So this was actually mostly an accident, since I had originally planned for today's post to be the first of my "obscure stuff" posts, but I got distracted by today's subject. But don't worry, you can expect to see that post later this week.
Title: Wolfenstein 3D
Original Release: MS-DOS (May 5, 1992)
Completed Release: Complete DOS Release (1992) [Modded]
So, before we get started, I just want to get a couple things out of the way.
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| Pictured: 1992 |
For the record, I also grabbed Wolf3D's expansion, Spear of Destiny, plus Doom, Doom II, the entire Heretic/Hexen series, and Quake, all for less than $10. So, yeah, expect to be reading about those soon.
Secondly, I played through the entirety of the game using a mod known as ECWolf, which you can download by clicking... wait for it... here. It doesn't change a whole lot, mainly just quality-of-life improvements. It allows you to play the game in a modern resolution, so you aren't having to squint, and lets you make aiming with the mouse much less of a headache than the original DOS release. It also gives access to an automap feature, which I did use, because why the hell wouldn't I? If you think this ruins the purity of the experience, that's okay, because I don't. It makes the game much more approachable and drastically cuts down on wasted time.
So, with all that having been said, let's jump right into this.
The place: Nazi Germany. The time: the height of World War II.
OSA Agent William J. "B.J." Blazkowicz is in a bit of a pickle, finding himself held prisoner in the dungeon of Castle Wolfenstein. It doesn't really matter why B.J. is being held prisoner, especially since it doesn't last long. Before the game even begins in earnest, he manages to kill the nearest guard with their own pistol, and we're greeted with the opening visual that created a genre.
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| Yeah, that's the good stuff. |
Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Unreal, Half Life, Halo. These are just a sample of the games that may never have existed if not for Wolfenstein 3D. And of course you can extrapolate all of that out even further and further, leading to sequels, spinoffs, inspirations, imitators, and competitors, and you begin to see how different gaming would have been over the past 25 years if this had never been created.
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| Pictured: The influence of Wolfenstein 3D |
Back in 1992, Wolf3D was released using the shareware model that was and would continue to be the norm for quite a while. The game was originally split into three episodes, the first of which, "Escape From Castle Wolfenstein," was free. If you liked the game, you could pay some money and id Software would send you the next two episodes, "Operation: Eisenfaust," and "Die, Führer, Die!"
id then went on to create a second trilogy of episodes that take place before the original three episodes, collectively referred to as the Nocturnal Missions (har har). The titles of these episodes are "Dark Secret," "Trail of the Madman," and "Confrontation," respectively.
All six of these episodes are more-or-less standalone, but there's a surprising amount of continuity between them if you're paying attention. For example, you basically wind up killing what appears to be the entire Grösse family over the course of this game and its sequel, Spear of Destiny.
For the purposes of this review, I played through all three original episodes, plus the three Nocturnal Missions, without putting too much effort into finding all the secrets. I focused on getting from one stage to the next, with my ultimate goal being able to definitively say I finished the main campaign. I'll definitely be going back through to find and complete all the secret levels, just to say I did.
Here's the thing: notwithstanding the historical significance of the game, I love Wolfenstein 3D a lot more than I probably should. If I take a step back and look at it from a more objective point of view, I can see the difficulty in approaching it from a modern perspective. If I'm brutally honest, it's probably better enjoyed as a museum piece rather than an actual game at this point. I mean, I had to mod the game just to make it comfortable to play with a mouse. This thing is downright prehistoric.
But I don't care. Let's do this.
So you've killed your guard and stolen his gun. What next? Well, you'll be going through hours of running, shooting, avoiding being shot, and attempting to interact with every single open panel of wall in sight. The main objective of Episode 1, as the title might suggest, is to escape the prison of Castle Wolfenstein. This involves completing 9 levels (plus one secret level), the last of which features a giant boss enemy, in this case elite guard Hans Grösse. Once you've accomplished all that, you're treated to a sweet visual of B.J. escaping, and you move on to do the same thing again in each of the next five episodes.
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| Look at how happy he is! |
That's not to suggest that there is no variation between the episodes, because there is, but the game is definitely repetitive. One benefit to this, at least, is that it's an easy game to learn. It doesn't take very long to get into the groove of things, and the game does a good job of teaching you the ropes in short order. And I have to say, even though there's not a ton of new stuff added from episode to episode, what is there is pretty cool. My personal favorite is Episode 2's unique enemy, the Mutant. There's also a few new textures here and there as you advance, including a pretty sweet wall texture in later episodes that features a skull design. It's actually kind of foreboding.
Speaking of textures, did you know that Wolfenstein 3D isn't actually 3D at all? That's right! It's just a trick of some really crafty early 90s programming. The end result is a world (well, some hallways) that gives the feeling of depth, even though the whole game is just as 2D as Super Mario World. Constraint breeds creativity.
