Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

Title screen from the PC-98 version.

Name:Wolfenstein 3D
Number:255
Year:1992
Publisher:Apogee Software (among others)
Developer:Id Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:7 hours 20 minutes
Won:Yes (114W/83L)

A while since I first covered it and feeling considerably wiser about myself, I return to Wolfenstein knowing that this is going to be a unique take. I wasn't very positive about the game last time and this hasn't changed as I've played through this. Every time I return to Wolfenstein I get less and less happy about it. This is not a hopeful playthrough.

Part of the problem is that when you're ten and you've played maybe three FPS, the flaws of this game aren't important. It's just a genuinely cool style of gameplay and who cares if it isn't perfect? Then you return after some games under your belt, and maybe it isn't as good as you remember, but whatever, it's still basically the first FPS. A little later, okay, maybe there are like ten before it.

Now though? Now looking back there are like 50. Some of them are more far afield, but others are pretty close to what this game does and some are even very good games in their own right. This paints, in my opinion, less the picture that Wolfenstein 3D is something special and more that it came at the right place, at the right time, and with the right distribution method, the shareware model.

I'm going to be doing something a bit different, which is general observations followed by my thoughts as I play through various ports, mostly source ports. While looking this up, I realized that most of the console ports and the Macintosh port are actually different games to a certain degree. This is unfortunate, but does give me an excuse to play source ports over console/computer ports.

Wolfenstein 3D does not really change much from Catacomb 3D. You move with the arrows, strafe with the alt key, shoot with ctrl. Where it differs is how you get a weapon select rather than being able to press a button to use a weapon. Speed differs between ports, but usually you can run faster with shift. Whether this turns gives you a reasonable speed or just shoots you across the map depends on the version. Source ports tend to crank this up to Doom levels, which in this game is quite distracting.

A typical screen.

Where Wolfenstein 3D differs is in slightly odd ways. Secrets are pushwalls, walls you push to reveal secrets. There are others, but I'm pretty sure these all are games derived from this one. The other is the odd way that turning around looks. This was present in Hovertank and Catacomb, but here it's a lot more noticeable, thanks to how carefully looking over walls is more important. You can kind of cheat by looking around a wall in a way that doesn't quite make sense. Kind of cheating, since you're liable to get shot by anyone you spot.

There's also how every fight has inherit risk in it. Everyone's shots could practically kill someone, or they could just hurt them a little bit. It's about half distance and half where you aim the gun. Hit dead center and you do better than a corner shot. The AI aims perfectly, so you control how much damage they do solely by distance. In a sense, it's trying to make a weakspot without really programming in weakspots.

The focus on treasure and score, too, differs from what we now know, but for a while, this sort of thing was expected. What makes this a bit odd is that it ties into the lifes system. As you can constantly save and load, this is not much of a problem, so those glowing orbs which give you an extra life aren't much of a reward...except that they also give you health and ammo.

Enemies and weapons are very simple. Your weapons change solely based on firing rate, while the enemies all fall into easy archetypes. There's some minor changes with the later, but for the most part, this is true.
 

The knife is so rarely used that I actually had to just randomly switch to it for this screenshot.

I'm probably not the first one to mention this, but I'm annoyed at how the knife works. It alerts enemies when you use it. I realize the use case, but it's a lot more satisfying to stab an enemy in the back then to use it to aggro a bunch of guards towards you. Granted, considering this game, it's rare to ever stab someone, but still, it would be nice to have it as an options beyond desperation.

 

In retrospect, it might not be a Luger, and instead be some weird Frankenstein pistol.

The remaining weapons are a Luger pistol, a MP-40 SMG, and a gatling gun of some sorts. It's disappointing that the only real variation is in how many bullets you spray out at once, it would be nice if there was something else. That said, I dig how the Luger and MP-40 work, even if this is the era where there isn't enough animation for weapons. Lugers, as far as most pistols go, has a unique action which looks really cool in a game.

Another Frankenstein-esque gun, but at least this is because there's no real handheld mini-gun from this era.

