Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

Title screen from the PC-98 version.

Name:Wolfenstein 3D
Number:255
Year:1992
Publisher:Apogee Software (among others)
Developer:Id Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:7 hours 20 minutes
Won:Yes (114W/83L)

A while since I first covered it and feeling considerably wiser about myself, I return to Wolfenstein knowing that this is going to be a unique take. I wasn't very positive about the game last time and this hasn't changed as I've played through this. Every time I return to Wolfenstein I get less and less happy about it. This is not a hopeful playthrough.

Part of the problem is that when you're ten and you've played maybe three FPS, the flaws of this game aren't important. It's just a genuinely cool style of gameplay and who cares if it isn't perfect? Then you return after some games under your belt, and maybe it isn't as good as you remember, but whatever, it's still basically the first FPS. A little later, okay, maybe there are like ten before it.

Now though? Now looking back there are like 50. Some of them are more far afield, but others are pretty close to what this game does and some are even very good games in their own right. This paints, in my opinion, less the picture that Wolfenstein 3D is something special and more that it came at the right place, at the right time, and with the right distribution method, the shareware model.

I'm going to be doing something a bit different, which is general observations followed by my thoughts as I play through various ports, mostly source ports. While looking this up, I realized that most of the console ports and the Macintosh port are actually different games to a certain degree. This is unfortunate, but does give me an excuse to play source ports over console/computer ports.

Wolfenstein 3D does not really change much from Catacomb 3D. You move with the arrows, strafe with the alt key, shoot with ctrl. Where it differs is how you get a weapon select rather than being able to press a button to use a weapon. Speed differs between ports, but usually you can run faster with shift. Whether this turns gives you a reasonable speed or just shoots you across the map depends on the version. Source ports tend to crank this up to Doom levels, which in this game is quite distracting.

A typical screen.

Where Wolfenstein 3D differs is in slightly odd ways. Secrets are pushwalls, walls you push to reveal secrets. There are others, but I'm pretty sure these all are games derived from this one. The other is the odd way that turning around looks. This was present in Hovertank and Catacomb, but here it's a lot more noticeable, thanks to how carefully looking over walls is more important. You can kind of cheat by looking around a wall in a way that doesn't quite make sense. Kind of cheating, since you're liable to get shot by anyone you spot.

There's also how every fight has inherit risk in it. Everyone's shots could practically kill someone, or they could just hurt them a little bit. It's about half distance and half where you aim the gun. Hit dead center and you do better than a corner shot. The AI aims perfectly, so you control how much damage they do solely by distance. In a sense, it's trying to make a weakspot without really programming in weakspots.

The focus on treasure and score, too, differs from what we now know, but for a while, this sort of thing was expected. What makes this a bit odd is that it ties into the lifes system. As you can constantly save and load, this is not much of a problem, so those glowing orbs which give you an extra life aren't much of a reward...except that they also give you health and ammo.

Enemies and weapons are very simple. Your weapons change solely based on firing rate, while the enemies all fall into easy archetypes. There's some minor changes with the later, but for the most part, this is true.
 

The knife is so rarely used that I actually had to just randomly switch to it for this screenshot.

I'm probably not the first one to mention this, but I'm annoyed at how the knife works. It alerts enemies when you use it. I realize the use case, but it's a lot more satisfying to stab an enemy in the back then to use it to aggro a bunch of guards towards you. Granted, considering this game, it's rare to ever stab someone, but still, it would be nice to have it as an options beyond desperation.

 

In retrospect, it might not be a Luger, and instead be some weird Frankenstein pistol.

The remaining weapons are a Luger pistol, a MP-40 SMG, and a gatling gun of some sorts. It's disappointing that the only real variation is in how many bullets you spray out at once, it would be nice if there was something else. That said, I dig how the Luger and MP-40 work, even if this is the era where there isn't enough animation for weapons. Lugers, as far as most pistols go, has a unique action which looks really cool in a game.

Another Frankenstein-esque gun, but at least this is because there's no real handheld mini-gun from this era.

But the gatling gun (really a weird mini-gun), that gets on my nerves a bit. I'm not opposed to having a gatling gun. There's an argument to made for having a gun which just shoots so many bullets that you turn your foe into a fine paste. In an arsenal. It's not in an arsenal, it's just a faster SMG. Here it loses that cool factor for me, since it's probably about as fast as a MP-40 should actually be.

There should be something else. A rifle, a shotgun, a rocket launcher or even some sort of weird sci-fi weapon. None of these things are arcane knowledge. There have been FPS games with these before. The only one ID themselves didn't already do something similar to at this point is the shotgun, and that's only because we think of shotguns as using buckshot, not slugs. (yeah, I know Dangerous Dave, not quite the same thing in practice here) If we expand it to everything a FPS could have at this point in time, then imagination is truly the limitation.

I know we get some of those in ports and upgrades, but this is generally supposed to be the default, plain Wolfenstein 3D, or at least with all six episodes. It's lacking, and I do not feel that any argument that can be made for this excuses it.

Enemies fall into the usual basic categories but have behavior which separates them from others in that category. And to begin with, no enemies have ambient noises. Once they've shouted their alert sound, the only sound they'll make until they're dead is a gunshot or opening a door.

I only need to take one screenshot of an enemy! Things will be fine...

Dogs despite being your typical melee enemy in theory, differ in a few behaviors. Enemies in Wolfenstein can either be standing still or patrol an area, except the dogs. They're always supposed to be patrolling. They're not really trouble, even in packs, but perhaps this is just because the game doesn't really know what to do with them compared to say, a demon from Doom. It helps that in all respects, a dog is weak.

A rare guard all on his own.

Guards, that brown-clothed standard enemy. Shoots at you and drops ammo. Weak for the most part, but capable of really hurting you if you get unlucky, thanks to how the bullet system works. Since they're noticeably slow on the draw, it is a matter of poor luck.

It's early yet, so one of these guys on their lonesome isn't too hard.

