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.

Spear of Destiny: Mission 3 - Ultimate Challenge

Name:Ultimate Challenge
Number:7
Year:1993
Levelset for:Spear of Destiny
Publisher:Formgen
Developer:Formgen
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:7 hours 00 minutes

As Greg Lake once said, welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. Well, there's no Giger cover art to draw us in here, it's just more Spear of Destiny. The same old, same old. Let's just see how much copy/pasting I could do from the last expansion, shall we? Once again, I'm playing on Bring 'em On.

Floor 1:
There's a box of bullets behind a barrel at the start. Giving me that much ammo right away. I get the feeling I'm not in Castle Wolfenstein anymore. No dogs this time, but there are a selection of corpses behind me, subtly indicating that BJ had some trouble getting in here. Mostly a decent intro level, but I did notice that there are suspicious puddles of blood near the walls, replacing the rats from last time as the obvious secret indicator.
 

Floor 2:
Did you know dogs can bite through walls if you're on the corners of tiles which you can't otherwise get across? Dunno at which part that lovely bit of gameplay was added, but I hate it, and I'm not at all regretting playing this. We've gone straight into the usual shenanigans in Wolfenstein level design too, better carefully check every room as you enter it or get sniped by a guard, repeat for every room. Oh, and there are over sixty enemies.

I also gotta say, this has been going on off and on since the original episodes, but this level really cinched this game as being a weird, surrealistic fever dream. The quasi-tactical nature of the gunplay, the bizarre usage of wall textures and more pictures of Hitler than in a neo-nazi's hard drive. Any description of this game beyond the basic sounds unhinged.

Floor 3:
I'm glad we're going straight into the annoying part of Wolfenstein level design. I swear, I feel like I'm playing SWAT 4, but with nazis...and none of the fun. When that game puts ten enemies in a room, it's the most terrifying thing ever, and there's a sense of satisfaction when you finally put them all down. Here, it's ten enemies every room, and there are a ton of rooms. It's already so bad that they've just given me the gatling gun, in an open room. Not even the illusion with a secret with a massive blood puddle outside. 

Floor 4:
Hey, we've actually gone down to having smaller groups of enemies per room. It actually feels manageable, or I've just gotten back into the habit of corner checking everything. Exploiting my ability to see around corners when there are two, or just running in and running out when there are two points of concern when I enter a room. It's almost becoming a fine science.

The secret floor entrance is weird. There are four elevators here. One you can't reach near the start, another about halfway through, doesn't need any keys to enter, another in an obvious secret, then the actual secret exit. This one isn't in an obvious secret, and needs both keys when you're inside. It's also got both a maze and a pushwall maze, because why wouldn't you do that at this point?

Floor 19:
What the heck is this wall texture supposed to be? I know what it looks like, a deliberately hideous texture from a Cruelty Squad imitator. It isn't interesting or cool, it just reminds me that I'm shooting the same enemies in the same halls again and again. The bats are back, and this level has a lot of choke point usage, funnel enemies through a tunnel or get gunned down. I'm running out of things to say and they've run out of things to do. At least the end section has enough secrets within secrets to feel like a secret level, even if I wish I was playing Blake Stone right now.

Floor 5:
The boss is the exact same one as last time, who was just a new coat of paint on the regular Spear boss, who was slightly different from the last six bosses. So once again, it's about the level, in which I have to kill dozens of dogs. After that, it turns into a maze level, so much and so long that I got lost a few times. With a map. By the time I found the boss it was just placed like a random enemy.

Floor 6:
We start with a secret maze, because why wouldn't you start with one of those? It isn't that secret, since there's no exit out of the starting room and it's obvious which walls you push, but man, come on. It's a long level, the designers here were really feeling like they needed to get absolutely everything they could out of a Wolfenstein level, much to its detriment.

Floor 7:
Most of this level is a giant spiral. You keep going forward, then left. The game throws a few guards on your right, but for most of the first half, you're just doing the exact same things over and over again. At most, there's going to be a group of enemies in front of a door. Still, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Floor 9:
There's a tell-tale sign of a secret in the opening area, but there's no secret, not even out the door in the next room. No major enemies straight away, and a bit of confusion only leading to an empty room where a bunch of dogs are facing away from me. I practically bowl them down. This level has multiple encircling hallways around a series of rooms. One of them is a secret maze. I cannot even muster the sarcasm to say I love that, just stop doing that.