But the gatling gun (really a weird mini-gun), that gets on my nerves a bit. I'm not opposed to having a gatling gun. There's an argument to made for having a gun which just shoots so many bullets that you turn your foe into a fine paste. In an arsenal. It's not in an arsenal, it's just a faster SMG. Here it loses that cool factor for me, since it's probably about as fast as a MP-40 should actually be.

There should be something else. A rifle, a shotgun, a rocket launcher or even some sort of weird sci-fi weapon. None of these things are arcane knowledge. There have been FPS games with these before. The only one ID themselves didn't already do something similar to at this point is the shotgun, and that's only because we think of shotguns as using buckshot, not slugs. (yeah, I know Dangerous Dave, not quite the same thing in practice here) If we expand it to everything a FPS could have at this point in time, then imagination is truly the limitation.

I know we get some of those in ports and upgrades, but this is generally supposed to be the default, plain Wolfenstein 3D, or at least with all six episodes. It's lacking, and I do not feel that any argument that can be made for this excuses it.

Enemies fall into the usual basic categories but have behavior which separates them from others in that category. And to begin with, no enemies have ambient noises. Once they've shouted their alert sound, the only sound they'll make until they're dead is a gunshot or opening a door.

I only need to take one screenshot of an enemy! Things will be fine...

Dogs despite being your typical melee enemy in theory, differ in a few behaviors. Enemies in Wolfenstein can either be standing still or patrol an area, except the dogs. They're always supposed to be patrolling. They're not really trouble, even in packs, but perhaps this is just because the game doesn't really know what to do with them compared to say, a demon from Doom. It helps that in all respects, a dog is weak.

A rare guard all on his own.

Guards, that brown-clothed standard enemy. Shoots at you and drops ammo. Weak for the most part, but capable of really hurting you if you get unlucky, thanks to how the bullet system works. Since they're noticeably slow on the draw, it is a matter of poor luck.

It's early yet, so one of these guys on their lonesome isn't too hard.

SS, blue guards with MP-40s. They drop it if you don't have one yet. They shoot swiftly at you so long as you're within their sight, but like the guards, they're slow on the draw. That said, they take more bullets to kill, so if there's one with other enemies and you don't have a machine gun, maybe hide a bit. Machine gun fire hurts.

A pair of mutants, one hiding behind the other.

Mutants, or zombies as I've called them in the past, are grey dudes with machine guns sticking out of their chest. These guys are nasty to fight, they have no alert sound and they're a bit stronger than the SS otherwise. Despite never showing up during the more annoying levels, they really show the spirit this game has. Gotta be careful not to get shot in the back, because if you aren't careful, they absolutely will shoot you in the back.

Officers start showing up in Episode 3, and boy howdy, do they make an impression. They have very fast reaction time. More than the player. If one is behind a door and spots you, you are getting shot if you don't get away. They aren't dealing a little damage either, you can get killed by poor luck. Their appearance amps up the difficulty of the game and not in a bad way. In any given scenario, they're the target to take on.

It's less about being quick on the draw in general and more about knowing where an enemy will be when you enter a room...for the first three episodes. There are several tricks to figuring out where an enemy could be in a room and how to avoid their opening shot...unless they're right behind a door or next to the hole you've entered in, in which case get shot.

I'll just hit the highlights of each episode as I go through them. Going in, I distinctly recall issues with level length and secrets coming off as obtuse. In theory this is supposed to have a limited scope and be fast, but in practice I found that levels were considerably longer than they should have been.

I'll be playing all versions on the third difficulty, Bring 'em On. That's the default, and after playing through the first level on both that and Don't Hurt Me, the third feels right. Even if I'm going to seriously regret it on the later episodes.

PC-98:

I was expecting something a bit different than the DOS version, but in Japanese. Which I guess it is. There are enough differences to drive me a little crazy. A sound effect here and there which is different, no menu or opening music. That said, I can have PC-98 sounds with Soundblaster music which is...different. Difficulties have slightly different names, but Death Incarnate is now "I am Unkillable!" or as I would prefer to translate it, "My Body is Unkillable." The third is now, "From Somewhere, Bring it On!". The first is now just a childish way of asking if the player can play and the second is the same.

