throughout the game, not to mention the opportunity to kill Hitler himself, was a hitherto unexplored and controversial design decision.

Who wouldn't want to kill Hitler?

Perhaps even more impressive, and why I feel it remains a good game, was the way the development team – which was only about four or five people – managed to make it work within their limitations. Yes, you only had three weapons, but if you found the Chain Gun, (the best of the three,) you had to be very careful with managing your resources as the rapid rate of fire would drain your ammo very quickly. There were only five enemy types (not counting the bosses,) but each enemy presented its own challenge and needed strategic thinking in order to defeat, especially when they started appearing in significant numbers. Finally, while the levels could only be designed on a flat grid, there was a massive amount of thought put in to their design, and except for a couple of clangers, the layout of each level was bang on point. Secrets areas with ammo, health and treasure were your reward for exploration; the rest of it was claustrophobic and challenging on usually the right level.

Wolfenstein 3D doesn’t look particularly good these days, and while the gun sound effects were meaty enough, the voices were tinny and distorted (more to do with the hardware limitations of the time than anything else.) But – and I’ve said it before – all the bells, whistles and graphics in the world can’t replace good level design and a solid core gameplay loop. It runs fine in DOSbox, and I didn’t run in to any compatibility issues. With that in mind, if you like first-person action games, you could do far worse than try Wolfenstein 3D to experience the core of this style of game – and make up your own mind as to how little or far video games have come since 1992.

Final Score: 4/5: Great game.

Last Week's Games: My Game Buying Analytics

This edition of the blog is going to take a decidedly Non-Gamey tone, since very little of it is to do with playing games. Most of it is the analytics I have been flagellating myself with all week. I will put some game bits in the start, but if you aren’t interested in anything I’ve got to say about my large and probably insurmountable game collection you can close the web page after the next paragraph.

I carried on with my usual games of The Horus Heresy: Legions and Rayman: Legends; games that I use mainly to pass time between jobs and things I need to be doing but are fun nonetheless, if better enjoyed in short bursts than extended gaming sessions! I also had a go with Chaos Gate, trying to beat one of the optional levels without losing any Space Marines. I didn’t get very far with that one. Finally, I continued playing Wolfenstein 3D and, for reasons that will become obvious in a moment, managed to drive myself to beat it. The review will be coming up on Friday, but I will say as one last snide remark that, brutally difficult though that last level was obviously designed to be, if I hadn’t looked up the map on a guide and found that secret area, I’d never have got past the second room.

Something to aspire to?
Or an addiction-based problem?

Watching far too many YouTube videos has made me aware of a vast multitude of games that I want to at least try. I’ve always owned too many video games, but that fact has been kicked into overdrive once I discovered Steam and its Wishlist system. To explain, if you find a game you are interested in on the Store page you can add it to your Wishlist. At some point, a game will usually go on sale and you can get it for a significantly reduced price. When this happens to a game on your Wishlist, Steam will send you an email telling you so, tempting you to buy the game. Being able to buy a lot of games for a relatively small amount of money tugs at my addictive nature, and this is how I’ve ended up with several hundred of the things – many of which I have never played. The fact that I now have the option to do this on GOG does nothing to help this issue.

At some point last week, I decided to count my games. I already keep track of what games I own on an excel document, so it was simply a case of working it out from the numbers in the margin. Having counted them, I then decided to total how many of them I’ve played, how many of them I’ve beaten and how many I’ve completed 100%.

At the time of writing, I own 834 video games, have played 415 of them, beaten 106 of them and completed 34 of them. And that’s if I haven’t missed any of them. Also keep in mind that this doesn’t consider all the video games I have ever owned, as many of them went to trade-ins at some point. Some of them I managed to beat, some I didn’t, but at some point, I decided I wasn’t going to play them again and traded them; that information isn’t displayed here.

I had originally intended to display the graphs I’d done as a result of this, but when I’d finished writing the first draft of the blog and read it back along with the graphs, I really didn’t come out of it well at all. Suffice to say, I own too many video games and should play some more of them at least to the end credits! I’m not saying I will never display that information, but I’d rather do it at a point where I have something more positive to say about it, e.g. if next year shows any significant improvement in my spending and gaming habits. The final chart, where I ran the number of games I’d bought and beaten throughout the years, was a particular eye-opener, and I’m hoping to see an improvement in what it’s telling us for next year.

So, back to it!

Last Week's Games: Museum Rush, Colonization, Army of Two

I’m going to start this week by talking about a game I’d forgotten to mention in the previous one: Museum Rush. My brother bought this for my birthday, so Kirsty and I thought we’d give it a go. This is a delightful little game in which you play as thieves trying to steal exhibits from a museum by sneaking around, cracking codes, avoiding the guards and making as little noise as possible. The player who’s stolen the most valuable goods at the end of the game is the winner. The board is created by cards, so you get a different one each time, and it’s surprising how claustrophobic it can feel when you know one of your actions will trigger the guards! There are some advanced rules about the different characters you can play, stashing goods and buyers who will pay better than the standard rate for a certain piece of artwork, but we didn’t use these; they appear to be designed to add to the game mechanics and Kirsty and I thought it would be better to learn them first! I would raise some questions about the build quality of some of the components – the cards began to scuff almost straight away (and we were playing on a bed!) and the miniatures representing some of the thieves look like they’ll snap off their bases if somebody breathes on them too hard. But we had a good time with it! 