Floor 10:
I feel like tossing in a hallway with a bunch of small rooms, then not actually doing anything with them on a boss floor of all things is a bad sign. Why do so many rooms feel like dining rooms? I guess some could be offices, but this has been a persistent problem in this levelset. Same boss as the last one, the bootleg Barnacle Wil guy, he shoots bullets and rockets. I've gotten so used to this kind of fight that I handled him incredibly quickly.

Floor 11:
This one actually has a bit of fun in it. There's an oddly shaped section, two outer hallways, two inner hallways and two interior rooms, where one gunshot, at the entrance, will more or less awaken every enemy inside. Just enough that you have to worry, but not so many it's cutting them down by the dozens. It took me a few attempts to get through. It was actually nice doing something other than constant corner checking and enemies just being dumped in front of me.

Floor 12:
The opening to this level is a series of hallways with pillars where dozens of enemies are free to fire upon you. The only help you'll get until you're past them is a secret cache of ammo which is not enough. Even when you get past that, the only health for a while is in a secret door you really need to trick open to get. Fortunately, that was the tricky part, after that it's mostly a maze. Hey, at least the path to the secret exit is normal...except for the part where those bubble tiles are shoved in your face again. Huzzah!

Floor 20:
One of the oddest levels in this game. It's another one path forward the entire time, we'll through in keys even though that makes no sense. Except this time, a lot of the rooms are either shaped like Nevada or just a triangle. Most of the level is taken up by this, as in, they fill out the entire grid of the possible level. There's 8 secrets inside, somehow, and I didn't really feel like going back and looking for all of them.

Floor 13:
Quite possibly the most bizarre case of level design I've seen. I ended up finding a secret early on which ended up putting me into a path which was more or less the same experience as the last, secret level. Technically it differs because there are two paths to the end of the level, each with their own key, but this honestly irked me the first time around. This should be the kind of thing I say is clever, but somehow this levelpack manages to ruin it.

Floor 15:
Another long hauler. To start, it at least tries the actually fun part of Wolfenstein gameplay, a big area full of enemies you have to move around rather than just gun down. Since some of them open up locked doors which actually give you more options for the battle, this is quite tricky. It takes me multiple tries and it's only 18 enemies. After that, it's a lot of slowly going through a maze-like area against enemies which often get the first strike against you if you don't know they're there, with constant backtracking to health and ammo caches.

Floor 16:
68 secrets!? On a boss floor? This isn't an easy one, because the skeleton mech knight (which I'm sure isn't the right name) isn't tied down like last time, and he's fast. Very fast. He's silent except when he's shooting at you, so if you accidentally awaken him the first time you'll notice is when you hear yourself dying. Since I didn't have a cache of ammo but a cache of health, I had to look around and ended up nearly solving the rest of the level...and finding out that I missed the cache of ammo. Sigh...

When I finally make it to the end I'm perplexed. That many secrets and only four mattered? I push every single wall I can and nothing. Okay, what did I miss? Because I missed something. There are a couple in an interior wall, but that isn't the big one. The big one is...I need to explain a trick in Wolfenstein 3D for a moment. See, pushwalls are just a flag you set a regular wall as. Any wall can be a pushwall, even if it'll only move if there's space behind it. A trick, some modders use, is to have the tile a pushwall is pushed to be another pushwall. Two secrets in one. Well, that's how modders use it. This uses it as a giant wall you constantly push for the length of a level. Have fun.

Floor 18:
This level quite handily demonstrates why boss levels aren't long corridors with curves to them. Because it's unfun, and it's blatantly obvious that it isn't a test of skill. Since there are other enemies here, it's about finding those before waking the boss. Note, most the ammo is actually behind him, so I hope you weren't pistol starting these. Once I kill him, it's time to use the key...wait a minute, there's no door out of here. I HAVE TO SECRET HUNT!? I go over the entire level, I find nothing. This is actually the worst level in a FPS I've ever seen. I don't mean that in hyperbole. I haven't seen the entire level, but I know there's going to be a maze and we're going to violate every single principle of good level design.

