Wolfenstein 3D - The Second Encounter (1994)

Name:Wolfenstein 3D - The Second Encounter
Number:266
Year:1994
Publisher:Macplay (Interplay's Macintosh arm at the time)
Developer:ID Software
Genre:FPS
Systems:3DO, Jaguar, Macintosh, SNES
Country of Origin:USA
Difficulty:4/5
Time:5 hours 10 minutes
Won:No (117W/91L)

As is usually the case with best-selling PC games, someone will try to port it to consoles. Technically, we've seen it before with Star Cruiser...even if I have yet to actually play the computer version, but this is the first one we're all familiar with. Normally, this wouldn't rate much of a glance, since most FPS are in some regard inferior on consoles and there's no real getting around that. Wolfenstein 3D though, isn't exactly better, but it is different.

The first console port was to the SNES, roughly comparable to some DOS machines at the original release. Which, in theory, should mean that the game plays similar to the original...mostly. The change is that the SNES is not quite as powerful enough to handle the proper experience, so corners were cut. Let's just get to that, shall we?

Oh, sweet lord, that's hideous. At the expense of having a decent sized viewing port, everything is a blur. This, in of itself, is not enough to warrant another playthrough. There are a dozen versions of Doom with similar issues. No, what warrants another playthrough is that there are thirty new levels, played concurrently, not in episodic chunks. New should be in quotes, since they're supposed to be simplified ports of various DOS levels. On the 3DO version and on Macintosh, these are alongside the original six episodes for...uh...some reason.

I eventually went for the Macintosh version. I tried the 3DO version, which is supposed to be the best, but it had no side-stepping and the emulator ran slowly on my system. Macintosh, despite some hiccups with a new version of Ubuntu, worked better. Even if there was still some slowdown with having a decently sized game window. Yeah, turns out running a Macintosh version in 320x200 you're running in a window on 1600x1080 is a recipe for not seeing anything. 

This controls a bit differently than you'd expect. Oh, there's the usual use, shoot and move, but the movement is awkward. This may tie into the whole slowdown bit, but aiming at someone was very awkward. I probably should have tried to find a port of this to ECWolf or something, but I was in too late before I realized it. There's a different sound effect when you use a wall, and nothing afterwards. I wasn't actually sure that this worked the same way as DOS.

 

Z and X sidestep. Aha, you may think, you can turn and sidestep, like a proper, modern FPS. Well, maybe, on my machine, side-stepping and turning results in nothing or turning in a very small circle. The Nazis haven't seen such incompetence in battle since they last fought with the Italians! Rounding this out is / for automap and esc for pause...which then allows you to open the menus, which are in the program menus like any well-designed game should have.

The GUI is changed. It looks like an AI upscale for some reason. Items are the treasure items you've found along the way, which now have a Quake sound effect when you pick them up. After about 40, you get another life. BJ looks weird, but is otherwise the same. Not shown, the ammo for your rocket launcher and flamethrower. Yes, there are new weapons here.

The returning ones are mostly the same. The pistol is no longer a Luger, but is instead some weird heavy metal monstrosity. The other two are almost the same. They shoot with 100% accuracy, which in this particular version can be annoying. Precise aiming is tricky, so you can go back and forth over an enemy while he gets free shots in. 

The rocket launcher is more like a railgun. Shoot it at someone and it goes through them. This was hilarious the first time I used it. I'm sure that's been done somewhere, but I've never seen a rocket which wasn't explode on impact before. It does explode, but only on walls or bosses. Not a lot of ammo, but oddly, more ammo than you'd expect.

Then there's the flamethrower. Rapid-fire, no decay in attack. Basically, a machine gun with solid projectiles and more damage. Anything it hits, well, it dies fast. Basically a plasma rifle without a cooldown period.

Every looks and seems just a little bit odd. It's not quite like that one image of a fan-made HD upscale of a game, but it is close. Guards, SS, officers and mutants all share the same lines, only the mutants don't have an alert sound. So there's no distinguishing them if you end up the wrong way down a fork in the road. Dog food also gives a dog barking sound effect, so this is distracting. Hunting for secrets is strange, because you can't hold down the use key here, instead you have to hammer it, while hearing BJ grunt continuously.

Levels seem to be simplified forms of more complex levels from the original. The first level, for instance, is a version of E1L1 with no side paths and a few side areas. Others, if they're based on a level, I couldn't really tell. Some levels are just more forgettable than others, so Second Encounter is working with that. Oddly, it kind of works. Wolfenstein was best when it was short levels you burned through quickly, and every level here is short and to the point.

To recap, the ideal for Wolfenstein, since each level has a limited amount of space, is that this forced limitation requires the level author to be clever in his use of enemies and space in order to make something short and fun. Which kind of worked during the original levels, but as the game went on you could see this idea start to disappear. By the end of Spear of Destiny, we had reached the limit and that game's expansions just spammed stuff at you because there was no other path forward. (This reasoning tends to be why I like Wolf-clones more than Wolf itself, because they tend to keep this feeling going for a bit longer or don't drag themselves out as long)

Second Encounter doesn't fool itself. No, by the third level, you'll have gotten your first non-secret gatling gun and found your first boss. But at the same time, the game loses the snappy gameplay, at least in how I experienced it. Enemies always seem to take a dozen bullets, aiming is awkward and enemies don't seem to do that much damage to me. Even Hans takes a few salvos to take me out. Doors also can only be closed again if it's midway through opening and only if you were the one to open them. I feel like the inevitable mod for Wolfenstein 3D that added in these levels probably fixes this, but in theory, I am testing something else.