Starting it up, on the first floor you can really see why this was at the right place at the right time. Even on a machine I've played a lot of poorly designed crap on, this runs buttery smooth and you can start shooting people within seconds. Which, when you get down to it, is something that gets you bang in with a lot of cases. Within five seconds of starting the game, you can shoot someone dead. Not a lot of games can say that.

But, that said, going for the secret floor pretty quickly brings the strengths down. Wolfenstein is best when every floor is quick and painless, with maybe a few challenges. E1L10 is a slog of a floor playing to the game's weaknesses, large, labyrinths where you never know where it is you're supposed to go. For the most part, here the game is keeping to the usual tract of not forcing the player to open secrets to progress, or making those secrets entirely random to find.

There's at least some slack here, simply because F10 is a secret floor and is tossing enough treasure at you for it to matter. Even regular floors, which quickly turn into labyrinths, aren't too bad. I feel like I'm fighting against the game, but there are some aspects which help the levels out. For instance, one set of rooms comes off as a dining room, complete with kitchen, area for the dogs, and a restroom. Like, they use the barrels as the toilet. ID Software really lost someone special when they got rid of Tom Hall.

I know this is supposed to be a prison of sorts, but it's really strange how every level has the same kind of cells with the blue stone. Oh, here's this section again, without fail. I'm also starting to wonder if me making it through more labyrinths has less to do with anything with the game being better than I remember or me now knowing how useful the "hug the right/left wall" trick from dungeon crawling RPGs.

Floor 4 put me in an interesting situation. In an unlucky encounter with a blue Nazi, I ended up low on health. As I continued onward, I opened fire into a large room, without considering the potential problems. Gotta say, more than anything else, I like sections like this in this game. Where you aren't chasing after, but are being chased. There's a tension you don't quite get in modern games, since here, the only noise enemies make is either getting alerted or shooting you. The only ambient sound is that of doors opening and closing in the distance. Hope you didn't leave too many dead guys in doors. This player hunting aspect works to the game's strengths a lot more than it does on the regular.

There are a lot of secrets which you really have no way of finding short of just hammering the walls with space. Some part of this, I imagine, would be easier if I had a map, but that was something that wasn't included until later. A few, well, you can guess, but the simple method of just looking for oddities in the walls has quickly become useless. This wouldn't be a problem, except a lot of the time there's limited supplies outside of the secrets.

Floor 7 is one of the more interesting levels here. It takes advantage of the engine ability to show great distances without slowing down. Near the start there's a big corridor, with openings on the side blocked off by pillars. First glance down, and you won't even notice it, but there's a horde of guards hiding behind the pillars. Walk by, and you'll get shot at. Further examination of the area and you can find your way onto the other side of these pillars. It's one of the few really cool levels here. Even if I did end up missing the key on my first time through.

Hans Grosse is kind of an odd boss fight. Even assuming you're doing pistol starts, there's a secret weapon cache off to the side of the main area. You're always going to be at 100% unless you ignore them for some reason. In order to fight him, you basically have to go right up to him, since he's behind a closed door. He seems to have no pain state and shreds you in a few shots, but at the very least, if you do hit him, he doesn't take that many bullets to take out. There's enough cover that this isn't a problem, but it does come off as underwhelming.

The PC-98 version is nothing special. It's Wolfenstein 3D in Japanese, you already know if you wanted that or not before I even opened my mouth.

Acorn Archimedes:
I'd just like to point out that this is an Archimedes title, at least the first release and won't work in the later RISC machines. Since the whole line of computers gets lumped together, because sometimes Archimedes titles will work on RISC machines. It was also published by Powerslave, which is a bit amusing in retrospect.

Right from the get-go, this version is very different from DOS. There's a James Bond-esque intro I've never seen before, then the opening music has very different instrumentation from the DOS version. There is also a horrendous amount of loading. The version I got running for the A3000 range, because the other rip kept failing, required three disk changes before the title screen even loaded. Talk about encouraging a HD install.