Okay, the rest of the level, after a set of three pushblocks with no obvious indicators, is just a simple "go back and forth along shrinking hallways", but it is annoying, because at the end you have to go back to fill out your health and ammo for the final battle.

Floor 21:
Wait, what!? Did someone slip in a level from Wolfendoom? This is very strange. At least before the mobile RPGs, the whole Wolfenstein/Commander Keen/Doom connections were supposed to be easter eggs. This is the earliest actual in-canon reference to that. And it's from a dubiously canon spin-off nobody likes. Huh. Anyway, the Angel of Death has an entirely new fight. I spend three tries trying to find him, look up where he is online, then gun him down when he gets stuck on a wall. The ending cutscene is the same as before.

This gets a 1. The only time I had a smile on my face was when I was playing the final level, and that isn't even a "I won the game joke". No, that was as good as any of these boss levels ever were, the reference was cool. Everything else was just a ceaseless, unending parade of bad level design choices. All of them, often at the same time. There is no reason to play this, I have already revealed the only interesting part of this. Even if you were doing so because you were trying to learn from bad level design, you already got enough of that from the base games in their worse levels. You don't need twenty levels of that.

Next time...we see what's so special about The Quest of the Space Beagle.

Spear of Destiny: Mission 2 - Return to Danger

Name:Return to Danger
Number:6
Year:1993
Levelset for:Spear of Destiny
Publisher:Formgen
Developer:Formgen
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:6 hours

Welcome to the first expansion pack to Spear of Destiny, Return to Danger. Forgive me if I don't go much into this beyond, "and clear out twenty more floors to get the Spear of Destiny", because the title screen isn't trying. It's the exact same title screen as the original. Could be because I copy/pasted the files over the original Spear's files in ECWolf, but I doubt it. You know the drill, Formgen smells money, decides to sell expansions to the game they have the rights to, ID doesn't care anymore because they're working on Doom. Same settings as last time, ECWolf, Bring 'em On.

Floor 1:
To start off, I'm flashbanged by the graphics. I'm not sure what it is that's making it feel so weird. I've seen scanned pictures from this era, and none of them cause quite the same level of "what am I looking at" as these. Too bright? They did some weird effect? Too zoomed in? Too zoomed out? Perhaps just the strange feeling that the game tried to make updated textures for everything but they don't quite work? I don't know, but what I do know is that the developers violated the level design rule where enemies can't attack you at the very start. They are the dogs, but still. It's more troublesome that you don't have any ammo for a while.

Oh, what the heck is that? Did BJ just go through an industrial sewage plant or something? What is that supposed to be? Yeugh. That's certainly a choice of design. It's just so...strange. This is actually a hard level regardless of what the dogs are here for. Barely any ammo for a bit, and barely any health for longer. For a while, the only ammo you get is off the now green suited guards.

This isn't a case of me missing a secret, because the game has a trick to its secrets, which I kind of appreciate in comparison to the randomness of previous games. Every pushwall is next to a rat. Which also means that every secret is a gimme by default. Hey, at least now I won't be complaining if I have to enter a secret to advance. Also, the SMG is now a blue AK-47 for some strange reason. The artist really loves the color blue.

Incidentally, the only thing that hasn't been revamped for this expansion is the music. There are  mostly new sounds for everything, including enemies. (treasure items are now bombs, for some reason) They're not bad, just...odd. Perhaps it is that everything's been given a makeover, but everything plays the same. That said, this level is quite difficult, to the point that I only won after multiple attempts. Two secrets lead into each other, and they're there just to waste your ammo. That's not a good sign.

Floor 2:
For a moment, I had some hopes that this was going to be an easy level, since there are quite a few empty rooms. These are lies intended to lull you into a sense of tranquility. Once again, we're fighting against endless hordes. It's pretty clear that the developers of this one know what they're doing and some of the flaws of the original game. Hence the bizarre secret giveaways. Yet, I'm still banging my head against the wall fruitlessly, hoping that sooner or later I'll actually make it through.