SS, blue guards with MP-40s. They drop it if you don't have one yet. They shoot swiftly at you so long as you're within their sight, but like the guards, they're slow on the draw. That said, they take more bullets to kill, so if there's one with other enemies and you don't have a machine gun, maybe hide a bit. Machine gun fire hurts.

A pair of mutants, one hiding behind the other.

Mutants, or zombies as I've called them in the past, are grey dudes with machine guns sticking out of their chest. These guys are nasty to fight, they have no alert sound and they're a bit stronger than the SS otherwise. Despite never showing up during the more annoying levels, they really show the spirit this game has. Gotta be careful not to get shot in the back, because if you aren't careful, they absolutely will shoot you in the back.

Officers start showing up in Episode 3, and boy howdy, do they make an impression. They have very fast reaction time. More than the player. If one is behind a door and spots you, you are getting shot if you don't get away. They aren't dealing a little damage either, you can get killed by poor luck. Their appearance amps up the difficulty of the game and not in a bad way. In any given scenario, they're the target to take on.

It's less about being quick on the draw in general and more about knowing where an enemy will be when you enter a room...for the first three episodes. There are several tricks to figuring out where an enemy could be in a room and how to avoid their opening shot...unless they're right behind a door or next to the hole you've entered in, in which case get shot.

I'll just hit the highlights of each episode as I go through them. Going in, I distinctly recall issues with level length and secrets coming off as obtuse. In theory this is supposed to have a limited scope and be fast, but in practice I found that levels were considerably longer than they should have been.

I'll be playing all versions on the third difficulty, Bring 'em On. That's the default, and after playing through the first level on both that and Don't Hurt Me, the third feels right. Even if I'm going to seriously regret it on the later episodes.

PC-98:

I was expecting something a bit different than the DOS version, but in Japanese. Which I guess it is. There are enough differences to drive me a little crazy. A sound effect here and there which is different, no menu or opening music. That said, I can have PC-98 sounds with Soundblaster music which is...different. Difficulties have slightly different names, but Death Incarnate is now "I am Unkillable!" or as I would prefer to translate it, "My Body is Unkillable." The third is now, "From Somewhere, Bring it On!". The first is now just a childish way of asking if the player can play and the second is the same.

Starting it up, on the first floor you can really see why this was at the right place at the right time. Even on a machine I've played a lot of poorly designed crap on, this runs buttery smooth and you can start shooting people within seconds. Which, when you get down to it, is something that gets you bang in with a lot of cases. Within five seconds of starting the game, you can shoot someone dead. Not a lot of games can say that.

But, that said, going for the secret floor pretty quickly brings the strengths down. Wolfenstein is best when every floor is quick and painless, with maybe a few challenges. E1L10 is a slog of a floor playing to the game's weaknesses, large, labyrinths where you never know where it is you're supposed to go. For the most part, here the game is keeping to the usual tract of not forcing the player to open secrets to progress, or making those secrets entirely random to find.

There's at least some slack here, simply because F10 is a secret floor and is tossing enough treasure at you for it to matter. Even regular floors, which quickly turn into labyrinths, aren't too bad. I feel like I'm fighting against the game, but there are some aspects which help the levels out. For instance, one set of rooms comes off as a dining room, complete with kitchen, area for the dogs, and a restroom. Like, they use the barrels as the toilet. ID Software really lost someone special when they got rid of Tom Hall.

I know this is supposed to be a prison of sorts, but it's really strange how every level has the same kind of cells with the blue stone. Oh, here's this section again, without fail. I'm also starting to wonder if me making it through more labyrinths has less to do with anything with the game being better than I remember or me now knowing how useful the "hug the right/left wall" trick from dungeon crawling RPGs.

Floor 4 put me in an interesting situation. In an unlucky encounter with a blue Nazi, I ended up low on health. As I continued onward, I opened fire into a large room, without considering the potential problems. Gotta say, more than anything else, I like sections like this in this game. Where you aren't chasing after, but are being chased. There's a tension you don't quite get in modern games, since here, the only noise enemies make is either getting alerted or shooting you. The only ambient sound is that of doors opening and closing in the distance. Hope you didn't leave too many dead guys in doors. This player hunting aspect works to the game's strengths a lot more than it does on the regular.

There are a lot of secrets which you really have no way of finding short of just hammering the walls with space. Some part of this, I imagine, would be easier if I had a map, but that was something that wasn't included until later. A few, well, you can guess, but the simple method of just looking for oddities in the walls has quickly become useless. This wouldn't be a problem, except a lot of the time there's limited supplies outside of the secrets.

Floor 7 is one of the more interesting levels here. It takes advantage of the engine ability to show great distances without slowing down. Near the start there's a big corridor, with openings on the side blocked off by pillars. First glance down, and you won't even notice it, but there's a horde of guards hiding behind the pillars. Walk by, and you'll get shot at. Further examination of the area and you can find your way onto the other side of these pillars. It's one of the few really cool levels here. Even if I did end up missing the key on my first time through.

Hans Grosse is kind of an odd boss fight. Even assuming you're doing pistol starts, there's a secret weapon cache off to the side of the main area. You're always going to be at 100% unless you ignore them for some reason. In order to fight him, you basically have to go right up to him, since he's behind a closed door. He seems to have no pain state and shreds you in a few shots, but at the very least, if you do hit him, he doesn't take that many bullets to take out. There's enough cover that this isn't a problem, but it does come off as underwhelming.

The PC-98 version is nothing special. It's Wolfenstein 3D in Japanese, you already know if you wanted that or not before I even opened my mouth.

Acorn Archimedes:
I'd just like to point out that this is an Archimedes title, at least the first release and won't work in the later RISC machines. Since the whole line of computers gets lumped together, because sometimes Archimedes titles will work on RISC machines. It was also published by Powerslave, which is a bit amusing in retrospect.

Right from the get-go, this version is very different from DOS. There's a James Bond-esque intro I've never seen before, then the opening music has very different instrumentation from the DOS version. There is also a horrendous amount of loading. The version I got running for the A3000 range, because the other rip kept failing, required three disk changes before the title screen even loaded. Talk about encouraging a HD install.