I will note that this has a few errors I still couldn't work around. For instance, the sound is really, really low. Even on the lowest volume for music it still drowns it out. There's no way to change the sound volume. The second is that BJ turns really slowly for some reason. This makes the game a lot harder than it should be.

The whole thing is subtly different. I'm sure this is all just necessary color choices for the system and some weird issues that nobody notices because why play Wolfenstein 3D on an Archimedes? It all feels like the setup to a creepypasta, but I'm just going through something that's been practically lost in the shuffle of much better ports and systems. Just gotta be careful when I'm done and turn down the volume or else hyperrealistic blood is going to pour out of my ears. Despite the errors, I think that this strangeness makes this an interesting port.

Operation: Eisenfaust doesn't change much about the overall gameplay, except now there are silent mutants. Not just the now soft-spoken characters of this game, but they only have shooting and dying sounds. This level just drops you in on them, go the wrong way at the start and you end up fighting four guarding the exit. So the second time I end up fighting two guarding a secret with the gatling gun.

The music in this version, combined with all the changes, makes this a strange experience. The music here is more of a dirge than the usual Adlib-esque stuff. Imagine wandering around a castle floor without the cheery Adlib soundtrack, but instead a funeral dirge. It's a strange change. It feels appropriate, somehow, given the slower movement.

Floor 10, which once again is reached from the first floor, come on, is one of those levels where there isn't that much "real" level and instead there's just a ton of secret stuff. Secrets within secrets. It's a cool thing, even if I would like there to be a different color wall once in a while.

Wolfenstein 3D, as only the Acorn Archimedes can depict it.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. This version is ready to crash at the drop of a hat. Hit F1 in gameplay and you're liable to crash the game. Play more than one level a session, crash. If you saved after going through two? Save file is corrupted, but it will let you continue. At first, then I had to look up how to levelskip in this version...which still didn't work. I'm not sure where along the way this error is occurring, emulation, disk rips or the files themselves, but this is apparently a known problem with some user levelsets in this version.

Floor 2 is where the game goes a bit off the rails. Because the game's corruption recovery system is to just dump you in a level as if you just started on that level, I'm pistol starting against some mutants. Who are very difficult to take out with the pistol. I go one way, get worn down because there's no health, I go the other, likewise. On my third attempt, I find a room leading to a nice big secret area.

Except it keeps going, and going. Another big room with secrets within secrets, okay. It has regular enemies and enough supplies, so it strikes me as weird...until I eventually get a key. That can be a cool idea, but something feels off about this. Then I find the door and reach the elevator down. The game which was supposed to be beatable without finding a secret wall has already broken that room. At least said secret is obvious, but it feels dirty.

Floor 3 consistently crashes the game whenever I fire it up, and the level skip code isn't working, so I have to play the entire episode in one session. Oh, good. This has some odd enemy behavior, apparently there are four guys in a crossroad near the start, and none of them are programmed to go after you before seeing you, even as you gun down their compatriots.

Floor 4 violates another general design flaw, enemies right when you start the level, rendering a save at the start useless. This one's really bad because it's a mutant right on top of you and there are at least six around the area when you start. This version is already tense because you can't be too sure you haven't activated more enemies than you want and you do not turn around well. I died, which made this even worse. Not worse in a bad sense, but worse in a difficult sense. I am digging this, even if it seems like it wouldn't be the same.

That said, this level doesn't seem to have any MP-40s or gatling guns lying around, the only thing before the end seems to be a random SS soldier in an easily missable room. I cheated, but it takes some skill to beat this on a pistol start considering there's easily dozens of mutants on this level. Multiple mutants and a pistol is a good way to die. I did, however, miss most of the secrets and I bypassed this by just using one of the two cheats available to me...a full supplies one. Not even a reduce health cheat works, only full supplies and no clip, for some strange reason.

