Favorite Old-Old-School FPS

[louisg]

I was playing Blake Stone the other day and thinking that, among that first generation of raycast FPS games, it may be one of the best in terms of variety, feeling like you're in an actual location (it's got break rooms, dungeon parts, office corridors... it all feels distinct), and colorful graphics that are almost cute in a bright-colored blocky VGA way.

But I was wondering what your favorites were? Which of these old FPS games have you played all the way through and enjoyed? What do you think has the best *gameplay*?

I'm only counting stuff with the original pre-Doom raycast technique (or an approximation), not games that focus on building elaborate environments like in Doom. I'm also not thinking of FPS stuff that predates Catacomb 3d, even if it is crazy-advanced (The Eidolon, or Corporation)

Big Ol' List of Wolf-Generation FPS Games
Blake Stone/Planet Strike
Wolfenstein 3d/Spear of Destiny
Rise of the Triad
Corridor 7
Catacomb 3d/Abyss/etc
Zero Tolerance
Battle Frenzy
Nitemare 3d
Ken's Labyrinth
Depth Dwellers
Alien vs. Predator (Jag)
Castle of Dr. Radiaki

Maybies:
Pathways Into Darkness
Wrath of Earth
CyClones
CyberMage
Isle of the Dead
Killing Time (3do)
Pie in the Sky: Lethal Tender / Terminal Terror / Industrial Killers (think these are all actually polygon..?)

[trap15]

Polls still broken..........

Probably Wolfenstein 3D and Rise of the Triad. Had an absolute blast with those.

[BIL]

Only really played Wolf3D (vanilla PC ver) and Zero Tolerance out of those, so I wouldn't vote even if polls were working.

Shareware Wolf3d blew my nine year-old mind with its smooth action and brutal yet colourful style. I still remember being bitterly disappointed when it ended after ten levels, haha. Still have the CD-ROM big box version with the awesome strategy booklet full of id trivia and quips, and even more awesome Julie Bell boxart of BJ kicking a Nazi's teeth in. I still enjoy firing it up for an episode or two occasionally. The primitive level geometry is an obvious weak point, but the maps are easily distinguishable with some interesting scenarios and traps. The fast, bloody shooting feels as great as ever. I wish it had sidestep keys for proper KB+M controls, though.

I bought ZT when it was new, since my family's PC couldn't begin to do justice to DOOM. Rotten game. Grudgingly tolerated (bahaha) it then, despise it now (see also 32X DOOM). It had some interesting ideas with its weapons and characters, but the wheezing performance undercuts everything. Don't look at enemies and they won't see you.

[BrianC]

I like Wolf 3D quite a bit.

Edit: read the topic. I still think Midi Maze deserves props for being one of the first and Faceball 2000 for being a well done FPS on the GB.

[Ed Oscuro]

I take it "Mood" is just the joke option?

Rise of the Triad is clearly the most advanced of the list here, by a good deal and also right up there for fun, at least in the shareware episode - the registered version's episodes seemed pretty weak with plenty of confused and convoluted maps with poor flow, if memory serves.

Of the other games on the list, Blake Stone is neat, Wolf 3D definitely has an evenness not seen in many of the others, the Catacomb series are also quite fun, don't know anything about Battle Frenzy and my Macs are all too bad to run Pathways Into Darkness well - the Mac TV is a neat looking machine but has poor internals. Don't think my PowerPC machines are up to the task either.

A good fit, even given its late date of release (1994) would be Nitemare 3-D (aka Hugo House of Horrors 4: The Shootening). Also a pretty fun game.
You might also consider (another late release) Bethesda's The Terminator: Future Shock. I haven't played much of it yet; it doesn't really grab me. Probably somewhere around RotT in terms of engine sophistication, but again from what I've played they didn't seem to do much with it. There's no jumping or vertical gameplay, for instance, just a lot of offices.