I will note that this has a few errors I still couldn't work around. For instance, the sound is really, really low. Even on the lowest volume for music it still drowns it out. There's no way to change the sound volume. The second is that BJ turns really slowly for some reason. This makes the game a lot harder than it should be.

The whole thing is subtly different. I'm sure this is all just necessary color choices for the system and some weird issues that nobody notices because why play Wolfenstein 3D on an Archimedes? It all feels like the setup to a creepypasta, but I'm just going through something that's been practically lost in the shuffle of much better ports and systems. Just gotta be careful when I'm done and turn down the volume or else hyperrealistic blood is going to pour out of my ears. Despite the errors, I think that this strangeness makes this an interesting port.

Operation: Eisenfaust doesn't change much about the overall gameplay, except now there are silent mutants. Not just the now soft-spoken characters of this game, but they only have shooting and dying sounds. This level just drops you in on them, go the wrong way at the start and you end up fighting four guarding the exit. So the second time I end up fighting two guarding a secret with the gatling gun.

The music in this version, combined with all the changes, makes this a strange experience. The music here is more of a dirge than the usual Adlib-esque stuff. Imagine wandering around a castle floor without the cheery Adlib soundtrack, but instead a funeral dirge. It's a strange change. It feels appropriate, somehow, given the slower movement.

Floor 10, which once again is reached from the first floor, come on, is one of those levels where there isn't that much "real" level and instead there's just a ton of secret stuff. Secrets within secrets. It's a cool thing, even if I would like there to be a different color wall once in a while.

Wolfenstein 3D, as only the Acorn Archimedes can depict it.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. This version is ready to crash at the drop of a hat. Hit F1 in gameplay and you're liable to crash the game. Play more than one level a session, crash. If you saved after going through two? Save file is corrupted, but it will let you continue. At first, then I had to look up how to levelskip in this version...which still didn't work. I'm not sure where along the way this error is occurring, emulation, disk rips or the files themselves, but this is apparently a known problem with some user levelsets in this version.

Floor 2 is where the game goes a bit off the rails. Because the game's corruption recovery system is to just dump you in a level as if you just started on that level, I'm pistol starting against some mutants. Who are very difficult to take out with the pistol. I go one way, get worn down because there's no health, I go the other, likewise. On my third attempt, I find a room leading to a nice big secret area.

Except it keeps going, and going. Another big room with secrets within secrets, okay. It has regular enemies and enough supplies, so it strikes me as weird...until I eventually get a key. That can be a cool idea, but something feels off about this. Then I find the door and reach the elevator down. The game which was supposed to be beatable without finding a secret wall has already broken that room. At least said secret is obvious, but it feels dirty.

Floor 3 consistently crashes the game whenever I fire it up, and the level skip code isn't working, so I have to play the entire episode in one session. Oh, good. This has some odd enemy behavior, apparently there are four guys in a crossroad near the start, and none of them are programmed to go after you before seeing you, even as you gun down their compatriots.

Floor 4 violates another general design flaw, enemies right when you start the level, rendering a save at the start useless. This one's really bad because it's a mutant right on top of you and there are at least six around the area when you start. This version is already tense because you can't be too sure you haven't activated more enemies than you want and you do not turn around well. I died, which made this even worse. Not worse in a bad sense, but worse in a difficult sense. I am digging this, even if it seems like it wouldn't be the same.

That said, this level doesn't seem to have any MP-40s or gatling guns lying around, the only thing before the end seems to be a random SS soldier in an easily missable room. I cheated, but it takes some skill to beat this on a pistol start considering there's easily dozens of mutants on this level. Multiple mutants and a pistol is a good way to die. I did, however, miss most of the secrets and I bypassed this by just using one of the two cheats available to me...a full supplies one. Not even a reduce health cheat works, only full supplies and no clip, for some strange reason.

The slow turning combined with this episode's love of making enemies hide in niches creates an interesting play through the game. It's not quite stealth or even a more tactical approach, more like a very careful one. Slowly approach the niche from such a way that you don't get shot in the back from another on the other side, or go into open view of both, and then back up. It's not like, say, a side-scroller where an enemy on the other side would just keep firing at you while you couldn't get in without getting shot.
 

Floor 6 is much like floor 4, and once again I end up getting caught in this trap. Enemies at the start, die, then give myself full supplies. Even if I weren't afraid that a random crash would cause me to lose this playthrough, I would find this incredibly annoying. This floor is actually bad in general too, because in order to advance, you have to find a key in a maze which, is easy to skip over because it looks like some small niche. Not a secret, just a niche. This isn't just an annoying maze, no, this is the kind of maze you can easily find yourself lost in. Also, it throws two level exit doors at you at the end, one of which contains mutants.

Floor 7 starts off strangely. Small area, a locked door right away with a key in a nearby room and then the exit. On a normal level? Okay, this is obviously a trap. That's what this episode has been about, trapping the player in bullcrap they couldn't possibly avoid. Haha, well, I noticed the last level, I'm going to find the secret which allows me to go around this.

And I do...it's an actual level. No sign of the fake exit leading to a trap though. Eventually ending up in another area which looks like the last level and has quite a few Nazi corpses. Considering this version, it feels cursed. Very, very, cursed...and it's just an area with a few orbs and some mutants...the actual exit was right all along. Huh.

Floor 8 has the infamous Aardwolf maze. Without knowing that this thing is a contest, I wonder what people thought of this? Did they think there was some awesome treasure hidden in it? Did they find one of the Hans Grosses hidden inside and then give up? Or just give up a few moments in. This version keeps the Aardwolf sign in, which is amusing considering that not only is this a later version of the game, it's the second on this system. Nor does Apogee have anything to do here. You might have zero context for what's going on here.

That said, there's also the moderately amusing section near the end. After you've gotten the final key, it opens two doors. One leads to the exit, the other is just a room full of mutants, guarding some meals and ammo. Not really needed, just an amusing thing. 

