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.