And there are plenty of others to consider - Cybertank 3D (Apogee Software), Ken's Labyrinth (interesting little game actually, and with lots of fun if useless features like the height adjustment or the slot machines), Midwinter ('89-90!), and Bram Stoker's Dracula which might be a contender if not for the horrible fanfare every time you kill an enemy (also a right pain to get working in DOSbox). I wouldn't forget about Shadowcaster, either - doesn't really play well but you can see Heretic and Hexen foreshadowed in that one.

I think the lesson of all this is that the early iD crew rocked - and to some degree Apogee Software. I'm sure Ken's Labyrinth would have been an excellent game with more thought given to gameplay features, and it's still quite impressive for being a one-man job, one teenager to be more exact, getting a bit of help on graphics and the Epic Megagames map's release.

I couldn't choose between Wolf3D and Rise of the Triad. RotT is less even than Wolf3D: When it's awesome it's far beyond anything else on the list, but it also has its weak moments.

[Gozer]

Corridor 7 was one of the first games I purchased for my 486. Lots of good memories with that one.

It was also the first game I tested out when I went from internal pc speaker to a proper soundcard. Hearing "elevator clearance acquired" for the first time really sticks out in my memory.

[Austin]

Wolf 3D/Spear, hands-down as my first pick. It would be a toss up between the Blake Stones and Corridor 7 as my second pick. Blake Stone had some interesting concepts, but I feel the sequel was definitely better, much more polished overall. Corridor 7 had some really cool features as well, like ammo and health packs on walls, and the varying types of vision modes you could switch between.

[lilmanjs]

Wolf3d/SoD. Mods are still made these days, and I'm taking forever to get out my second mod that is actually going under a team name. Second is Rise of the Triad. I had so much fun with the shareware version years ago and the full version is just as good. One of the few old-school FPSes that actually made both the Shareware and full versions worth playing.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Spectre Supreme (most playable in cockpit view). It really was a 2D arena shooter, but the 3D presentation served a purpose - aiming was easiest this way.

[Mortificator]

I've played the games in the first four choices, and it's hard to pick one. Blake Stone and Corridor 7 each do some things right that the other does wrong. The bosses are what I remember best about the Wolfenstein games... not just Hitler, but the transition into hell after grabbing the Spear of Destiny. And Rise of the Triad, I agree with Ed that it's a game of highs and lows. Sometimes the levels would be so good I'd almost forget they were flat and orthogonal, but the weapon system's pretty stupid, and after I finished the incredibly irritating fights against El Oscuro I didn't think I'd ever want to touch the game again.

I guess I have both the strongest positive and strongest negative feelings about RotT.

[null1024]

Man, this list.
The only things in it that I've played are Wolf3D and Zero Tolerance [and Wolf3D is a billion times better, haha]...

[ACSeraph]

I loved Wolf when I first played it, but it was so vastly outdone by Doom I don't enjoy playing it so much these days. I still play Doom regularly however.

Blake Stone holds a special place in my heart. I agree when you say it did a great job of realizing its own world and felt convincing to me as a kid. I haven't played it since I was in Elementary school though so I'm not sure how much of my memories of it are just nostalgia-vision.

I also played Rise of the Triad quite a bit, but that one definitely had a lot of rough points in its design despite the impressive engine.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

A good fit, even given its late date of release (1994) would be Nitemare 3-D (aka Hugo House of Horrors 4: The Shootening). Also a pretty fun game.

<3 Glad someone else remembers it. I remember playing it and being terrified of the game, I wouldn't play past the first level just because of the voice of the frankenstein monsters.

Of course nowadays, it's the fact that dangerous enemies use long-range hitscan attacks that's scary (not the bats or frankenstein's monsters, which are melee). The bride of frankenstein rips your health up in a scary hurry at a distance. Interesting game for the mapping ideas/abilities, but it hasn't aged well, like most of the games in this list.

Really, Nitemare 3-D is like Blake Stone and Ken's Labyrinth in that they're more interesting because of their setting. Blake with the whole space station, talking to informants for help, Ken's with the really surreal/colourful maps... but the gameplay really doesn't hold up well. None of the FPSes in that time really aged well, gameplay-wise, movement and dodging just didn't feel as good yet as they do in newer FPSes.