Finally, the boss level. Two secrets, one with a lot of ammo and a gatling gun, the other with a lot of health items. The boss, Dr. Schabbs, has a few mutants before you meet him. He, himself, however, is easier than other bosses. He still has the same problem where you don't know if you're hitting him, but he's throws easy to dodge items at you. I'm only really in danger if I press ctrl+alt and left or right together.

I would recommend this for players more familiar with the game interested in playing a cursed version of the game. We really don't get subtly wrong versions of games like this. You're not coming into this expecting anything you normally would from Wolfenstein 3D. Anyone else should avoid it.

Wolf4SDL:
I was going to talk about the 30th Anniversary upgrade/levelset, but what I didn't realize going in was that it added in weapons to the base game. Not actually sure what this did going in, but after playing it, it seems to be a simple enough Windows port. It runs smoothly enough, and seems to be doing a vanilla-type deal. Against it, I couldn't alt-tab out of it or run it in a windowed mode. (I am looking up things if I can't find the way out, but that's only happened once, along with which levels lead to the secret ones) 

 

Die, Fuhrer, Die adds in officers, but for the most part I haven't got much to say about it. Nothing for a while is getting on my nerves, and secrets, while I'm not getting 100%, are reasonable. It's actually my favorite episode so far, outside of this port giving me motion sickness. Might be because I'm playing Wolfenstein 3D in relatively high resolution, compared to the past two, which I ran windowed. Something optimized for 320x200 isn't going to look that good at 1900x1080. Suffice to say, I would not recommend this version. 

There's persistent sort of trap these early levels are doing, you'll get guards and a few officers alerted as normal when you fire, but SS will just hang around. Waiting for you. Not bad, a bit good actually, if you weren't careful like I am, you'd get caught off-guard easily. But for the most part, I don't really have anything noteworthy to say up until floor 4.

Remember how Episode 2 broke the whole "no secrets required to progress" bit of information? Episode 3 breaks it too, but in a really strange way. After getting the second key, you end up at a pushwall. I don't understand the propose of either of these when just making it obvious enough that you should try it. There was no point in making either of these secrets, but this is just silly. 

Floor 5 isn't really odd, but it does highlight how difficult some sections can be if you don't find a gatling gun. Officers are regularly kicking my butt, I'm not being quick enough on the draw to get out of the way of them when they're behind a door. Out in the open, eh, I can handle those. Usually, but here they're coming in multiple numbers among groups of enemies that I'm starting to get overwhelmed.
 

Floor 6 was actually really fun. A lot of tense moments. The area around the start has three doors, so you know you aren't finding a secret there. Near there, however, is a room with pillars, always fun, but the game is just nasty enough to let you fret over it without there being a real threat...until you open fire. Then the officers become alert. There's a way behind them, of course.

Then there's the maze, a endless series of blue steel walls, which I didn't take any screenshots of. Another one of those things that feels like it would be really annoying to deal with in real life. I got damaged by a random officer, so this was a very tense experience. Constantly going through corners, hoping not to find anything tougher than a guard...and getting my wish at the end. I know at some point someone tried to push all the walls in this maze, only to be rewarded with nothing. (I looked it up afterwards, I was curious) At the end, there's a beautiful set of treasure, gatling gun, full heal and a key. Naturally, if you just rush in, you'll get shot by the two officers in niches on the entrance. I was smart...then got shot by a random officer in a later area. Also, if you go through an area full of blue walls then look at an area full of red ones, it hurts your eyes.

Floor 7 has nothing too out of the ordinary in the regular level. A nice big area with a few dudes, some of which would give you trouble if you pistol started. But this is the path to the secret level, and the secret level is at the end of a long maze. As in, so long that after a while I stopped checking corners for hostiles and kept returning to the start. I checked a map online just to make sure I wasn't supposed to be looking for a secret. There isn't one, you just have to go far enough to reach a treasure room. There is the secret exit.

Floor 10 is Pac-Man in Wolfenstein 3D. Regular dots are chalices, while power pellets are orbs. It's a clever idea, but because the ghosts here are dumb and straight-forward, they clump up together soon enough. The real threat are the regular Wolfenstein enemies you might not expect to be at a random area off to the side. I kind of wish more games would have neat little secrets like this.

Floor 8 starts off with a blank room. If you guessed there's another pushwall you have to press to get out of here, you'd be correct. It's also a bit odd in that, you can make it 90% of the way to the end without ever realizing it. It's only a second locked door that prevents you from going straight to it. Just one of those usual oddities about this game.

Then we get our boss floor against Adolf Hitler. This isn't just a straight shot and then fight against a boss, it's a series of fights against mini-bosses combined with regular enemies. Before you can fight the man himself, you have to take care of floating Hitlers who shoot fireballs. It's unnerving, really. In an era where killing Hitler is a joke, a game where you keep killing him and keeping finding another one would come off as mockery. Yet here's the game that inspired that, and it isn't even a joke. 

Hitler himself is in a mecha suit and has a few officers around so you don't get complacent. By this point, I had pretty low health, but I managed to survive after having found a bunch of medikits in a big niche. Hitler has two gatling guns, so the convenient cover is how you'll avoid getting shot. As with all bosses, it's just a matter of hoping you haven't been missing.

There's not anything wrong with Wolf4SDL, but it just feels like an awkward between point. It isn't vanilla and it doesn't add in anything fancy like ECWolf or LZWolf. It's just sort of there, making me dizzy because BJ is turning around like a top.

LZWolf:
Now we have an automap and a windowed mode. The speed of BJ is now down to manageable levels and I'm not in danger of getting dizzy from spinning around too much. There's a whole bunch of other stuff added in, but this doesn't really apply to base Wolfenstein. I was going to play the GBA port, but lacked music and looked very bad. This from a system with a decent port of Doom, considering the hardware.