The graphics are what they are. I didn't play with any sort of graphics mod, since I'm actually pretty fond of the game's 1992 aesthetic. The palette is colorful (with a surprising amount of blue), which kind of clashes with the fact that it's supposed to be NAZI GERMANY. Seriously, there are pools of blood on the floor and skeletons in cages and hanging in chains from the ceiling, all in the PC equivalent of technicolor.
Still, this tonal dissonance is really just indicative of the nature of the game. It's a power fantasy built around the sheer catharsis of gunning down hordes of evil Nazis, all with tongue planted firmly in cheek. It's just so dang quirky that it's as hard not to love it as it is to take it seriously.
The music is also a product of its time, and for me it doesn't stand up as well as the visuals. Don't get me wrong, it's still really impressive for the time, it just didn't appeal to me. It was never to the point that it irritated me or anything like that, but I ultimately chose to listen to my own music instead most of the time.
The gameplay itself definitely shows its age, which honestly isn't all that surprising. The game is more than twenty-five years old, after all. I played through most of the first episode with the original controls before deciding that I could do with a controls mod. I then started the game over with the new controls, and I never looked back. The unmodded game isn't unplayable by any means, but the mod just makes it a much more pleasant experience. It essentially makes the game play like a modern shooter, albeit without a Z axis.
Like I said before, the ECWolf mod also adds an automap feature, making it so that the game will automatically make a map (get it?) of each level as you move through it. This can be pulled up at any time with the tab key, making it that much simpler to keep track of your progress through the level. And this actually brings me to one of my few complaints with the game that can't be put down to the game's age.
The very fact that I have to mod in a map feature is absolutely ridiculous. The first three episodes wouldn't be so bad without it, but the levels in the Nocturnal Missions quickly become so gigantic and convoluted as to be downright labyrinthine. I could easily see the lack of a map adding another hour or more to the completion time for some of the later levels.
I get the feeling that, maybe, you were expected to draw your own map, in the real world, since that is sort of how things were done in those days. The problem with that comes from the very nature of the game. A dungeon crawling RPG is done one step at a time, thus making it simple, if tedious, to copy each square of the map onto graph paper. Wolf3D is not that game. You move in real time, very quickly, and having to stop and try to make a map would defeat the whole purpose of the run'n'gun feeling of the game.
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| Get used to mech suits and chainguns. |
The bosses are another, relatively minor, point of contention for me. I like the designs of them (and all the enemies, for that matter), but there's very little to distinguish one from the next outside of their looks. A couple of them have their own little quirks, and one of those two actually has his own unique weapon (and thus a unique strategy), which is cool. But the vast majority of them just boil down to a hit-and-run strategy, and the only distinction between them is that some take more hits to
kill. The boss of Episode 4 is just the regular, run-of-the-mill soldier with lots of health!
Oh, and they're also easy, because they're stupid. That hit-and-run tactic I mentioned is almost always really simple to pull off since they'll just follow you in a circle around any given column our square section of wall. The only real increase in the boss difficulty is accomplished by throwing in some lower tier enemies as well, but this doesn't make the boss more challenging or memorable, it just makes things annoying. It's also pointless, since, again, it's really easy to outmaneuver the bosses and kill the minions at your leisure.
My final complaint is the secrets. Don't get me wrong, secrets are great, but the way they're implemented here is as basic as it gets. See, there are pushable walls sprinkled throughout every level, and these can be moved by interacting with them, thus uncovering the secret they're hiding, usually treasure, but occasionally hoards of ammo and health. This isn't necessarily a bad idea in theory, but there's no visual cue to separate a "pushwall" from every other frame of wall around it, not even a subtle one. The secret areas will occasionally be behind a wall with a Nazi flag or painting of Hitler, but this is less creative design and more just "that's what we happened to pick for this one." All this combined leads to a feature that could have made you feel really clever for finding a secret, but instead makes you feel like an idiot as you run back and forth over every stretch of wall, slapping the spacebar furiously as you go.
Still, none of these complaints serve to ruin my appreciation for Wolf3D. In my opinion it more than earns its place in the annals of gaming history. And beyond that, I just have a blast playing it. If you're interested at all, give it a shot. The digital version is pretty cheap, even when it's not on sale. It's a great game to play while listening to a podcast or an audiobook, since it's just mindless enough to let you absorb something else, while at the same time serving as a decent challenge.
Just, for the love of God, use a map.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - We Need Medicine! (The Fratellis, 2013)
Playing - Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny (MS-DOS 1992)
Reading - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW, 2011)
Watching - Bob's Burgers (2011)
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