I'd probably pick Rise of the Triad, but it's a great game in spite of the raycasting engine, not because of it. The collision checks for those raised platforms is WAY more irritating than simply walking up a staircase in Doom, it feels too easy to fall off of them in RotT. But the variety of weapons, the absurd gore and sheer feeling of power you get... if they made RotT using Doom's more advanced engine, it would have been pure gold.

I also remember Space Hulk being pretty fun, but it was more of a tactical FPS and didn't play much like any of the games on your list (1993 game), so I doubt it really qualifies.

Honestly, my fave FPS is Descent 2 (and 1 as well, 2 feels very similar but with extra polish, and I like the tweaks made). I just love the zero gravity navigation and gameplay, it's awesome, and it's every bit as much fun as when it first game out (D2X Rebirth is the way to go on a newer machine, basically a faithful port for Windows). But obviously it's too new of a game engine to fit on your list...

I almost forgot: Wrath of Earth. This is probably the most complex game using an older-style engine I can think of. It looks really cool, but admittedly I'm not very good at it and I haven't invested much time in it yet, but I think it definitely deserves to be on your poll. It seems to be a bit of an unknown. It's actually very, very reminiscient of System Shock in its atmosphere too. Basically, it's like an early FPS mixed with a bit of a survival horror element. One of the really cool things is you're wearing a solar powered suit, and that's what fuels your weaponry and your shielding, so as you enter dark areas you have to be careful about your battery level and be prepared to recharge in an outdoor area. From a review:

To complicate the gameplay even further, both ambient temperature and radioactivity are present in the game, and affect your movement, the effectiveness of your weapons, and the speed that your power drains at. If an area is cold, the floor will be icy and so you will slide far more than on a warmer surface, and your power will drain faster as your suit tries to keep you warm. If an area is too hot or cold, your health and suit strength will begin to deteriorate. Thankfully there is an infra-red mode that allows you to see areas of hot or cold, and also radioactivity, as radioactive areas tend to be warmer.

Yet another thing to keep in mind is the strength of your suit's components. The more your shield has been depleted, the more other parts of your suit will become damaged and affect its performance accordingly, such as your weapons becoming more erratic and slower-firing before failing completely, or your personal health being deteriorated more as your life support becomes damaged.

the review's from an abandonware site, not sure if it's okay to link directly to it so I won't

[Domino]

Honestly, my fave FPS is Descent 2 (and 1 as well, 2 feels very similar but with extra polish, and I like the tweaks made). I just love the zero gravity navigation and gameplay, it's awesome, and it's every bit as much fun as when it first game out (D2X Rebirth is the way to go on a newer machine, basically a faithful port for Windows). But obviously it's too new of a game engine to fit on your list...

I second this. I wish there were more FPSes with 6dof concept. If you still play it we should do online Multiplayer on this some other time.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I second this. I wish there were more FPSes with 6dof concept. If you still play it we should do online Multiplayer on this some other time.

I still play it occasionally. I tend to go for co-op, as I'm not so good at anarchy...! But I've recently gotten a new keyboard that'll hopefully work better for the older one. PM me if you ever want to play at a specific time.

[Cuilan]

A bit silly to include Rise of the Triad but not include Marathon, since they were released fairly close to each other.

My two votes would go to Marathon and Pathways into Darkness.

[Ed Oscuro]

Anybody who is really interested in finding out about unusual FPSes might check out this awesome YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... B1CF53EEAC
It's constantly being updated with plays of different FPSes from all eras and types.

Oh shoot, I just remembered another interesting, interesting Raven Software title - CyClones! I have at least three copies of it, no joke. Don't know how that happened. Immortal for the techno soundtrack at least - the maps are way too spartan (which is kind of interesting but doesn't make for interesting repeat plays) though, and the aiming system doesn't work as well as Resident Evil 4 by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe should be excluded due to its unique and somewhat advanced engine.

There's also Dark Forces, which I think is once again going to run afoul of engine limitations:

A bit silly to include Rise of the Triad but not include Marathon, since they were released fairly close to each other.

I initially mentioned this in my post, but I think I understand the OP was trying specifically to exclude games like DOOM with very fancy architecture and most of those with non-orthogonal, non-block shaped maps. Zero Tolerance does have those diagonal walls but it doesn't have the more free sector / wall placement of DOOM and Marathon.

A good fit, even given its late date of release (1994) would be Nitemare 3-D (aka Hugo House of Horrors 4: The Shootening). Also a pretty fun game.

<3 Glad someone else remembers it. I remember playing it and being terrified of the game, I wouldn't play past the first level just because of the voice of the frankenstein monsters.

Haha. Same sound the mummies make if I recall. OOOooogaaah! *wimpy "boum" noise as you turn them into smoke puffs*

I have talked about that game on here fairly frequently, in fact. The shareware episode showcases everything the game has going for it, though - the registered version's maps are mostly terrible, with lots of ugly textures (wtf @ demon baby photo edit wall in late maps) and long corridors with lots of hidden walls (i.e. the caverns at the start of the second episode, I think). David P. Gray neglected to put any fun stuff in the later episodes, like the radio-controlled enemies or silly block / dumbwaiter puzzles.

Of course nowadays, it's the fact that dangerous enemies use long-range hitscan attacks that's scary (not the bats or frankenstein's monsters, which are melee). The bride of frankenstein rips your health up in a scary hurry at a distance. Interesting game for the mapping ideas/abilities, but it hasn't aged well, like most of the games in this list.

At range, and if you have enough ammunition to deal with them, they're generally not a big deal. What's most troublesome about these enemies is that they don't need a line of sight to zap you - many of them (mostly female - or is that ex-female since they're mostly undead? err - enemy designs when you think about it...strange) will do so repeatedly. This starts becoming a big bother within the first few maps. Actually, the skeletons are nasty too. Damage falls off with range but that doesn't help you when you have to creep around corners while worrying about an enemy. The crystal ball power for the map (showing enemies) might be useful here but it was rather too clunky to use in regular gameplay, I thought.

I'd probably pick Rise of the Triad, but it's a great game in spite of the raycasting engine, not because of it. The collision checks for those raised platforms is WAY more irritating than simply walking up a staircase in Doom, it feels too easy to fall off of them in RotT. But the variety of weapons, the absurd gore and sheer feeling of power you get... if they made RotT using Doom's more advanced engine, it would have been pure gold.

Mostly agreed, although I'd say that RotT's troublesome platforms helped me develop my sense of location in FPSes better, and going around a line of elevated platforms high in the sky will make you pay attention to your facing so you don't drift off. And I think that the platforms add a cool visual factor to the game - they seem to fit pretty well with the mood. They are a good way to exploit any fear of heights on the part of the player

I also remember Space Hulk being pretty fun, but it was more of a tactical FPS and didn't play much like any of the games on your list (1993 game), so I doubt it really qualifies.

I haven't played this but I do think it qualifies.

I almost forgot: Wrath of Earth.

Interesting name, I need to check this out.

You know, it's the inbetweener-generation games that tend to get squeezed out. There's Unreal and Duke 3D and lots of stuff people know about that came after, but what about Terra Nova?

Hmm, Necrodome, maybe Battledrome (its box art and manual make it seem like a Mechwarrior clone, but it might possibly be first person), some other stuff. I really ought to find some time to actually play some more of these titles.

