Wolfen-Baww

I have no idea how one of my favorite companies of all time started with a game like Wolfenstein 3D. I know they made commander keen beforehand, and earlier wolfen games, but this is where they really became recognized.

And for what? One of the most godawful games I can remember playing.

It's not that I am biased against it because it's so retro, I still play and enjoy DOOM and that game is over 16 years old. But wolfenstein is one of those painful middle children between the arcade genres and what we know today.

And you can tell that just by looking at the "points" and "lives" system. You run around killing nazis and collecting treasure to collect points, and every so many points you get an extra life and the all so precious high score, but what's the point? Even on the leaderboards that the xbox live arcade has now, there's only so high your score can go for each level, and what's the point of extra lives?

I could see if you started off where you died, like most arcade games with this sort of system, but no, you start at the beginning of the level, with all enemies respawned, no ammo, no weapons, and 1 less life!

Why the fuck would you want to do that? Especially when you could just, I dunno, fucking save the game?

Speaking of saving, you end up doing that a lot, because they like to hide bad guys behind corners, and just one slip up could have even the weakest enemy doing anywhere between 1 and 50 points of damage with a single shot, and when you only have 100 health, that's a pretty big deal.

Yeah I know, 1 and 50, really random isn't it? The same is true for enemies as well, it could take anywhere from one to five or six shots to kill any of the standard badguys, with no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever. Remember, this is back before you could aim for the head.

And when every badguy takes more hits to kill than you it can get really fucking frustrating and tedious really fucking fast.

You remember that old windows screensaver that made a random maze for the screen to navigate its way through? That's what this entire game is like, only chopped up every 10 minutes for a reload. All the floors and ceilings are one boring ass color, and the walls are just tiles repeated over and over. Add that in to the random maze design of some of the levels, and you can get wicked lost very easily, with the only thing to lead you being bodies from badguys.

And the moment you let your guard down you'll walk past a corner you thought you checked and "SHUTZSTAFFEL!" BRAKA BRAKA DEAD-RELOAD.

Seriously, maybe if this BJ BLAZKAWHATEVER was running around in combat armor instead of his...tattered prison pajamas, maybe the game would be more fun.

And you can tell the developers thought the blind corners thing was just awesome, because one of the last levels consists of nothing but. Moving up a few feet so you can kill the guy hidden in a little alcove, and then turn around and do the same to his buddy before he kills you, is not fun.

But then I can't help but wonder, when this game came out, did we even realize what WAS fun?

I started PC gaming with DOOM, so I may never know. DOOM is so vastly superior in every way maybe I'm just not capable of looking back at Wolfenstein 3D without bias.

Hal