I spent a surprising amount of time playing Sid Meier’s Colonization. I’d this played before back in March; stopped playing for some reason and thought I’d give it another go. I’ve got quite a long way into the game now – roughly 10 hours – and I’m… well, I have no idea how I’m doing, to be honest, because there’s little means of measuring such things. I’m playing as the English this time (lead by Hugh Bonneville – see my previous coverage) and I’ve managed to establish seven or eight colonies around the middle of the map. Most of these I have taken from the French or the Dutch, and while the Dutch haven’t given me much trouble, the French have not taken the losses of their colonies lightly and they fight me tooth and nail to get them back. I seem to have remained friends with the Spanish so far – largely because they occupy the bottom third of the map that I don’t have a lot of interest in at this point. My colonies are up to a standard, which is just as well because I will be on the front line when the time comes to declare independence and hopefully defeat the European forces. I’m not able to do that yet though! I have no ships apart from your starting ship, and I doubt I have the numbers to repel a sustained attack. I wonder whether, in hindsight, I would have been better addressing some of the issues from the beginning – producing liberty bells, for example – but I haven’t come this far to start again. This time, win or lose, I hope to see it through until the end!

Finally, I played Army of Two on the Xbox 360. I bought this game in 2015 (I keep track of these things, what of it?) and played it for a while before getting in to something else. I didn’t touch it for a long time after that; it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it at all, but a modern military shooter just wasn’t what I was in to at that point. I’m enjoying it now, though. It’s a 3^rd person action game about a couple of private security mercenaries who get caught up in a conspiracy. It sounds quite generic and to a certain extent it is, but the game’s gimmick is the dynamic between you and your partner. You can use him to distract the enemy or attack them while you do the same, and unlike many AIs this one’s reasonably competent. He will take out enemies efficiently, not wait for you to do it. It’s been a fun game so far, and I’m not too far from the end now so we’ll see how it works out.

Until next week!

Last Week's Games: Fallout 4, Putty Squad and Legacy of Dorn: Herald of Oblivion

I spent most of last week playing games that, for me at least, were new…

Fallout 4 had been talked up by the various pundits I follow on YouTube, and I’ve always enjoyed the Fallout games to a certain extent though I’ve only seen one of them through to the end (Fallout 3, if you want to know,) so I bought it last year and have just got around to playing it! I’m enjoying it so far, the settlements bring something new to the series and I also like how the VATs system doesn’t stop the game completely, forcing you to make snap decisions as to where to call your shots. The plot is interesting, starting before the nuclear war and showing a time where everything was all sweetness and light, though it gets dark very quickly. I don’t know that I’ll be able to suspend my disbelief that, on a quest to find your son, you quickly get side-tracked in to doing quests for Non-Player Characters, but heading straight to the place I was told he was resulted in me getting killed as it was too high-level for my character, forcing you to “game” it and build up your skills and hit points.

Screenshot taken from a version I don't have.

I’m also not sure about levelling up; as with previous games, you level up and pick a perk, except that in Fallout 4 all the perks are shown from the beginning along with the characteristic it relates to. You can also choose to increase a statistic. This doesn’t restrict you too much to begin with but later the perks become tied up in your abilities being at a certain level. I find this to be a double-edged sword: on one hand it stops you choosing perks that it wouldn’t make sense for your character to be able to do; on the other hand, with all the perks mapped out it’s hard to justify aiming for them either, which I find a little more restrictive. But I’ll keep going and see what we get.

Bright and colourful, like every game should be.

I bought Putty Squad on the PS4 completely blind; I had no idea what it was or whether it was any good. My motivation for buying is that I wanted something I could play when my three-year-old daughter was around. Most games I play have mature themes, and while I don’t necessarily buy into the idea that video games cause children to be disturbed or violent, I want her to enjoy them as well – which she’s not going to do if I’m trudging through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, as she can’t relate to that in any meaningful way! So I had a go with Putty Squad. My first impression was that it was a PS1 game, given the graphics, frame rates and game-play which must at least have come from a time prior to controls being standardised! I wasn’t far off; the original game was released on the Super Nintendo. It’s interesting; you play as a blob of putty who is trying to rescue his putty friends. It’s a platforming game with a lot to do and an unconventional control system, but I couldn’t help but wonder what it was doing as a physical release on the PlayStation 4!

Lictors...

