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.
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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