By the time I have enough ammo for all weapons that I can go through a level more or less as I please, it feels even less like Wolfenstein 3D. Unless I miss or get ambushed from behind, I am under no real threat. Bosses die to several rockets, but those are easier to aim and they like to get close. In complete contrast from other expansions/sequels, I am now far too powerful for the game. I barely need to worry about secrets, to the point that I didn't even know there were secret levels until I stumbled into one.

Even when I do occasionally bite it, it's not that much trouble to get back to where I was. Even when it does get to the harder levels, I'm not constantly spinning around to take out guys hiding behind corners...because that's something this one can't effectively do. Oh, there are some, but the game doesn't overuse them this time around.

At least, until you get to 5-1. Now there are the usual amount of enemies. So you have to carefully clear out a level room by room, over the course of ten minutes, with controls that don't let you turn around quickly or aim accurately, when the game often expects you to do both. And we're back to what made Wolfenstein bad once again. But for a while it was the manageable kind of bad.

Then 5-5 happens. As I've banged on before, one of the expected principles of good level design, as in, so obvious we shouldn't have to explain it, is that levels should not start with the player about to get shot with no chance of escaping some damage. 5-5 not only ignores this, but practically throws the player into a nearly lethal situation. You don't start in elevators, so you're out in the open. Where a SS and a couple mutants are.

5-6 repeats this with a SS RIGHT IN FRONT of the player. This is a boss floor, incidentally, complete with fifty or so enemies, and a boss who, when you fire a shot in his room, becomes alert. Which is good, because there are about a dozen enemies in there. The first time I got there, I killed him and then got taken out by some guards who waited for me to enter. This level certainly encapsulates the Wolfenstein 3D experience.

I had already decided that I wasn't going to finish the last "episode" of Second Encounter beforehand, 5-6 solidified that, and when 6-1 opened up on another group of hostiles I just laughed as I quit the game. There's nothing quite as ironic as a game I thought was actually going one way start to end to the point that made the others bad.

As I was making it to those last few levels, I was starting to have a bit of trouble with ammo. Not 5-5/5-6, which had plenty of bullets, but I was actually getting into the double digits for that. I also noticed that as the levels wore on, I was finding less and less flamethrower and rocket launcher ammo. To the point that if I were pistol starting each level I would be having significantly more trouble than I already was.

Weapons:
The flamethrower, for the most part, feels like an unnecessary addition. Since the base weapons now all have perfect accuracy, a sprite projectile weapon isn't that useful. It's basically an additional 99 shots for risky situations or if you think you can anticipate where an enemy'll be. The rocket launcher, meanwhile, is quite possibly the most useful rocket launcher in any FPS, simply because the only situations it isn't useful is against a single guy. 4

Enemies:
Unchanged from the original. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
As a greatest hits version of Wolfenstein, I have nothing to complain about. Most of what I enjoyed about the game is here and that which wasn't...well, we didn't lose anything. That said, since the game has lost the opening elevator, and several levels had enemies outside the elevator...and now they aren't balanced around that, this is actually worse. I will say that this version's way of using mutants and officers together more felt nice compared to the either or of the original. 3

Player Agency:
Sure, this version has smooth side-stepping and a map feature, but it also has strange turning, no holding down use, and it's hard to hit anything. Plus that side-stepping comes with a cost of working awkwardly with turning. 4

Interactivity:
Unchanged. 1

Atmosphere:
Somewhere between frantic action hero movie, the life or death action of the original, and sometimes the tedious slog that was the Spear expansions. So, very mixed. 3

Graphics:
There's something uncanny about it all. None of the enemies have side or even back sprites now, so everyone is just going straight for you. The walls seem unchanged, but I can't help think they have and I don't like that I couldn't figure out why. 4

Story:
The SNES version added in cutscenes between "episodes"...which was not present in the 3DO or Macintosh version for...some reason. Now there's nothing, not even the vestige of what the DOS version had. 0

Sound/Music:
Higher quality sound effects, some of which sound weird. This is discounting the use of a Quake sound effect for picking up treasure. The music is odd, it's all this really energetic pseudo-heavy metal stuff. Less Doom's...well, doomier influence and more the kind of stuff that would influence power metal. Very happy, very energetic, but there are like 5 tracks. 4

That's 27, along the same lines as Spear of Destiny.

Were it not for the sudden shift into gotcha moments, I think this version would have been the best. It almost did exactly what it needed to do...and then it screwed it up. I wouldn't even have complained if it kept in the hardness of the later levels were it not for enemies being right next to the start. All other issues pale in comparison to that. I know Wolfenstein is about being a quick shot, but you can't be testing me the second I start a level, I make my saves there.

This should be the last time I cover anything directly connected to Wolfenstein for a while. Any other expansions I could find are just compilations of random levels, which could be worth a look as a lark, but not anytime soon.

Next time, I continue having to manage real life issues, but I think I'll either try out the Acorn 32-bit version of Elite or pull out something completely random out of a hat.