The slow turning combined with this episode's love of making enemies hide in niches creates an interesting play through the game. It's not quite stealth or even a more tactical approach, more like a very careful one. Slowly approach the niche from such a way that you don't get shot in the back from another on the other side, or go into open view of both, and then back up. It's not like, say, a side-scroller where an enemy on the other side would just keep firing at you while you couldn't get in without getting shot.
 

Floor 6 is much like floor 4, and once again I end up getting caught in this trap. Enemies at the start, die, then give myself full supplies. Even if I weren't afraid that a random crash would cause me to lose this playthrough, I would find this incredibly annoying. This floor is actually bad in general too, because in order to advance, you have to find a key in a maze which, is easy to skip over because it looks like some small niche. Not a secret, just a niche. This isn't just an annoying maze, no, this is the kind of maze you can easily find yourself lost in. Also, it throws two level exit doors at you at the end, one of which contains mutants.

Floor 7 starts off strangely. Small area, a locked door right away with a key in a nearby room and then the exit. On a normal level? Okay, this is obviously a trap. That's what this episode has been about, trapping the player in bullcrap they couldn't possibly avoid. Haha, well, I noticed the last level, I'm going to find the secret which allows me to go around this.

And I do...it's an actual level. No sign of the fake exit leading to a trap though. Eventually ending up in another area which looks like the last level and has quite a few Nazi corpses. Considering this version, it feels cursed. Very, very, cursed...and it's just an area with a few orbs and some mutants...the actual exit was right all along. Huh.

Floor 8 has the infamous Aardwolf maze. Without knowing that this thing is a contest, I wonder what people thought of this? Did they think there was some awesome treasure hidden in it? Did they find one of the Hans Grosses hidden inside and then give up? Or just give up a few moments in. This version keeps the Aardwolf sign in, which is amusing considering that not only is this a later version of the game, it's the second on this system. Nor does Apogee have anything to do here. You might have zero context for what's going on here.

That said, there's also the moderately amusing section near the end. After you've gotten the final key, it opens two doors. One leads to the exit, the other is just a room full of mutants, guarding some meals and ammo. Not really needed, just an amusing thing. 

Finally, the boss level. Two secrets, one with a lot of ammo and a gatling gun, the other with a lot of health items. The boss, Dr. Schabbs, has a few mutants before you meet him. He, himself, however, is easier than other bosses. He still has the same problem where you don't know if you're hitting him, but he's throws easy to dodge items at you. I'm only really in danger if I press ctrl+alt and left or right together.

I would recommend this for players more familiar with the game interested in playing a cursed version of the game. We really don't get subtly wrong versions of games like this. You're not coming into this expecting anything you normally would from Wolfenstein 3D. Anyone else should avoid it.

Wolf4SDL:
I was going to talk about the 30th Anniversary upgrade/levelset, but what I didn't realize going in was that it added in weapons to the base game. Not actually sure what this did going in, but after playing it, it seems to be a simple enough Windows port. It runs smoothly enough, and seems to be doing a vanilla-type deal. Against it, I couldn't alt-tab out of it or run it in a windowed mode. (I am looking up things if I can't find the way out, but that's only happened once, along with which levels lead to the secret ones) 

 

Die, Fuhrer, Die adds in officers, but for the most part I haven't got much to say about it. Nothing for a while is getting on my nerves, and secrets, while I'm not getting 100%, are reasonable. It's actually my favorite episode so far, outside of this port giving me motion sickness. Might be because I'm playing Wolfenstein 3D in relatively high resolution, compared to the past two, which I ran windowed. Something optimized for 320x200 isn't going to look that good at 1900x1080. Suffice to say, I would not recommend this version. 

There's persistent sort of trap these early levels are doing, you'll get guards and a few officers alerted as normal when you fire, but SS will just hang around. Waiting for you. Not bad, a bit good actually, if you weren't careful like I am, you'd get caught off-guard easily. But for the most part, I don't really have anything noteworthy to say up until floor 4.

Remember how Episode 2 broke the whole "no secrets required to progress" bit of information? Episode 3 breaks it too, but in a really strange way. After getting the second key, you end up at a pushwall. I don't understand the propose of either of these when just making it obvious enough that you should try it. There was no point in making either of these secrets, but this is just silly. 

