Contents:
The Intro
Title: Wolfenstein 3D
Release year: 1992
Developed by: id Software
Genre: first-person shooter (FPS)
Platform replayed on: PC
Before there was Doom (1993), there was Wolfenstein 3D.
I’ve never been a huge first-person shooter fan, but I remember playing a lot of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom in the mid-90s.
They were quite unlike anything I had played up until that point on PC. I’d played platformers, point-and-clicks, and roleplaying games. But Wolfenstein 3D was probably the first 3D game I played. I recall that my friends and I only had access to the shareware version at the time, but this was more than enough for us.
I suspect I was drawn to the technical achievement of the game. Visually, it looked great, and you had the freedom to explore levels however you chose to. I don’t think the novelty of such a graphic game in my early and impressionable teenage years had much of an impact. Back then, it was just another computer game I could play, in a time when I didn’t have much choice—I took what I could get!
The goal was simple in the first episode, titled “Escape from Castle Wolfenstein”: escape! But how did this play out? Let’s find out.
The Game
Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter, set during World War II. You take on the role of Allied spy William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, as he attempts his escape from a Nazi prison: Castle Wolfenstein.
The game is split into six episodes, which actually make up two trilogies. The primary trilogy follows the escape, then subsequent attempts to thwart the Nazi regime, including taking on Hitler himself. The second trilogy is actually a prequel trilogy where Blazkowicz tries to disrupt Nazi plans for chemical warfare.
The controls are simple to learn, with three action buttons: open/activate, fire (or attack with knife), and strafe. You can customise the keyboard layout. There was also support for a joystick(!) and mouse.
The heads up display is clean and simple, and shows you all you need to know. Most importantly, it shows your current health (as a percentage), the amount of ammo you’re carrying, and the weapon you’re currently wielding.
Interestingly, this game also has a score, and you have a certain amount of lives. This very much reminded me of platformer games I was playing at the time, like Commander Keen (1990) and Duke Nukem (1991). In those games, indeed in all platformers, you often tried to not only complete the games, but achieve a high score—like in arcade games. I think it was a sign of the times to see scoring here in Wolfenstein 3D.
Now, we can’t talk about Wolfenstein 3D, and not talk about the guns (or weapons to be more accurate—there is the knife!).
You start with the pistol, but this won’t do you much good long term due to its low damage and slow rate of fire.
Getting your hands on the machine gun will make life a lot easier—higher rate of fire, and more damage.
The gun that deals the most damage is the chain gun. However, it does use a lot of ammo. You will need to use this during boss battles though.
You’re limited to a maximum of 99 rounds (the same ammo is used for all three guns), and I found using the machine gun was more economical.
What is absolutely brutal in Wolfenstein 3D is when you do lose a life, you start the level again with the pistol and eight rounds of ammo.
In the worst case scenario where you run out of ammo, you’re left with your knife.
The pickups are quite standard in first-person shooters: ammo, health, and new weapons.
You can also pick up a variety of treasure (adding to your score), some of which is hidden in secret rooms.
In the first episode, the goal in each level is to find the exit point. In certain levels, you will require a key to access this.
Once you find this exit point, you get to see how you performed in terms of time, kills, secrets discovered, and treasure accumulated.
And that’s it: rinse and repeat!
For my replay, I’m going to attempt Episode 1: “Escape from Wolfenstein”.
Will I escape? Let’s find out!
The Replay
Like with most games in the first-person shooter genre, before you start playing you need to select a difficulty level. It’s usually along the lines of easy/medium/hard. Unlike In Wolfenstein 3D, where I was immediately reminded how this game (and later Doom as well) taunted you.
Even when you try to quit, it taunts you.
I’m not sure what level I played on when I was younger, but I wasn’t going to let this game taunt me now. Bring ‘em on!
From there, you join the protagonist just after he’s taken out a Nazi guard. Equipped with a pistol and eight rounds of ammo, you begin your escape.
The first challenge for me was familiarising myself with the keyboard controls. Again, I’m not a huge first-person shooter fan, but I have played a lot of the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series over the years. Whenever I’ve played these games on PC, I’ve always used a controller, and never the keyboard and mouse combo.