Floor 3:
Remember way back in the first game's secret levels? One of the secrets was in a desert rock-styled diamond room where you had to go the right way to avoid battling something like 44 Officers. This level is based around a similar principle, only instead of Officers, it's just endless Guards with a few SS thrown in. This only has 66 enemies spread across a wide area, but this opening section, which is really just nine blocks leading to the rest of the level, is by far the most tedious.

This level also reveals a particularly nasty bit of information, both that some secrets won't take advantage of the rat trick and that they may sometimes be vital ones. The key to the floor exit is behind one such secret, and you can bet that this is going to come up again later. I wonder what awful thing is going to happen next? Not even tempting fate at this point, that's just how this game is rolling.

Floor 4:
Just because you involve something doesn't mean it wasn't going to happen anyway, I'm just surprised at how much worse it gets. At first this starts up like a normal level. A few guards, an obvious secret which leads to a room with...doors that open to verboten warnings. Well, I did miss a door back in the non-secret area...which leads to more doors with those warnings. You ain't getting anywhere without hunting for secrets. Good. Just what I needed.

I'm just impressed that they managed to make my opinion of them 180. I thought they understood some of the flaws of the past levels. No, they viewed those as strengths, and decided to double down. Because I can't figure out why else you'd place a door that leads to nowhere at the end of a long, winding hallway full of enemies.

This is where the first secret level can be entered, and it's actually kind of strange. See, there are two keys in the level and two exits, but the secret exit is actually easier to find. Since, you know, you have to find secrets to get through the level. I don't understand what the developers were thinking during this process.

I realize this franchise left reality a while ago, but even in the alternative history this game has been going for, giant bats with machine guns is a bit of a shift. They're just as annoying as the mutants were, perhaps moreso. It seems like they're somehow stronger and more powerful than the mutants, but it could just be the game feeling worse since I keep getting hit around corners this time around.
 

Floor 5:
The first boss floor. What terrible things will happen this time? Outside of the now expected difficulty, this is just a regular level with a boss appended at the end. Like how Spear was going, and we've picked up where Spear left off. Well, Spear left off just before we got to have to deal with a maze before getting to the boss. There are also 18 secrets, which are just so excessive. Especially since they aren't optional. One is even a way you can screw yourself, which is just the cherry at the top of this game.

Basically, this entire level is me going through a slog of a level before I get to fight the boss. A reskin of the submarine guy from last time. He's...actually, he might just be even easier than previous bosses. That or it could be the easy cover setup. In my serious attempt at the boss, I didn't even need to run away for health or ammo to get him.

Floor 6:
Something occurred to me while playing this level, the art direction might actually be better. Yeah, it's garish, but so was the base game, and a lot more places in this game feel like actual places as opposed to the endless prisons and stone structures the original had. There's a secret lab here, and a lot of the map is dedicated to a food room. Nothing really special here otherwise.

Floor 7:
In the absolute final statement on swastika-styled floors, the entire level is one giant swastika. The way this level is done overall is somewhat lazy. Instead of having four different sections, there are two sets of room which are more or less copy/pastes of each other. Also, the exit is basically right at the level start, if you know which hallway to go down. You could do it without ever engaging in anything at all on this level.

Floor 8:
Oh, look, a level-sized maze. My favorite. My absolute favorite. Oddly enough there are more...normal sections, but they're in the middle of a big maze. Which has not only secrets which allow you to cut across wide amounts of it, but the level exit. Without anything to stop you from just taking it short of your own luck in finding it. This expansion, man, this expansion.

Floor 9:
It's another maze leading to big rooms with stuff and enemies in them. Sure, it's simpler than the last one, but it still follows most of the same tropes as the last level. These guys were really struggling to fill out 21 levels, weren't they?

Floor 10:
Boss number two. This one starts off intriguing, there's this massive wraparound hallway with no enemies, but plenty of doors and one of the keys. One of the areas won't open with the new key, but one does, and it leads to a particularly annoying maze. The kind where you have to move around static objects while figuring out who's shooting at you. There's also a key in there you can't reach, but this is one of those levels where a boss drops a key, so that isn't important. Instead, I start clearing the rooms on the north side, big mistake, because these really just contain enemies. No real treasure, ammo or health. Just a drain on resources.

The far right room has a semi-secret, including ammo...and the boss. I'm not even upset, this is at least a clever play on the usual boss level. It's better than just throwing the boss at the end of a mediocre level, because, hey, it doesn't make the fight any worse and I actually feel like I got killed for a good reason for once.

Floor 11:
What maniac is designing this crap? Two paths out of the starting area, one leads to an AK and a key, the other leads to the rest of the level. Including, once again, the level exit with barely anything stopping you from just gunning it. At least this time there are some enemies there. Also, all the doors out of this area are locked, the first key opens a room inside this area which has the second key. Look, I get making some stuff optional, but at this point a significant chunk of the game is turning out to be ENTIRELY optional. Even modern day open-world games with optional content aren't making you avoid the main chunk of the game!

Floor 12:
Twenty-five secrets and the exit to the second secret level. I'll say one thing at least, the actual exit out is obvious, especially since there's only two pseudo-secrets between the start and the exit. Most of those secrets are just pushwalls in a long corridor which by technical definition is a pushwall maze.

The actual meat of the level are four rooms, three of which are corner rooms with a small amount of enemies and the fourth is a central room with a significant chunk. That fourth room has so many enemies that you realistically can't get through it with anything less than full ammo. Naturally, this is where the secret exit is. Good thing you can funnel them through a small corridor. That and the ability for some guards to become awake but not all of them saved my bacon for the last charge.

Floor 20:
This level is more or less a straight shot from the level start to the level exit, save for the two keys. Not in the sense it has been, but there's only ever one path forward, past the hordes of Nazis you have to kill. Not really much to talk about, but the second key is in an annoying secret, non-obvious and near the middle of the level.

Floor 14:
Every level at this point is starting to become the same. Floor 13 and Floor 14 are basically the same, except this one has two mazes in it. Open door in corridor to room full of 10-20 enemies, funnel them through corridor, repeat until you fall asleep. Oh, but this level has something even better, this time, you have a fifty percent chance of finding the level exit before the rest of the level. Why do this every level?
 

Floor 16:
The last floor was just a completed game of tic-tac-toe with a few side rooms, which was about as interesting as it sounds. This one, instead, is another floor with a bunch of rooms where a bunch of enemies stand at the door waiting for you. To be fair it's not all like that, but this game is getting tiresome in how much it repeats itself. This one's a giant swastika, but at least it's sort of clever in how each room is laid out...most of the time.

The boss is actually kind of clever in its location. There's plenty of ammo and health next to him, but positioning is actually tricky. Unlike other levels, there's just a whole bunch of stuff in the way of you and him, and while you get plenty of cover, one lucky burst could end you. Which gets us back into the real deadly foe of these boss floors, the rest of the level.

The real nastiest enemies around are the mutant replacements, the bats with machineguns. I don't know if they're at all changed from the regular mutants, but they feel faster. Every time I fight one, it's only luck that results in me not losing health. Screw the rest of the secret projects they've been working on in this game, deploy a battalion of these guys in London and the tide of the war will change over night.

Floor 18:
For the most part, this follows the usual boss floor stuff, save for the health and ammo merely being in side rooms. Go out one door at the start, and you're face to face with the boss, go out another and you can slowly pick off the rest of the guards before taking him on. The layout of the room is a bit janky, he can get caught in a big niche and fighting back can be tricky. After this the final level is more or less the same as the last one, just with a bit more trouble finding the boss.

I've going to give this a 2 and not explain it any further. I'll save that for the second expansion, of which I am definitely looking forward to. For the time being, I'm going to head for an entirely different game. For some reason, I picked out a game at random and ended up with Legend of the Hero Tonma, a Turbografx/PC Engine game from 1989. Gotta say, played a bit and discovered that it was certainly a game. So, none of that, we'll just be seeing the next game I was going to play anyways, Overkill, a shmup from Epic MegaGames.

 

 

Spear of Destiny (1992)

Name:Spear of Destiny
Number:260
Year:1992
Publisher:Formgen
Developer:ID Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time:8 hours 40 minutes
Won:Yes (8W/1L*)

Spear of Destiny, as if you don't know, is the first sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, made in an incredibly short period of time in order to capitalize on the massive success of the game. The story behind this one is much the same as the story behind Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Babysitter, probably because it's the exact same company. Formgen was a company that published shareware titles in real stores, so naturally they would try to reach out to the companies providing them the best games in order to sell originals. Commander Keen 6 must have done well for them to want to publish another Wolfenstein 3D game.

Wherein there's a problem. They already killed Hitler, and nobody else really has the same romanticism in killing them. Stalin gets close, but Wolfenstein wasn't getting that alternative history yet, just into the more fantastical elements of the real world. Emperor Hirohito wasn't really the guy you could paint all the country's evil on, Petain came off as a stooge, and nobody cared about Mussolini after the war was over. (See, Alessandra Mussolini) So, they were stuck with more Nazis. Except, rather than setting it after Wolfenstein, it's instead set before.

So Spear is a prequel, in which Hitler has acquired the Spear of Destiny, the mythical spear that pierced Jesus's side during the crucifixion. Shoot a bunch more Nazis and wonder how they got anything done considering one guy killed like five thousand people between these two games.

Befitting what is effectively an expansion pack sequel, almost everything I said about Wolfenstein 3D applies here as well, the important differences is that there are some new ammo pick-ups with a higher amount of bullets, and a few new enemies. I'm going to be playing this in ECWolf, since I like having an actual automap and on Bring 'em on, because I am insane. 

Floor 1:
A technically competent opener, but I didn't really feel like I was having fun going through here. Plenty of ammo, and the SMG here is held by a SS you can cleverly get the drop on if you know what you're doing, but this really falls into the "wander around until you reach the exit" style of Wolf levels.

The real big change is in how it looks, a lot of the wall textures are now scanned images. Before I objected to them and I still dislike them. It's just odd-looking. Some walls are realistic and others are the more cartoony style and it doesn't work. A lot of later games do have scanned textures with pixel art enemies, but those do so in a more consistent way where even if a wall actually is made using paint tools on a computer, it tends to blend in better.

Floor 2:
It's the second level, they're not going to try anything crazy yet. Try being in a starting area with dozens of guards and a dozen hallways they could come out of. You shoot, a dozen guards wake up, and their AI won't make them head straight to you the entire time, sometimes they'll try to go behind you. That means you'll hear a lot of doors open, and when you fire, whoops, more guards are alert. Hey, was that a SS shouting?

This is a genuinely tense level, and it took me quite a few tries before getting past the opening slaughterfest. It feels different than a Doom slaughterfest, everything tends to die in a few hits, so you aren't going to be gunning down the exact same monster for a minute. That said, the level gives off some serious signs that they gave up afterwards. There are two keys right next to each other and the doors they open are on the other side of the map.

Floor 3:
My god, this game loves ambushes. I swear every single niche has a guard or a SS in it. It was kind of annoying in the last level, but this level is driving me up a wall. It could be my imagination, but it feels like they have larger hitboxes, which means I often touch them, awakening them and causing them to become alert a moment before I realize they're there. It's also one of those where if you go the wrong way at the start, you'll be halfway through the level before you realize there was stuff at the start you probably would need if you were pistol starting.

Floor 19:
The first secret, entered from the fourth floor. While I do generally feel that forcing the player to find secrets to win a level is bad game design, doing so in a secret level is forgivable. What isn't forgivable is that in an area with three obvious secrets, the actual way forward is to find one particular block, in a diamond shape no less, that opens a passageway.

This level adds mutants/zombies to the mix, and boy howdy, did I forget how nasty these guys could be. Especially when the level designer, say, makes them become alert behind a door, and since they're completely silent, the first time you'll notice them is when they're opening doors on your flanks. This level does that sort of thing a lot, to the point that you could probably reach the exit about 20 minutes sooner on a lucky playthrough. It got to the point that between that and the constant corner checking I was sick and tired of the level by the end of it. Unfortunately, I got the impression that the game was just getting started.

Floor 5:
Our first boss. It's just another of the Grosse siblings, this time he's green. This, amusingly enough, is treated as such a serious boss that most of the level is actually done after him. Unless you already know what you're doing. Pistol starting these levels may be technically viable, but in practice, good luck if you don't have a map. There are twelve secrets on this level and only one is before you enter the bossfight, but don't worry, there's a million medikits in one!

Floor 7:
Even if this is not an interesting level, I appreciate that not all these levels are insane endurance tests. It's just some big corridors with the occasional enemy jumping you. You can tell this was balanced around a pistol start, starting with full ammo gives you a lot of leeway, even if you don't find any secrets. Find one, and suddenly everything is in your favor.

Floor 8:
There is a secret right next to the start which just has five SS hanging out in a small, featureless room. Otherwise, it's more of the last level, except now the parts which were nice and simple have turned into the same old, same old full level adventure in dodging the guy you alerted at the start. If you were allowing yourself to fully restart after dying, it's getting to the point where yeah, technically you can, but you need to know where the secret is which has the gatling gun.

Floor 10:
The second boss. This is just a boss in the middle of a normal level. By this point, none of the things this level is doing is really interesting, and together it's not breaking that. All aspects of this level have been done to death by now, and just because the boss shoots rockets and bullets at the same time doesn't mean there's anything new here. The boss arena otherwise falls into the same template we've seen for a while now, down to a secret with health and a secret with ammo.

Floor 12:
They started using the mutants the last level, which wasn't that interesting despite making it blatant that you were to go through the opening section just sidestepping and shooting a guard in a niche. It's odd how many levels here follow the same formula with a few differences thrown in. Secret near the start with the gatling gun, long winding corridors, at least one secret you will never, ever find without pushing every wall on the map. Hey, here's a section where enemies are behind barrels on both sides of a passageway, better be quick or be dead. But the mutants, man, the mutants are just so quick on the draw, it's infuriating.

Floor 20:
The second secret floor. The name ECWolf gives me for this level is Pushwall Panic, I don't know if that's the official name or something ECWolf just gave it, but it's fitting. You start off in a hallway with only the entrance elevator. Fine, it's a secret level. There are thirty two secrets, and it's basically a pushwall maze. Only, it's a pushwall maze you can accidentally cause huge chunks of the level to be blocked off. I'm sure it's even possible to screw yourself over. To start with, this is displaying the worst of Wolfenstein's secret design, random walls lead to the secret. No real method of figuring it out short of just spamming the space key. Fine, whatever, this is just the best of Id's capabilities here. The worst of this is that most of the health and ammo is in a place where you can easily block off without even realizing it. Going for the gatling gun is also tricky. Hope you weren't playing on a pistol start. At least it plays like a secret level.

Floor 14:
I hate zombies/mutants. It feels like unless the game positions one away from you and you're facing them before they become alert, you're getting shot and for quite a bit of health. Naturally, the level does everything it can to make this situation impossible to end up in, so every encounter is practically a guarantee that you'll lose health. It's really helped by the game's insistence on making every single level have a maze.

Floor 15:
Take all of what I keep repeating, now add in a section where you have to rush between doors because there are wells on each side of a corridor, which allow a bunch of mutants to attack you from both sides. It gets a little better as you go along, but even as the game showers you with ammo, health is getting tighter and tighter.

Floor 16:
It's time to fight the Ubermutant. Assuming you can reach him. Because right outside the entrance elevator are, a group of various Nazis to your left and right, more hidden behind walls with strategic pillars so they can snipe at you before you realize what's going on, and the only ammo you get is what you came with and a box in front of the elevator. There's some off to the side, but this is next to even more guys behind pillars. Which, if you go around, you can actually be next to one group, but if you're careful, you can avoid them all together. The only way forward from here is a set of doors, which is within sight of the pillars, hope they can't snipe you. This leads to a set of rooms, which the second you fire in, alerts more enemies. Once you take them out and head further in...there's another set of rooms with a whole bunch of enemies. Then you can do a normal level.

Once you've gotten the first key, you can enter the area behind the pillars. The Ubermutant is inside the room inside this area. I hope you've saved some ammo and can run straight out of here, because there's no cover inside this area. Sure, the Ubermutant is basically another Grosse sibling, but with no real cover, this actually makes him a bit trickier. A bit, I still made it through handily.