Floor 5 isn't really odd, but it does highlight how difficult some sections can be if you don't find a gatling gun. Officers are regularly kicking my butt, I'm not being quick enough on the draw to get out of the way of them when they're behind a door. Out in the open, eh, I can handle those. Usually, but here they're coming in multiple numbers among groups of enemies that I'm starting to get overwhelmed.
 

Floor 6 was actually really fun. A lot of tense moments. The area around the start has three doors, so you know you aren't finding a secret there. Near there, however, is a room with pillars, always fun, but the game is just nasty enough to let you fret over it without there being a real threat...until you open fire. Then the officers become alert. There's a way behind them, of course.

Then there's the maze, a endless series of blue steel walls, which I didn't take any screenshots of. Another one of those things that feels like it would be really annoying to deal with in real life. I got damaged by a random officer, so this was a very tense experience. Constantly going through corners, hoping not to find anything tougher than a guard...and getting my wish at the end. I know at some point someone tried to push all the walls in this maze, only to be rewarded with nothing. (I looked it up afterwards, I was curious) At the end, there's a beautiful set of treasure, gatling gun, full heal and a key. Naturally, if you just rush in, you'll get shot by the two officers in niches on the entrance. I was smart...then got shot by a random officer in a later area. Also, if you go through an area full of blue walls then look at an area full of red ones, it hurts your eyes.

Floor 7 has nothing too out of the ordinary in the regular level. A nice big area with a few dudes, some of which would give you trouble if you pistol started. But this is the path to the secret level, and the secret level is at the end of a long maze. As in, so long that after a while I stopped checking corners for hostiles and kept returning to the start. I checked a map online just to make sure I wasn't supposed to be looking for a secret. There isn't one, you just have to go far enough to reach a treasure room. There is the secret exit.

Floor 10 is Pac-Man in Wolfenstein 3D. Regular dots are chalices, while power pellets are orbs. It's a clever idea, but because the ghosts here are dumb and straight-forward, they clump up together soon enough. The real threat are the regular Wolfenstein enemies you might not expect to be at a random area off to the side. I kind of wish more games would have neat little secrets like this.

Floor 8 starts off with a blank room. If you guessed there's another pushwall you have to press to get out of here, you'd be correct. It's also a bit odd in that, you can make it 90% of the way to the end without ever realizing it. It's only a second locked door that prevents you from going straight to it. Just one of those usual oddities about this game.

Then we get our boss floor against Adolf Hitler. This isn't just a straight shot and then fight against a boss, it's a series of fights against mini-bosses combined with regular enemies. Before you can fight the man himself, you have to take care of floating Hitlers who shoot fireballs. It's unnerving, really. In an era where killing Hitler is a joke, a game where you keep killing him and keeping finding another one would come off as mockery. Yet here's the game that inspired that, and it isn't even a joke. 

Hitler himself is in a mecha suit and has a few officers around so you don't get complacent. By this point, I had pretty low health, but I managed to survive after having found a bunch of medikits in a big niche. Hitler has two gatling guns, so the convenient cover is how you'll avoid getting shot. As with all bosses, it's just a matter of hoping you haven't been missing.

There's not anything wrong with Wolf4SDL, but it just feels like an awkward between point. It isn't vanilla and it doesn't add in anything fancy like ECWolf or LZWolf. It's just sort of there, making me dizzy because BJ is turning around like a top.

LZWolf:
Now we have an automap and a windowed mode. The speed of BJ is now down to manageable levels and I'm not in danger of getting dizzy from spinning around too much. There's a whole bunch of other stuff added in, but this doesn't really apply to base Wolfenstein. I was going to play the GBA port, but lacked music and looked very bad. This from a system with a decent port of Doom, considering the hardware.

A Dark Secret begins the Nocturnal Missions, which are a prelude to the whole mutant business we just dealt with. There's nothing you can really do to the Axis in a WWII game once you've killed Hitler. Nobody cares about Mussolini and there's no real central figure in Japan to point at and say he deserves a horrific fictional death for his crimes against humanity. Individual crimes, sure, but not for the whole shebang.