A Dark Secret begins the Nocturnal Missions, which are a prelude to the whole mutant business we just dealt with. There's nothing you can really do to the Axis in a WWII game once you've killed Hitler. Nobody cares about Mussolini and there's no real central figure in Japan to point at and say he deserves a horrific fictional death for his crimes against humanity. Individual crimes, sure, but not for the whole shebang.

Also, this is a plot to stop the Nazis from unleashing chemical weapons on the Allies, which goes to show that the boys at ID probably did five minutes of research, and all of those were spent looking up a picture of Hitler. Come to think of it, it's really odd that most of the treasure looks like it was looted from a Church. I'm not saying they didn't loot from Christians, but I am saying that maybe this loot should look a bit more Jewish? Since it was probably stolen from Jews?

Floor 1 is both typical and not so. It starts off modestly and typical enough, but it also turns into a quite typical later level. In many senses, it's the best opener so far. That said, I did get quite the nasty surprise, if an officer is just hanging out in a corner in a room you're about to enter, he will be able to shoot you before you see him.

Floor 2 is this big hallway around a central area, which despite it's relatively common premise, is a cool idea. Even if you end up shooting one guard then alerting what could be dozens. Lots of little cool ideas here, I like how for once I could be the guy shooting from behind the pillars at a bunch of unsuspecting rubes. There's also this one secret which seems not to lead anywhere, but based on past experience, I strongly suspect would have screwed me out of a secret I missed anyway.

Floor 3 is annoying. Not because there's anything wrong with it, plenty of ammo and health, normal numbers of enemies. It's annoying because there are basically no secrets. As I've said, I've been looking up where the secret levels are so I don't miss them, and this level is annoying in that there are two pushwalls. One which just allows you to ambush someone, the other is in a maze at the end.

Floor 10 is a giant series of one-block walls filled with treasure and officers. The idea, in theory, is that you can avoid the officers by going by areas with blood on the walls. In theory, eventually it just sort of puts you somewhere with no way to the exit. Another idea is that there's a secret near the start, complete with ammo, that you can hole up in as you take what is likely a hundred officers. I couldn't do that, so I just booked it for the one door and tried not to get shot.

Floor 4 has this weird set of hallways with dozens of pictures of Hitler on the wall and officers who ignore you shooting. Not a special level otherwise, but it is an unusual sight, even in a game full of unusual sights.

Floor 5 is by far the most annoying yet. Mazey, full of places where you can't easily deal with any ambushers, and worst of all, the keys are annoying to find. One of the keys is in a secret, which I did try for considering that I didn't have a gatling gun yet, but still. The other is in the usual small room you can accidentally overlook. This feels like a microcosm of everything wrong with Wolfenstein 3D-style level design, even if I liked the fake exits in theory.

Floor 8 breaks that by making worse behaviors that have been going on for a while. Officers, once in a while, are clever little guys who force you to consider each room carefully. Officers, as they've been used in these past few levels, have become something the game spams to the point that every room has become a chore to clean out.

Floor 9, rather than having the health and ammo troves in a secret, has them in locked doors. The keys are next to what can be described as a trap room, enter, and a dozen SS and officers start fighting you. The General, Otto something or another, shoots rockets at you and is comparatively easy compared to everything that has come before.

LZWolf was fine, but I'm really starting to feel this game's playtime. You can tell that they're starting to run out of good ideas and are just sort of filling out a whooping sixty levels of game. What I complained about at the start, mazey levels and secrets which force you to walk along every wall, are out in force here. We'll see if the next episode does any better.

ECWolf:
From what I can tell, almost exactly the same as LZWolf. Unlike LZWolf, it's still being updated.

Trail of the Madman starts us off with a new music track. Feels like most of the last two episodes have been the same old music from the first two episodes. This level is intentionally harder than previous openers, there are no health items until near the end, and there are certainly none hiding in secrets that I missed. This, combined with a number of harder enemies caused me to have to restart a couple times.

Floor 2 however, bucks the previous trend. On one door from the starting area is a series of barrels holding bad a horde of SS. Approach, and get slaughtered. Clearly, there's a secret somewhere which will allow me to enter there and take them out safer. So I cleared out the rest of the map, searching for any secrets...and finding nothing that leads behind the area before the exit. So, despite it all, I shot my way through this pressure point and somehow managed to take it. Complete victory on this level.

After two floors of what can only be described as simple, easy to play through levels with no real annoyances, Floor 5 throws out a half dozen guards at the starting point. After this, there's a definite "just throw a bunch of guys in a room" style to the level. Oddly, the map function screwed me a bit here when I was looking for the secret exit, it's on the far west side of the map, and I incorrectly assumed that there was nothing there.

Floor 10 is almost entirely unremarkable for a secret level. It's a series of long, snaking corridors full of treasure, with your only health being at the start and at two rooms in the middle of two corridors. One of which is the level exit. Surprisingly tricky, not really that unusual.

Floor 6 highlights one of the more unusual aspects of the game. Sometimes the game is set up so that enemies behind doors can hear your shots, and you spend a significant chunk of the level wondering if you're about to fight some guy who got alerted right at the start. Nice level for it though, tons of doors, so unless you block off every door, you shouldn't get blindsided. I also dig the big "outside"-esque hallway this has at the start.

I more or less cruise through the rest of the levels until the boss level. Even that is more odd than anything else. There's seemingly no secrets here, no machine guns save for a MP-40 you can get off a SS's corpse. The boss is Greta Grosse, Hans sister. She is almost exactly the same as him, except she's a woman. This arena provides plenty of cover and she's no trouble. The surprising real threat here is a surprise group of officers and SS just past the door she's guarding.

I've run out of patience for the game at this point, and won't be going through Episode 6. I know I'm missing out on what might just be the best secret level of the bunch, but I'm tired of seeing these walls and these guys and I'm ready to call it quits. Based on past experience, it'll either be more of the same or the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Now, contrary to what I thought, I hated the worst of it less than I thought I would going in, even if this is clearly going for quantity over quality. While I dislike how badly some levels can end up, there are few games that just let you blow away a dozen enemies with a machine gun so easily. With that, to the rating.

