Wolfenstein 3D
First person perspective shooting game by Powerslave. Reviewed by Rob Gibson.
Note: This review was originally written for the Illusions disc magazine well before Acorn Arcade was born, so we make no guarantees that this game will work on more recent machines. Many thanks to Richard Goodwin, Phil Coleman and Rob Gibson for allowing us to reproduce this review on the site.
Violent death seems to be in at the moment. No sooner do Krysalis have Cannon Fodder up and running, the game with the title track claiming that war is 'so much fun', than up pops id's gorefest Wolfenstein. No doubt all those wusses who still think the Rolling Stones are incarnations of the devil will be reaching for the Basildon Bond and the days when even Arc games have to be given a film-like rating draws ever nearer, but what the hell, amongst all the extreme carnage there's a pretty cool game to be played here.
Set in the era when Nazi scumbags first walked the earth, Wolfie takes you round a series of mazes trying to find the keys and lifts to get out. Not so amazing so far, but add the odd machine gun and plenty of blood and you've got the makings of a winner. Okay, so it's a great feeling to watch soldiers, SS officers, zombies, Alsatian dogs and the like fall apart in a spray of blood and a hail of bullets, and it's scary when you open the door to get seven shades of living s**t blown out of you by some huge behemoth with gattling guns for hands, but this is only a small (but admittedly quite fun) part. The quite amazing part is the way you smoothly walk, run or side-step around the quite huge mazes, picking up food, ammo, weapons, keys and treasure to aid you on your quest, discovering secret passage and causing general mayhem wherever you go. Even on an Arm 2 machine you can fairly whip round, although you'll probably have to reduce the size of the playing window.
Adolf Hitler in a mechanical exoskeleton -
just another everyday occurance in the world of Wolfenstein 3D
The sound is basically one tune at the start and from then on a collection of effects, basically gunshots, shouts (or barks) of alarm, and death howls; each type of baddy has their own shout, and there are a number of phrases, grunts and farts upon dying. It all adds to the atmosphere of the game, and adds a little humour at times. There's not much else to say except to show some nice screenshots and let you make up your own mind. The graphics are good, although a bit blocky close up, and compared to Doom II a little flat looking (i.e. everything's only one pixel thick, although this is hidden fairly well most of the time). People have been moaning that Doom wasn't the first to appear, but hey, did the pc get Doom first? No, they had to start off with Wolfenstein and work up. It's a good game, but you have to learn how to walk before you can run.
Die painfully, evil Nazi SS scumbag!
Err, not that the game's violent or anything
Summary
Much too violent for younger kiddies, but great fun for grown-ups. The large size and the fact that the author has allowed the use of the hundreds (thousands?) of PD levels available on the Internet, it represents excellent value for money.
Cheat!
The Hacker in both incarnations is useless against Wolfenstein, but there is an in-built cheat set. So as not to ruin the game, the cheat has been included, but you have to click on the text below to show it:
