Wolfenstein3D

Wolfenstein3D is what most gamers know as the grandfather of the FPS genre. Doom may have been what made the genre popular but Wolfenstein3D laid down much of the groundwork that would later be used in the Doom series and every FPS thereafter. Recently Wolfenstein3D came out on PSN for a bout five bucks, I was curious to see what started what is now the leading genre of games so I decided to spend the five bucks and check it out.

The game's story is lacking, but given the time it came out it can be forgiven. Basically your an allied soldier who breaks out of Nazi prison and sets out to stop what evil plans they have brought forth, such as mad scientists creating zombie Nazis. Eventually you even get to kill Hitler himself. Episode 4-6 are prequel episodes from my understanding and basically has to do with you putting an end to the Nazis chemical warfare plans. The only tidbits of story you get is with text after the end of each episode.

Eventually you get to kill the Fuhrer himself! 

Wolfenstein3D is divided up into six episodes, all spanning ten floors, with the last floor ending with a boss fight. The objective is usually find the key and go to the exit for each floor so the game does get quite repetitive, but there will be many Nazis standing in your way and mowing them down is quite satisfying with the simplistic run and gun gameplay. There are four difficulties to choose from. From my understanding thanks to the trophies listed for the game, I have come to believe that "Don't hurt me" is the standard "Normal" difficulty.

It may not look good now but for it's time this was freaking phenomenal!

To start with you are only armed with a pistol and knife, later you can acquire a machine gun and chain gun, really these are just higher tiers of the same weapon and the game really lacks in weapon variety, though I did find myself using the machine gun a lot more than the chain gun because the latter burns through ammo to quickly. Unlike shooters nowadays there actually isn't a need to reload a weapon, you can just mow all the Nazis down with a chain gun until the ammo counter reaches zero. The problem here is that for all six episodes you only have these four types of weapons and there is next to no point in ever using the pistol or knife so you basically run around with a machine gun all day and only using the chain gun for bosses or those few times you get into a stick situation. Only having one method of dispatching enemies can get very boring and besides the dogs the enemy types are almost the same, just some take more hits than others and some fire faster than others as well. Heck even the bosses were just upgraded versions of the grunt enemies so you'll be using the same strategy for the entire game. One thing to note though, CHECK YOUR CORNERS!!!!!!! Enemies do hide there and they will kill you if you aren't careful, especially on harder difficulties.

Speaking of death the game does use a life system. You begin the game with three lives and if you lose them all it's game over. Honestly thanks to the save feature this game has I felt that it was a useless mechanic. When you die just reload your last save. That way you keep all your weapons and you won't have to start from the beginning. You also will never have to worry about the dreaded game over screen this way. The trick is just to save often.

Other than fighting through enemies you will find treasure along the way. This is the most effective way to increase your score. Every 40,000 points you earn nets you an extra life as well, but the real fun in searching for the treasure is that most of it is secret, meaning you'll have to be pretty thorough in your search if you want to find everything. I often found myself searching every flag, every symbol, and every picture of Hitler just to see if there was a hidden passage.

Holy crap I hit the jackpot!

Now how does it stack up to the games of today? Well it doesn't really. With only four weapons it is already out shined by games like Doom and that game only came out a few years later, Doom also has a much better enemy variety and much more varied environments. So already it doesn't stack up to a game from the same generation of games. On top of that you can't aim up or down, though you don't need to because the game takes place entirely on one level of terrain.

Is it worth the 5.99 price tag? Well honestly if you can't afford it than you shouldn't be gaming, but if your looking for a fun way to pass the time and are to short on cash to buy a full priced game than Wolfenstein may tie you over for a little bit but honestly I got bored with it after a few hours of playing it. I still need to finish episode 6 but I didn't really care to because I knew it was just gonna be more of the same. If you wanna see how the FPS genre started though than there is no harm in getting it. Besides there is something to love about never having to reload a gun. 

Krieg the Psycho

Last month Gearbox added another class to Borderlands 2, Krieg the Psycho. This is the second class that Gearbox has added, the first being Gaige the Mechromancer. Unlike Gaige however no one is getting Krieg for free, even if you paid for the Season Pass which many people have been complaining about. Well stop complaining, If anyone read the terms of the Season Pass you'll know that it only includes the 4 campaign DLC's which is: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty, Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt, and Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep which will be released later this month. It never said we'd get anything like Krieg or the Ultimate Vault Hunter pack. The only reason why some people got Gaige for free was because she was a pre-order bonus.

Krieg's class is a Psycho. For those unfamiliar with Borderlands 2 Psycho's are an enemy type in Borderlands 2 that rush at you and either try to kill you via melee or by pulling a pin on a grenade and rush out you suicide bomber style, or even light themselves on fire and rush at you. Krieg takes the same mentality and places these tactics in the hands of the player making for some frustrating fun. He is fun because if played right he can be ridiculously powerful, possibly the most overpowered character in the game, but it can be frustrating because most builds for the Psycho drop short when facing off against aerial enemies and most bosses, causing him to be ineffective during some of the game's crucial moments like the final boss.