Weapons:
Very simple, either knife or chose how fast you shoot bullets. 2

Enemies:
Deceptively simple, surprisingly clever. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There are too many of these. Some are interesting, some are very annoying, but most of them just don't stick in the mind for very long. 4

Player Agency:
Despite the widely varying movement speeds, I think the whole package worked well, so long as you don't end up slowly turning around or moving around like the Flash. The controls are otherwise simple and functional enough that there's nothing to really complain about. 6

Interactivity:
Basic use cases, walls and secrets. 1

Atmosphere:
In development, this game was intended to be a stealth game, and even in the finished product you can see it. It doesn't quite know if it wants to be serious and creepy, wacky or vaguely realistic and I think it suffers on that front. 3

Graphics:
Everything sort of works, except the way you move tends to make it all look very weird. Also, could use some more animation. 4

Story:
End of level text walls which sort of tie the gameplay together. 1

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are fine, though I do find there's an issue when enemies are first alerted. That said, the music is...okay. After a while it got on my nerves though. 4

That's 29, 2 points less than what I originally gave it. This time around I actually gave controls and levels more points, it was less in atmosphere and the audio-visual departments that caused the change.

I know I'm crapping on something that's a nostalgic memory and formative experience for many and retroactive first FPS for many others, but I think this causes us to ignore the game's flaws way too much and hype it up far more than it deserves. Did it create a template that a significant number of games tried to imitate? Yes. But it did not invent anything and compared to many of its contemporaries, lacks in some regards.

There's an anecdote about ID Software meeting Ken Williams of Sierra to sell this game to them, so they could get out of their Softdisk contract. Ken liked it, but offered less than what they wanted. When they complained, he showed them Red Baron, and ID Software walked. In retrospect, Williams made the wrong choice, but without the importance placed upon Wolfenstein, this is not quite the easy choice it seems.

1992 is almost done, I really only have Spear of Destiny left, but I think it'll be a bit before I feel up to that. Pulling a game out of my hat, I got Electro Man, also known as Electro Body, one of the weirder side-scrollers that Epic published in olden times.

Skyfox (1984)

Name:Skyfox
Number:244
Year:1984
Publisher:Electronic Arts
Developer:Raymond E. Toby
Genre:FPS/Flight Simulation
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes
Won:No (107W/79L)

We've seen quite a few alien invasion games so far. It's a simple enough plot to come up with and provides easy conflict. At first glance, Skyfox does nothing to change up the formula. Oh, sure, it's a first-person flight sim rather than the hordes of side-scrollers and top-down games, and within atmosphere rather than space, but that's not too different from the template.

Skyfox was released on most platforms of the day, from Apple II, C64 and ZX Spectrum, to later Atari ST and Amiga ports. I chose the Amiga port, based on the logic that since it was released later, it probably smooths over the worst parts.

Starting the game up, you get a difficulty selector and a mission selector. The latter can be divided into two categories. Training and the real deal. Training pits you against a limited selection of enemies and you have to take them out. The real deal pits you against an entire invasion, complete with a mothership you have to take out. For future reference, I took the easy way out as far as difficulty is concerned and stayed on Cadet.

At the start of every game, you get a map of the area you're in. In training missions, this just shows where you're going. In an actual battle, this just shows the tanks that have freshly spawned off the ship. Fortunately, you can bring this map up, complete with up to date tactical info, with C. There's a whole bunch of other stuff you can do, but it doesn't matter. At first, all you really do is just click until it brings up a launch mode, select high or low launch, which almost always seems to switch to high, then launch.

When I first managed to flew around, what was brought to mind wasn't a flight sim. This is not even an arcade simulation, it's more like a FPS where you're flying. You move at a constant speed, determined by what number you hit, and up and down causes you to turn up and down. You rise and fall based on that. Hitting the ground doesn't hurt you, you basically just float across it. Moving in any direction doesn't cause constant turning, it moves you a bit then you right yourself automatically.

This actually makes it really annoying to do much of anything. Since you're constantly fighting against your plane going back into the same, standard position, you can't really move around quickly. It's also hard to aim, because you never seem to stop on an enemy. At first I even thought each time you turned, you turned 45 degrees, but no, it's just freeform for that to not be true. It's slightly better with a keyboard joystick over a mouse. The mouse aiming here isn't like regular mouse aiming, it's holding it down, which any joystick does better.

Training is more or less what you expect it to be. Here you are in this situation against these enemies, now take them out. The rub lies in these being training missions. Technically, you are in an actual live fire action, but regular enemies like tanks and planes aren't that difficult to deal with.

But the weird thing is, you never seem to fight the two at the same time, instead, you alternate between the areas they're in. Press U to jump up into the clouds, press D to go back down to ground level. There's a long shift as you automatically move, then a time you wait for the disk to load.

To fight back against enemies, you have three attacks. Your typical gun, in this case an automatic laser. This works well enough, but you can only hit enemies with it when you turn, not when you're just gliding along. Then you get two missiles, a guided missile and a heat-seeking missile. The guided missile seems to have a higher chance of not hitting its target, but otherwise the function of the two are the same.

Once you master training, it's time to deal with an invasion. This removes all enemies from the board at the start, placing you against a giant, floating city which constantly spawns planes and tanks. These go after friendly installations which you can recharge your ship's fuel and heal damage. You're going to need to do that, because unlike in training, those are important concerns. You get three spare fighters, and depending on how things go, you'll need them.

Motherships are far more difficult to kill than anything else. It's not necessarily that they're tougher or more difficult to hit, just that they fire a lot at you. I'm not sure how getting hit works, it seems to just happen based on if there are enemies around, but if you're near a mothership, you're getting shot.

Unfortunately for the mothership, it isn't any stronger against missiles than anything else. So get a lucky missile hit against it and poof. This makes the strategy fairly easy to understand. Rush to the mothership, then hit it with a missile. No more enemies spawn, and you can take out the rest before they clear you out.