The basic movement and actions came back to me pretty quickly, but strafing proved more challenging. For the most part, I tried to get by without it.
You don’t have an aiming reticle like in modern first-person shooters, and the keyboard movement is quite sensitive. I often found myself wanting to adjust my aim by a fraction, only to end up moving too far off to one side.
Thankfully, the aiming is quite forgiving. You just have to be pointing in the general direction.
What isn’t forgiving, are your enemies (on this difficulty level). And there are a lot of them.
The levels are quite large, and the layouts are varied, but it generally comes down to running around opening doors and clearing rooms of enemies (at least it feels like running; the pace of movement is very quick).
You have to take out the enemies quickly, as you really can’t take much damage. Health pickups are also quite scarce.
There are a few different enemy types in Wolfenstein 3D. The most common is the Guard.
You soon start seeing the Elite Guards (members of the SS/Schutzstaffel). These guys pack a punch, wielding machine guns.
There are also quite a lot of Guard Dogs in Castle Wolfenstein.
I was quite impressed with the enemy AI, where if they see you, they will follow you, including opening doors.
I felt a lot more comfortable navigating Castle Wolfenstein once I was able to upgrade my pistol to the machine gun, with its higher rate of fire and damage-dealing capability.
Now, while it was great returning to Wolfenstein 3D, and the immediate nostalgia hit was good, it didn’t take long for the monotony to set in. After a few levels of running and gunning while looking for the exit, it started to feel repetitive.
In Episode 1, the levels are all visually similar, with only the layouts changing. In the later levels, it’s always the same situation: find the key and get to the exit as soon as possible.
After you’ve made your way through eight levels, you come across a mysteriously large and empty chamber in level nine.
Open that door though, and you come across the episode’s boss: Hans Grösse.
Extremely large and wielding two chain guns, he greets you with a menacing “guten Tag” (“hello” in German). Then he opens fire on you.
There was only one solution for this: pull out the chain gun and open fire back. Thankfully, I managed to bring him down, with just under 50% health remaining. No tactics here, just unloaded as many rounds as possible while trying to stay standing. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
All that’s left is to emerge from Castle Wolfenstein a free man.
This brings us to (in my humble opinion) one of the greatest endgames of all time. I had forgotten about it, so I very much enjoyed reliving this one. Play the clip below (sound on!); it’s worth it, and it’s only a few seconds long.
You can hear the absolute relief, satisfaction, and joy from Blazkowicz. He’s just gone through hell. And survived.
It’s great that you can actually see Blazkowicz too, as the camera swings around to face him as he runs to freedom. Emotional stuff!
Now that I had guided Blazkowicz to freedom in Wolfenstein 3D, what did I make of this now 30 year old game?
The Verdict
To pull back the curtain a bit, this blog came together very quickly and was relatively easy to write. There are definitely times where the words don’t come easy, but this wasn’t one of them. Thinking about why this was, I think it reflects on Wolfenstein 3D: it’s a simple game, easy to pick up and play, and it doesn’t take too long to complete.
Episode 1 took me just over two hours to complete (including reloads). I feel this was just about right. The repetitiveness had started to sink in, but to have a complete game experience in two hours is more than acceptable. If you’re a completionist, there’s plenty more to keep you occupied. You can attempt to complete levels under their par times, as well as go for 100% in the kills/secrets/treasure categories.
I believe the disappointment with the repetitiveness is a product of playing first-person shooters over the three decades since the release of Wolfenstein 3D—I’ve come to expect a lot more.
As I try to do, I look at this game for what it achieved when it came out, and my enjoyment of it then. From that perspective, it looks a whole lot better. It’s satisfying to think that this game, the so-called “grandfather of 3D shooters”, was generally thought responsible for increasing the awareness and popularity of first-person shooters. That means that I was playing a game on the cutting edge!
It was fast, it was violent, it was edgy. It was cool.
Overall, I enjoyed my time revisiting this classic. It was both a good gaming and good blogging experience. After completing Episode 1, I didn’t think I’d go back to it again. But having not played for a few days now, I suddenly find myself wanting to return to Wolfenstein 3D, to see what else it has to offer in the other episodes.
And if a 30 year old game can keep you coming back for more, well that’s a winner in my book.
Thanks for reading!
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