Krieg's Action skill is Buzz Axe Rampage where he will switch out a gun and pull out his buzz axe and.....well go on a rampage. The bonus to this is that you will deal an extra 500 percent worth of melee damage and every enemy you kill heals you fully. Sounds great but without being specced for melee this abilty is next to useless, meaning if you want to use this skill effectively you are forced to go down his Mania Skill tree, but when properly specced Krieg becomes his own circle of slaughter.

Krieg like the other Vault Hunters has three skill trees: Bloodlust, Mania, and Hellborn. Bloodlust is effective a kill skill tree, meaning most of the skills are only in effect when you kill something, normally I hate kill skills in a multiplayer setting because other players can steal your kills, but Kreig is so effective at killing the problem is almost nonexistent. The Bloodlust tree also allows you to build stacks of.....well bloodlust, kinda similar to Gaige's Anarchy stacks, only instead Krieg get's a stack for each time he damage's something, so for every shot you get a stack, meaning you want weapons with a high firing rate when using the Bloodlust tree. What Bloodlust does is it gives you a bonus to almost every Bloodlust skill per stack and the stacks cap at 100 meaning you can get some serious bonuses as long as you keep killing stuff.

Mania is primarily his melee tree. However it also gives him access to Light the Fuse which is both a blessing and a curse. Light the Fuse replaces Fight For Your Life when your health drops to zero. Instead of crawling on the ground and hoping to kill something with your gun for the second wind, Krieg still remains standing and pulls out a bundle of dynamite which he can throw at enemies, and if you run out of time or if you give up  Krieg will cause a huge explosion and if that kills anyone you still get the second wind. This ability is frustrating in the sense that the dynamite you throw doesn't do a lot of damage, it's good though because you still run around at normal speeds during this phase and allies can still revive you so it can be handy for running  behind cover so your allies won't be in much danger when they try to revive you, but the ability is also good because the final explosion when your time runs out or if you give up does some SERIOUS damage and the radius is pretty big to, sure you won't get a second wind off of some of the bigger enemies but it almost works every time on a crowd of weaker enemies. The other nifty ability (and overpowered) is Release the Beast which is at the bottom of the tree. When activating Buzz Axe Rampage at 33 percent health allows the Psycho to mutate into a Badass Psycho which also fully heals him and increases his melee damage and damage reduction, but the real reason why this is so overpowered is when Buzz Axe Rampage wears off the cooldown is cancelled and the Rampage is ready for use again as opposed to waiting for the 120 seconds, meaning if played properly Krieg will always have a full heal button waiting to be pressed when he is near death. But the most frustrating yet must have skill here is Silence the Voices. This is a must have because if you wish to take full advantage of Buzz Axe Rampage you must know that this skill increases melee damage by a major 200 percent, even more if you have a class mod, (right now mine is at 400 percent!) but the downside here is you have a 12 percent chance of hitting yourself....(ouch!) Now in my experience I think the percentage chance is wrong because sometimes I attack myself three times in a row and there were even a few times where I attacked myself four times in a row, so you can see how this can be frustrating especially when enemies are almost dead and you just want to kill them so you can fully heal yourself.

His final tree is the Hellborn tree, meant to mimic the Psycho's that light themselves on fire. Krieg can also light himself on fire. Why you ask? Well because he receives some serious bonuses when on fire. No seriously if you want to to ranged damage with Krieg this tree is a must have. Sure you take damage when on fire but there are ways to soften the blow. Grab a fire resistance relic, grab the skill where he receives damage reduction while on fire (how does that even work?) Also there is a skill that allows him to heal himself while enemies have any elemental DoT put on them. But why would you want to do this you ask? Well early on he gets skills that greatly improve his burn damage on top of weapon damage, meaning if you have a fire weapon you will do ALOT of damage, but he has to be on fire for all the bonuses to apply. So how do you light yourself on fire? Well the first two skills in the tree Burn baby burn, and Fuel the Fire all increase the chances of igniting yourself when setting other enemies on fire, but also later you can get the skill Delusional Damage which allows it so any elemental status you cause can set you on fire, including slag! Honestly this build is probably the most effective on bosses but some bosses are immune to elemental statuses and this tree doesn't do as much damage as the other two.

Go to http://www.borderlands2.com/us/skilltree/psycho.html if you want to have a more detailed look at Krieg's skills.

Krieg can be downloaded for 9.99 on PS3 and PC or 800 Microsoft points on 360. Is he worth the money. I think so because I love crazy balls to the walls characters, but if you don't like his play style than you should save your money. Why buy character you don't like? But for those interested, the amount of content you get with Krieg is worth the price.