Floor 17:
Not exactly an easy level, but easier than the last one. There are two SS outside the starting area, shoot one, and every guard on the outside hallway around the castle becomes alert, but there's more to it than that. They'll open little doors to small rooms, each containing either mutants or keys. Only one key is useful, and you'll know none of which doors were opened. It sounds tricky, considering how quick mutants are on the draw, but opening the door then backing off works in your favor. I actually got killed more by the officers waiting in ambush for the player next to purple walls. It's strange.

Floor 18:
This floor has the Death Knight, the most obnoxious bossfight by far. To start with, the game just puts the gatling gun outside the elevator. Because if you die you will need it. There are no SS on this level, just some officers outside and some mutants next to the Death Knight. He's one of those bosses who throws everything at you, bunch of bullets, then two rockets just to cap off your likely death. In order to actually survive, you need to rush past him, hopefully to a safe corridor, then go outside where all the ammo and health is and use that to slowly wear him down. He drops a key and the Spear of Destiny is in front of a picture of Hitler.

Floor 21:
This leads straight to the final, final level, with the Angel of Death in a quite creepy situation. There are thirty five wandering souls who can only temporarily be knocked out with some bullets. The Angel is a lot less tricky than previous bosses, he just shoots one shot and it's an actual projectile you can dodge. It's not a one-hit kill or anything, so you just have to find him and then try not to get hit. It two me two tries, and the only reason why I died the first time was because ctrl+alt on Ubuntu shifts windows.

Two things, this level has a whole bunch of stuff unique to it in addition to the enemies. Various sprites, including several statues of the boss. There's also a unique music track, which is very nice. The other is that the majority of the health items on the ground are the chicken dinners, which when you think about it, is very strange.

Killing him results in a slow transition to an animation of BJ falling down, then an end text box, an image of BJ getting a medal from FDR and then the credits play with various pictures of the bosses. The end.

Weapons:
The game showers you with so much ammunition and spawns you practically next to a gatling gun on every level that any other weapon usage is practically pointless. Still the same rating though. 2

Enemies:
There's really not much change here despite the new bossfights. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Wolfenstein's roster just was not designed to last for eighty whole levels. Patterns quickly emerge among the levels, so that while they aren't just the exact same thing over and over again, in practice, they're more or less generated along the same theme. It becomes quite tedious if everything feels the same. 3

Player Agency:
Same as Wolfenstein. 6

Interactivity:
Same as Wolfenstein. 1

Atmosphere:
So much of this comes off as running out of ideas and just trying to put in as much as possible to extend the playtime of a game that didn't need it that much. I shudder to think how much you'd have to play this in order to be able to handle most levels without dying once. 2

Graphics:
The contrast between the old pixel art and the newer scanned image based stuff is annoying, but after a while it tended to fade into just another set of wall graphics. 3

Story:
I feel like the better end animation should get some more credit, but there's basically nothing outside of it. 1

Sound/Music:
Oddly, I felt like the music here was a lot better. Most of it wasn't exactly memorable, but nothing got on my nerves outside of the bossfight music. Some of it was even quite pleasant. 5

That's 27, two lower than what I gave it the first time, and two lower than the improved rating of Wolfenstein. Oddly, I seem to have given it a 2 on story last time, which feels quite inflated for what it is.

It's pretty clear that halfway through the game, ID just ran out of ideas and just threw whatever they could to get this one over the finish line. While I don't think the general design of this style of FPS is bad, it's clear that these guys were just doing it because they didn't have much other choice.

With that, I've finally finished 1992. I'm thinking before I finish the year entirely I should look over the expansions to games I've covered. That leaves expansions to this, Wolfenstein and one for Terminator 2029. I'm not really sure I'm going to do the ones for this and Wolfenstein, simply because most of them are either compilations of user levels, and the ones that are not are infamously terrible. I've heard real bad things about the Spear expansions, and I feel like we'll all probably be better served if I just play some fan games instead. Next time, more Terminator 2029.

*For those that care, I'm not counting it as a win again, this is what it was during the first time around.