Also, this is a plot to stop the Nazis from unleashing chemical weapons on the Allies, which goes to show that the boys at ID probably did five minutes of research, and all of those were spent looking up a picture of Hitler. Come to think of it, it's really odd that most of the treasure looks like it was looted from a Church. I'm not saying they didn't loot from Christians, but I am saying that maybe this loot should look a bit more Jewish? Since it was probably stolen from Jews?

Floor 1 is both typical and not so. It starts off modestly and typical enough, but it also turns into a quite typical later level. In many senses, it's the best opener so far. That said, I did get quite the nasty surprise, if an officer is just hanging out in a corner in a room you're about to enter, he will be able to shoot you before you see him.

Floor 2 is this big hallway around a central area, which despite it's relatively common premise, is a cool idea. Even if you end up shooting one guard then alerting what could be dozens. Lots of little cool ideas here, I like how for once I could be the guy shooting from behind the pillars at a bunch of unsuspecting rubes. There's also this one secret which seems not to lead anywhere, but based on past experience, I strongly suspect would have screwed me out of a secret I missed anyway.

Floor 3 is annoying. Not because there's anything wrong with it, plenty of ammo and health, normal numbers of enemies. It's annoying because there are basically no secrets. As I've said, I've been looking up where the secret levels are so I don't miss them, and this level is annoying in that there are two pushwalls. One which just allows you to ambush someone, the other is in a maze at the end.

Floor 10 is a giant series of one-block walls filled with treasure and officers. The idea, in theory, is that you can avoid the officers by going by areas with blood on the walls. In theory, eventually it just sort of puts you somewhere with no way to the exit. Another idea is that there's a secret near the start, complete with ammo, that you can hole up in as you take what is likely a hundred officers. I couldn't do that, so I just booked it for the one door and tried not to get shot.

Floor 4 has this weird set of hallways with dozens of pictures of Hitler on the wall and officers who ignore you shooting. Not a special level otherwise, but it is an unusual sight, even in a game full of unusual sights.

Floor 5 is by far the most annoying yet. Mazey, full of places where you can't easily deal with any ambushers, and worst of all, the keys are annoying to find. One of the keys is in a secret, which I did try for considering that I didn't have a gatling gun yet, but still. The other is in the usual small room you can accidentally overlook. This feels like a microcosm of everything wrong with Wolfenstein 3D-style level design, even if I liked the fake exits in theory.

Floor 8 breaks that by making worse behaviors that have been going on for a while. Officers, once in a while, are clever little guys who force you to consider each room carefully. Officers, as they've been used in these past few levels, have become something the game spams to the point that every room has become a chore to clean out.

Floor 9, rather than having the health and ammo troves in a secret, has them in locked doors. The keys are next to what can be described as a trap room, enter, and a dozen SS and officers start fighting you. The General, Otto something or another, shoots rockets at you and is comparatively easy compared to everything that has come before.

LZWolf was fine, but I'm really starting to feel this game's playtime. You can tell that they're starting to run out of good ideas and are just sort of filling out a whooping sixty levels of game. What I complained about at the start, mazey levels and secrets which force you to walk along every wall, are out in force here. We'll see if the next episode does any better.

ECWolf:
From what I can tell, almost exactly the same as LZWolf. Unlike LZWolf, it's still being updated.

Trail of the Madman starts us off with a new music track. Feels like most of the last two episodes have been the same old music from the first two episodes. This level is intentionally harder than previous openers, there are no health items until near the end, and there are certainly none hiding in secrets that I missed. This, combined with a number of harder enemies caused me to have to restart a couple times.

Floor 2 however, bucks the previous trend. On one door from the starting area is a series of barrels holding bad a horde of SS. Approach, and get slaughtered. Clearly, there's a secret somewhere which will allow me to enter there and take them out safer. So I cleared out the rest of the map, searching for any secrets...and finding nothing that leads behind the area before the exit. So, despite it all, I shot my way through this pressure point and somehow managed to take it. Complete victory on this level.