This is of course, the small invasion on the easiest setting. A proper invasion consists of multiple motherships. I beat one of them, dubbed Halo. Here, there are five motherships, one in the center, four two tiles away from home base. This is the easiest of the proper scenarios, simply because the motherships don't drop tanks. With less firepower, it's easier to take out a mothership and then you can clear out the planes that launched much quicker.

There are more variations, some based on unorthodox gimmicks, others based on throwing as much as they can at the player. Even on the minimum difficulty, they're throwing groups of five tanks at you, which is very difficult to counter. Higher difficulties don't seem to increase this speed, it just turns them into more dangerous enemies. They actually chase after you a lot more rather than the more casual stroll the lower difficulties have.

Getting away from the big problems of the game, there's a lot of little problems. The game slows down when there are a lot of enemies nearby. Tanks stare at the player with an almost unreal look. It's odd seeing a half a dozen tanks turn in perfect harmony. You basically just speed from place to place and hope your fuel doesn't run out at the worst possible time.

Weapons:
A simple blaster and some missiles. 2/10

Enemies:
Tanks, planes and a boss which seems invulnerable. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
Don't let this place get hit. 0/10

Levels:
The game tries to have variety in the number of scenarios it has, but there a few obvious variations. The grouping around a single base and the "chess" motif, in which there are bases on one side and motherships on the other. In 1984, I might have even considered working through them. 2/10

Player Agency:
It's sort of what you expect, but works in enough odd ways that it feels more off than if it was outright unusual. 5/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Very meh. 1/10

Graphics:
Colorful but not too garish and a decent number of variations, but the ground is one solid color. 3/10

Story:
So little they don't even pretend there's one in the manual. 0/10

Sound/Music:
There's a jaunty intro tune and some soft sound effects. 2/10

That's 17.

While it didn't have much to capture my attention, and I didn't have much fun with it, I see several good points about it. We've got the basic template of any later action game with small-scale, randomized missions, just with a spawn rate that's way too large. Seriously, five tanks at a time?

Tobey had an unusual career afterwards. He had a hand in three other games, Budokan - The Martial Spirit, one of the more notable early fighting games, a chess game and a Sega Saturn adventure game. The later two he does not list on his personal site, instead focusing on graphics programs he worked on. Considering the number of people who seemed to have used them, I can see why.

Next time, in order to get out of this feeling that I've been spinning my wheels here, I've decided to go very out of chronology and play Streets of SimCity, one of Maxis's weirder titles.

The Catacomb Abyss (1992)

It's weird to think that once upon a time, games could have telephone numbers on their title screens.

Name:The Catacomb Abyss
Number:12
Year:1992
Publisher:SoftDisk
Developer:Gamer's Edge
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:3 hours 00 minutes
Won:Yes (9W/2L at time of original playthrough)

Of the many games that ID Software made that SoftDisk had the rights to, it was a stroke of luck that they had Catacomb 3D. While the 2D Catacomb games are nice, they're not necessarily special in design. Dangerous Dave is clever, but appeals to a specific niche and isn't special technology-wise. But Catacomb 3D had everything it needed to be special, it was just lacking polish. Hovertank 3D, meanwhile, would be too barebones to fully flesh out.

When you capitalize it like that, I start to suspect that your secret knowledge isn't that useful.

Taking place after Catacomb 3D, the story is that the minions of Nemesis, previously known as Grelminar, have built a mausoleum next to Towne Cemetery. Emboldening them, they perform vile acts of violence to the nearby townsfolk. Naturally, they hire you, Petton Everhail, to find out what's going on and stop it.

Abyss comes firmly in the era of Softdisk games where they give you a ton of options for info at the start and an in-game help file, but there's a focus on slowly getting you up to speed in-game. There's no in-game description of your keys, but the basics are the usual. Arrow keys for movement, ctrl fires and alt sidesteps. Additional points are V/TAB for quick turning, which is vital in some situations.

It isn't perfect, but I can't say I've ever felt that this should play a different way. Turning is slow and even with quick turning an enemy is going to get the jump on you if they're behind you, but the game early on encourages cautiousness in approaching a room. The first enemy type you fight, zombies, pop out of the ground and it's easy to get blindsided by him. But it's just one at first and even if you die, you can just restart. Enemies that don't pop out like that don't become alert if you aren't looking at them. Goofy in theory, but encourages clever movement in practice.

Your attacks are not terribly changed from Catacomb 3D. There's no holding the fire button down for a nuke attack, you're just spamming magick missiles now. Enemies have a pain state which makes spamming them effective. Z fires a rapid stream of missiles if you have a zapper orb, X fires in a circular pattern if you have an xterminator orb. Xterminators do more damage than regular missiles for some reason. C causes you to heal yourself if you have a cure potion. You can carry up to 99 of each. In addition to individual pickups, there are chests which drop various amounts.

Some of the later descriptions get spicy.

The cleverest part of Catacomb Abyss, which is for once actually used in comparison to Catacomb 3D, is that the GUI constantly has a bit of text on-top related to where you are on the map. As odd as it sounds, it helps avoid the problem a lot of Wolf-clones have where the entire level is a confusing maze, because you have something distinct to place it. In a sense its cheating, but when the choice is cheating or nothing at all, I'll take it. The level design usually isn't so bad as for that to happen, but it does cinch it.

Most of the time this information comes off as telling you things you could find out by wandering around.

Rounding out the GUI are scrolls, which you read as you come across them and you can reread by pressing a number from 1-8. The requisite keys, which come in four colors and every time you open a door that key disappears. In all situations, you enter one by walking in, either one that blocks off part of the level or one that leads to the next level. Finally a radar, which if you have the gem which reads a particular enemy type, will show that enemy on the radar. Gems come on or before most levels with the enemies of those types.

The game opens with a set of graveyard levels function well as opening levels. Enemies in the first two are zombies, shades and bats, so the kind which suggest slowly checking the areas of a room to ensure you don't get backstabbed or enemies who die upon attacking you. And if you come from a game where you can open doors, the game encourages you to shoot walls by giving them descriptions such as "weakened walls" and different graphics. Along with the occasional enemy pop-up next to an item, so if you're trigger happy you find out that stray shots destroy items real quick.

