About a month ago I had the chance to finish playing Wolfenstein 3D – the game of my childhood, the game that introduced me to games, the game of a pioneer. And someone told me to try Spear of Destiny – a prequel released shortly after the original. At one time I had not seen this game at all and looked at it with fresh eyes.
What is worth saying first of all is that for a separate game, which is what it was positioned to be, it has extremely little original content and the situation is more reminiscent of the story with Doom and Doom 2. Indeed, one, one, ONE damn new item for the entire game (a box of ammunition), a dozen new wall textures and item sprites, and three new bosses – not enough originality. As for the rest: the weapons are the same, the enemies are the same, the limitations of the engine have not gone away, all levels are still built on right angles and the same height. And the most surprising thing about all this is that this game has become much better to play than the original Wolf 3D and the level of coolness increases as you progress, and may not be noticeable at first.
It is worth saying that the duration of the game easily fits into a third or half of the original and its 21 cards are not much inferior to the 35-30 cards of a simple Wolf. Also, the game stopped being divided into separate episodes for playthroughs and began to be a sequence of map blocks connected by one playthrough. And now I will try to refresh my memory and jot down a few words on each.
Tunnel Well, this is the most simple and introductory block of maps, although already here the triggers disturbing half the map of enemies greatly dilute the measured gameplay, giving it dynamics. The cards themselves are more reminiscent of the second episode of the original, but a little simpler. The secret level lets you screw up and allows you to more soberly evaluate your skills. True, the boss here is just another carbon copy of the first boss Wolf 3D – what nonsense.
Dungeon Of all the map blocks, it seemed to me the weakest: the levels are simple and linear, the enemies are for the most part very toothless, there is no secret level, and the boss is a clone of the boss from episode 6 of the original. You need to try harder.
Lock This is a completely different matter: https://i1scrcasino.co.uk/bonus/ the levels are well designed, the enemies are placed where needed and as many as needed, the game for the first time forced me to use the contents of my skull. The only thing I didn’t like was the secret level built on secrets alone. But the last level is simply gorgeous: crowds of enemies behind the columns, really big piles of meat, because of which for the first time in the entire game I had to put aside the previously successful tactics of rushing and “dancing with machine guns around enemies” in favor of luring them into doorways and corners. And in the end, just an interesting boss – a zombie with a machine gun, almost as fast as myself, with whom I had to tinker a little.
Bastions These two levels really made me think about my tactics. And if the 17th map had to be completed very sparingly, spending ammo, because here it is very possible to end up with only a knife, then with the boss I had to rack my brains. As a result, I quickly rushed through the hall with the boss and a bunch of zombies into a huge corridor with loose cartridges, pharmacies and a horde of officers. After which all that remained was to lure the zombies away and finish off the lone boss. By the way, the boss is potentially dangerous due to two machine guns and a pair of rocket launchers, but his slowness reduces all his attempts to nothing and, despite his fat health, he can be disassembled in one or two.
Final level in hell Surprising from the point of view of the unexpectedness of the turn itself, the unusual design of the environment and the respawning ghosts. Although the boss himself is more difficult to find than to defeat, because dodging his attacks is as easy as shelling pears.
What can we say about the whole game as a whole: I liked it and if after completing Wolfenstein 3D I felt relieved, then after finishing the Spear of Destiny I want more. What’s surprising is that the difficulty level doesn’t kill interest, unlike the last episode of the original. And it’s really interesting to play.
Spear of Destiny Mission 2: Return to Danger
Wanting more after completing the Spear of Destiny, I eventually got to the so-called Lost Missions. And first of all, I was simply unpleasantly surprised to learn about their release date – May 94, six months after Doom and six months before Doom 2, it was too late for the release of games on Wolf’s primitive engine, even if these were official additions to such a popular game. By God, if their developers had released them in 1993, before the release of the first Duma, these missions would not have been lost. But what is really surprising is the combination of a well-done job and absolute hackwork. Look: all the textures have been redrawn and several new interesting textures and objects have been created that fully convey the spirit of the submarine base and research laboratories. All enemies have been redrawn and re-voiced, and the same replacement of zombies with bats looks very interesting. But at the same time, if the re-voice of the weapon is not bad, then painting it blue is simply very ugly. And at the same time, a complete copy of the structure of the original with all the bosses, secret levels, right down to the inscriptions for passing secrets, defeating bosses and even the final video with credits. All this creates the feeling of an amateur modification, with good work by artists and decent level design. The secrets almost ceased to be secrets, because already on the second map I realized that they should be looked for not far from the dead rats. Of course, building entire maps on secrets alone is simply disgusting, but with such an easy search for secrets, this ceases to be a problem. And I was somewhat frozen out by as many as 7 maps in the middle of the game, completed in 5 minutes – just a strange thing. Well, the love of the developers for whole packs of enemies is something, I have never seen so much meat in Wolf. On the other hand, it’s easy to pass, little annoying, the design is normal – quite suitable for quick passage, but the general hackwork is annoying.
Spear of Destiny Mission 3: Ultimate Challenge
This part of Blazkovich’s adventures left the most contradictory impression. On the one hand, in the first third of the game the maps seem very complex and interesting, using large spaces. It’s immediately obvious that they were guided, among other things, by the recently released first Doom. However, soon you are overtaken by the unpleasant feeling that the creators were stupidly exhausted and could not withstand their own pace of development. The maps have become boring and monotonous, secrets are no longer secrets being placed near bloody and acidic puddles, even bosses are taken from the first addition without any alteration. Those responsible for the textures also performed poorly, producing 2.5 uninteresting and repeating old ones. In any case, if in its predecessor they still tried to amaze the player with the design of the premises and hordes of enemies. Either here, either my skill has grown to indecent heights (which is hard to believe), or the levels are made very simply and without invention. What to talk about if the main problem for me during the passage was areas filled with some kind of bubbles, and not enemies and labyrinths. On the other hand, perhaps the creators by that time were able to squeeze the maximum possible out of such an ancient engine, and by the end I was a little bored with the game. However, I got my dose of fun and pleasure: whether pouring lead on the fascists with a minigun, solving riddles with secrets or taking out bosses in one gate.
PS: And above all, he provided a comfortable and fun game for me ECoWolf, which allowed me to set up normal resolution and free mouseluk with quick saves. As well as HD packs from versions for Mac and Jaguar and high-quality music. And if the first episodes of Wolfenstein 3D were played without these oddities, then later I couldn’t imagine my game without it. And the overall result of the entire Wolf 3D series will be a big and fat plus to the four. Because the game still retains enough arcade conventions, such as the life system, which is simply not needed during saves, one hundred lives without any armor, which really helped increase the difficulty: and collecting treasures, which brought me purely aesthetic pleasure. And personally, I’m sorry that a couple of features were not implemented in the game: for example, the silence of the knife and killing with it from the first blow from behind would definitely not have been superfluous. Well, given the lack of any brakes, mouse visibility and the speed of modern gameplay, playing Wolf 3D, not at the latest difficulty levels, simply does not make sense. Blessed be the IRS for bringing me to this old topic.