After two floors of what can only be described as simple, easy to play through levels with no real annoyances, Floor 5 throws out a half dozen guards at the starting point. After this, there's a definite "just throw a bunch of guys in a room" style to the level. Oddly, the map function screwed me a bit here when I was looking for the secret exit, it's on the far west side of the map, and I incorrectly assumed that there was nothing there.

Floor 10 is almost entirely unremarkable for a secret level. It's a series of long, snaking corridors full of treasure, with your only health being at the start and at two rooms in the middle of two corridors. One of which is the level exit. Surprisingly tricky, not really that unusual.

Floor 6 highlights one of the more unusual aspects of the game. Sometimes the game is set up so that enemies behind doors can hear your shots, and you spend a significant chunk of the level wondering if you're about to fight some guy who got alerted right at the start. Nice level for it though, tons of doors, so unless you block off every door, you shouldn't get blindsided. I also dig the big "outside"-esque hallway this has at the start.

I more or less cruise through the rest of the levels until the boss level. Even that is more odd than anything else. There's seemingly no secrets here, no machine guns save for a MP-40 you can get off a SS's corpse. The boss is Greta Grosse, Hans sister. She is almost exactly the same as him, except she's a woman. This arena provides plenty of cover and she's no trouble. The surprising real threat here is a surprise group of officers and SS just past the door she's guarding.

I've run out of patience for the game at this point, and won't be going through Episode 6. I know I'm missing out on what might just be the best secret level of the bunch, but I'm tired of seeing these walls and these guys and I'm ready to call it quits. Based on past experience, it'll either be more of the same or the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Now, contrary to what I thought, I hated the worst of it less than I thought I would going in, even if this is clearly going for quantity over quality. While I dislike how badly some levels can end up, there are few games that just let you blow away a dozen enemies with a machine gun so easily. With that, to the rating.

Weapons:
Very simple, either knife or chose how fast you shoot bullets. 2

Enemies:
Deceptively simple, surprisingly clever. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There are too many of these. Some are interesting, some are very annoying, but most of them just don't stick in the mind for very long. 4

Player Agency:
Despite the widely varying movement speeds, I think the whole package worked well, so long as you don't end up slowly turning around or moving around like the Flash. The controls are otherwise simple and functional enough that there's nothing to really complain about. 6

Interactivity:
Basic use cases, walls and secrets. 1

Atmosphere:
In development, this game was intended to be a stealth game, and even in the finished product you can see it. It doesn't quite know if it wants to be serious and creepy, wacky or vaguely realistic and I think it suffers on that front. 3

Graphics:
Everything sort of works, except the way you move tends to make it all look very weird. Also, could use some more animation. 4

Story:
End of level text walls which sort of tie the gameplay together. 1

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are fine, though I do find there's an issue when enemies are first alerted. That said, the music is...okay. After a while it got on my nerves though. 4

That's 29, 2 points less than what I originally gave it. This time around I actually gave controls and levels more points, it was less in atmosphere and the audio-visual departments that caused the change.

I know I'm crapping on something that's a nostalgic memory and formative experience for many and retroactive first FPS for many others, but I think this causes us to ignore the game's flaws way too much and hype it up far more than it deserves. Did it create a template that a significant number of games tried to imitate? Yes. But it did not invent anything and compared to many of its contemporaries, lacks in some regards.

There's an anecdote about ID Software meeting Ken Williams of Sierra to sell this game to them, so they could get out of their Softdisk contract. Ken liked it, but offered less than what they wanted. When they complained, he showed them Red Baron, and ID Software walked. In retrospect, Williams made the wrong choice, but without the importance placed upon Wolfenstein, this is not quite the easy choice it seems.

1992 is almost done, I really only have Spear of Destiny left, but I think it'll be a bit before I feel up to that. Pulling a game out of my hat, I got Electro Man, also known as Electro Body, one of the weirder side-scrollers that Epic published in olden times.