That said, there are two gems in these three levels, and the game makes it incredibly obvious that they're there. Depending on how you go about it, they might just be easier to find than the keys which lead to the way out. Level 3, outside the mausoleum, also adds skeletons to the list of enemies, which are tougher than zombies, but also just stand around until you activate them.

The graveyard leads to a mausoleum/crypt, where we get our first ranged enemy, a squishy flying wizard. They're not special, your usual slow ranged attacks, but the game decides that this is the time to start putting you in close quarters where you can't easily dodge. Though, this doesn't entirely work against you since the wizards shoot infrequently and deal low damage on this level.

This section illustrates what I think the game does really well in design, wall block usage. A lot of games tend to have random choices, where it seems like they're just randomly breaking up a wall. Here, there's one used primarily for all walls, with others being used as accents or as indications that you can shoot a wall. For most of the game it works well, though once you've cleaned out an area it can feel unusually empty. Here, it helps that we get what is probably the first example of an occult area in a FPS, look at all the pentagrams and sarcifical altars!

Den of Zombies follows the crypt up, which comes off more as a cave. This one has the closest to real doors, wall pieces that when you touch them disappear. There's no new enemies, but skeletons come out of the walls in this level, which, combined with the zombies, makes the level feel like something out of a horror game. I think I was scared of this level as a kid, but in retrospect, that makes sense. How many games have you played where enemies are coming out of the floor and the walls?

Ancient Aqueduct continues with the monsters coming out of the floor, only this time it's less literal since you're standing in water. More like they come in and out of the floor. This is the most boring level, since you're simply waiting for the trolls to come out of the water, then moving through a place with basically no variation in wall texture. Which just illustrates why the rest of the game works so well, a few accents make all the difference.

The Orc Mines brings the game back to enemies which just stand around. Orcs, reusing the orc sprites from 3D, feel like a downgrade from the trolls, since they don't take a million missiles to kill. Them constantly stopping for me to shoot them is a bit distracting. I guess its intended for me to recover my zappers, as if I don't need excuses to use them when I've been hovering near the 99 mark for a while.

Lair of the Trolls is a bit of a breather, despite the trolls being fairly beefy enemies. Probably because it also introduces hourglasses which stop time for 99 "seconds". Which I suspect are tied to clock speed. Your missiles hang in the air during this and there are only so many you can fire at a time. I've never actually been in a position where this felt helpful. It just felt like something I had to wait out.

The Demon's Inferno follows. Bright red walls, nearly all of which look the same, demons, which just absorb a ton of magick missiles and you get what is not the best level. The game does break it up considerably with skeletons popping up in alcoves. You're spamming your attacks while staring at a bright red screen, which is just not good. I think this might have something to do with certain issues in these kinds of games, the developers don't realize you shouldn't be using bright colors like this.

Battleground of the Titans is two large rooms and a hallway. Do you enjoy killing dozens of big meat shields to get to a key? Do you enjoy potentially destroying a key because you were to careless with high powered attacks because you now have 99 of everything? Even when it's crap, I'll give Abyss credit for making different crap each time.

Coven of Mages adds in teleports. The game offers you five locations to go through to, but you only need to go to three. Enemies are the mages again along with giant eyes that shoot electricity. Even the later are too weak at this stage to do much to you. I wish they were just a little bit stronger.

Then we go to another area full of bright walls, but at least this time there are some accents. Still wandering around, shooting demons, because killing enemies which take a thousand hits is fun. Even the skeletons make a reappearance because demons and skeletons make sense together.

Finally, Nemesis himself. Or at least, Nemesis after fighting through a horde of demons. Nemesis is just sort of hanging out, behind one of two nearly identical corridors. You can't quite stunlock him into submission, and his shots take out 25% of your health, but by this point that's not really a problem.

The game ends with a nice, relaxing stroll to the surface, in which you can see statues of all the enemies you killed, along with being given the cheat codes to the game. Which is kind of nice, more games should have done that. Let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
I appreciate the variety, but it basically boils down to, regular attack, autofire attack, highly situational attack and healing. Because of the way enemy alertness works, the situational one is one you have to work to use properly. 2/10

Enemies:
While some enemies are too easy or too tedious, there's enough that there's a decent variety of more interesting ones. Even if the number of enemies on a level is limited and too often every enemy has the same behavior. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Something new is always being thrown at you, albeit, at the cost that what is new might not necessarily be good, just different. 5/10

Player Agency:
Your basic setup, except different weapons are special buttons rather than switching attacks. That said, the fast turn function doesn't come off very well in the heat of combat. 6/10

Interactivity:
Destructible walls and that's it. 1/10

Atmosphere:
At first, we get some decent dark/gothic fantasy elements going on. A mysterious mausoleum being built in honor of a dead lich. Wander through spooky graveyards waiting for monsters to pop out of the floor or the wall. Then we get random mines, aquaducts and then what appears to be hell. It gets a bit goofy. 6/10

Graphics:
Most artwork here is nice, but as time goes on, it feels like the game is running out of visual steam. Enemy designs are nice, but have limited animation and only face one direction. 5/10

Story:
Your basic go kill the bad guy affair. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Detailed PC Speaker, but no music. Everything has a nice sound to it, but far too often it's just silence. 2/10

That's 31, down from 34 last time. Broadly the same as last time, but a few of the more bloated categories got cut down to reasonable levels, with a few other categories picking up more points. The most significant change is that level design no longer gets an eight.

In the past, I've generally considered this one of the best 1992 FPS, despite the issues with the level design. It generally came off as doing something that ID would eventually succeed at with Doom, making a world which is not just randomly placed blocks. I still think that, but now it's tempered by how it's pretty clear that most levels were thought out with random ideas and that more worked than not was down to luck.

Next time, we return to Apogee with Secret Agent.