A while ago I bought Legacy of Dorn: Herald of Oblivion. I played it this week; if you could imagine Space Hulk as a choose your own adventure book, it’s basically that. It’s presented well, and has you initially searching for your squad on the space hulk. There’s a basic combat system that has more in common with things like Phantasy Star than anything else, and an odd Purity system where certain choices are restricted depending on how you’ve conducted yourself in the plot. However, as the former resulted in a cheap death (if your combat system relies on random number generation, don’t put a turn limit on the battles!) I didn’t remain engaged for long.

I carried on with Wolfenstein 3D too; I’m not far from the end of the game now. I’ve not got much more to say about it so I’m going to try to beat it and leave any future remarks for a review, but I’m glad I’m still enjoying it!

Last Week's Games: Wolfenstein 3D, Open TTD, Kingpin and Chaos Gate

I’ve been playing several different games over the last couple of weeks, so if this blog seems a little longer it is because these notes cover two weeks rather than one!

They’ve mainly been on my laptop. I played a bit of Wolfenstein 3D, killing Hitler at the end of the third chapter and playing through the prequel campaigns; I’m about half way through them now. It’s an odd experience; I’ve been playing WWII-related games for many years now, and this is the first time I’ve killed Hitler!

I’ve found that because the game requires a certain amount of timing and skill to complete, this isn’t the sort of game where you can play it for ten hours and beat the whole thing. After about an hour and a half, my concentration drops, and I make silly mistakes that get me killed; at that point I find it’s best to drop the game for a little while and come back to it another day. But it’s nice to have that option!

Not exactly historically accurate, but fun nonetheless!

I’ve also found that with a few exceptions, the level design of the game is generally very good. The graphics must have been impressive for the time but were hardly the photo-realistic polygons we’ve come to expect now, the sound was tinny and distorted, and while the presentation was thematic and did the job, it’s basic. The design team at ID software were aware of this and had to really concentrate on making the game playable – which they have, without a doubt. They might only have one level of view and and three guns to play with, but they designed the levels and challenges to really get the most out of their limited resources. So apart from a couple of clangers (one of the levels require you to find a secret in order to find the key, which when the secret areas are not telegraphed very well is a significant challenge, that you’ll only really achieve by luck rather than judgement. Or read a guide, like I did. It’s not fun to press the activate button on every wall on a huge stage on the off chance you’ll get the right one!) the game is designed very well.

I carried on with my game of Open TTD and I’ve realised some of the problems you can run in to when running a transport network consisting mainly of road vehicles – they get old and need replacing. I’m playing on a large map and I have a lot of road vehicles; it takes time and it is a massive faff. It’s part of the game, I suppose, and it gives you the option to replace those vehicles with improved versions, but I wish there was some way to automate the replacement! I’ve also reached a point in the game where some of the supplying businesses start to close; I’ve noticed it mainly with oil: there comes a point where the primary business doesn’t operate anymore, and a lot of the transport designed around it becomes redundant. Rerouting your entire network to compensate is a challenge!

Of course, as Kingpin was released in 1999, the
character models are absolutely hideous.

There were some other games as well. A while ago I bought Kingpin: Life of Crime, plus a couple of older Games Workshop games, Final Liberation and Chaos Gate. I’ll go in to specifics in a minute but for now let me say that as I downloaded these games from GOG, all three of them required fiddling around with the game files to run. This involved looking for advice from the community, finding out what patches I need, and making sure they were in the game files. Kingpin wouldn’t boot at all until I’d installed a patch, and Chaos Gate wouldn’t proceed past the point where I’d launched the mission because apparently it can’t handle particularly long file paths, so I had to make a new directory for it. Final Liberation was a little easier to fix; for some reason it doesn’t want to play the videos, so I had to go into the configuration file to disable them. This is a little sad as some of those videos were brilliant; not technically wonderful but the actors and producers were clearly in to what they were doing! I got them all working eventually but this is not something I expect to have to do with a product I’ve bought from a game distributor on the understanding that it will work.

I wasn’t too impressed with Kingpin, actually. From the marketing, I was expecting a kind of Grand Theft Auto without the cars, where you build up your criminal empire and take on the people who betrayed you. In fact, it’s a difficult shooter with some shopping and recruiting. I didn’t get far in to it; maybe it gets better at some point but starting a game like this with no weapons and being surrounded by enemies who are at least on par with you and often much tougher made the game frustratingly difficult.

The rest of the squad are in the Thunderhawk...

Chaos Gate was a lot of fun, though. It’s a Warhammer 40K squad-based tactics game, and I’m a lot better at them now than I was when I originally bought the game in 1999 so I set it on the middle difficulty rather than the easy mode I would usually look for back then! The graphics look a bit “Second Edition,”[1] and while the weapons make the right noises, I’m not sure how I feel about firing the rocket launcher and seeing the impact of it with absolutely nothing in between, but the game itself is pretty good if a little clunky. It must be one of the first games I played with a Permadeath function; if your squad members get killed, there’s no replacing them at all in the campaign. It even has an Iron Man mode, which I haven’t touched yet. I’ve got to the second mission, but I can’t seem to get through it without at least one squad member dying; I’ll keep trying though!

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[1] If you know, you know.