I was ripping on it a while ago, and it intends to be a Quake-style game (including using some graphics it shouldn't) but the feel of Chasm - The Rift is often quite oldschool, and while its level layouts aren't built on the block model always, it often has a corridor shooter feel, but with some twists here and there (I won't say "interesting" twists because quite a few of its gameplay ideas are less than successful, but it gets points for being a different experience than any other FPS I know of). Some of the later maps are a bit interesting. Has a nicely stripped-down feeling at times; I somewhat enjoyed my time with it, although I ended up feeling a bit disappointed at some of its choices (aside from the blatant copying).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Haha. Same sound the mummies make if I recall. OOOooogaaah! *wimpy "boum" noise as you turn them into smoke puffs*

Hate that sound, especially when they always showed up in your face around a corner or door. I was quite young when I first played it, but it scared the bajeesus outta me every time.

Which is really odd considering I also played Doom, Halloween Harry, Wolf3D and other gory/scary games (I got a bunch on a shareware CD, parents taught me at a young age video game violence isn't real or meant to be taken seriously), it was more that sound effect itself that was scary (why imps and demons in Doom didn't bother me, I don't know). The only other FPS that terrified me as a kid was Descent 1 because of those fucking drillers, and they still scare me (because they have crazy accuracy and hitscan and shoot as soon as they see you and when you hear the sound you're getting plugged, ohgod).

Interesting name, I need to check this out.

Every review I've seen says it's criminally underrated (mostly due to it being unknown because it was a shareware game with next to no marketing). The combat is slower paced than your average FPS of that time, but it's meant to focus as much on the atmosphere, exploration, a few puzzles, etc, apparently.

[Ed Oscuro]

About Nitemare 3-D - I don't know if you've seen any of my other posts here on it, but there is one final bit of interesting information on it - the multiple versions. The first version has one set of graphics, and the second version has updated versions of some (not all) monster graphics, mainly things like Franky's Monster and the mummy get a different and less blocky appearance. I guess it counts as an improvement. Even later versions of the game - both demo and full version I think - are a Win95 executable with a menu and some other functions. Can't recall if I played that on Windows 7 or XP, but in either case there were some color palette issues to sort out. When I finally played through the full version recently, it was a good ol' DOS executable, via DOSBox.

In regards to Nitemare 3-D sounds, I have the skeleton jingle more. Also, the witch / whatever yells definitely inspire a bit of panic if you aren't in a good spot. Running up to them while they're standing idle is also a rather unsettling experience. For a game that isn't bloody and is supposed to be more "family-friendly," it really does have some nightmarish qualities to it! David P. Gray always has done quite well with tone in his games - not up to the level of AAA-game development but it seems to me that (at least up to the shareware release of Nitemare 3-D when the development had some apparent motivation behind it, unlike the phoned-in registered episodes) his games did very well to set out a story, set up an atmosphere, and then bring that story full circle (again, Nitemare 3-D doesn't really deliver anything like story closure - its ending has had gamers scratching their heads for years - but the atmosphere throughout the game isn't bad at all).

Aha, I just remembered another interesting title which tries to set up like a comic book - CyberMage. YouTube that one also. To hell with engine limits - it does have multiple stories and stuff but it definitely is oldschool. Seems that it might have a bit more of an adventure mindset than some of these other titles, but I can't say for sure since it does seem to have the usual "enemies march up to you and shoot you" mindset.

Of course, no fan of oldschool-feeling FPSes has really lived unless they've checked out LameDuke, the odds and ends of early Duke Nukem 3D development in some primitive early levels.

[Vexorg]

Back in the day I spent all sorts of time playing LAN games of Descent (and later Descent 2) with my brothers. I remember being blown away when I got a 3DFX Voodoo 1 video card and could play it 3D accelerated. There's been rumblings from the reanimated corpse of Interplay about reviving the series at some point, but as far as I can tell nothing definite has ever come out of it.

[null1024]

Looking back on it now, early hardware acceleration was really disappointing -- you might have been able to run the game at 640x480 now, but it often was choppier and needed cutbacks that weren't really worth it. I'd rather play Descent software rendered on a machine of the era than hardware rendered on that same box.

The Voodoo cards were the best of the lot at the time though, I wondered why 3Dfx had gone out.

I'd adore a new Descent, haha. It was such a cool idea for an FPS, full 6DOF motion.
Been a while since I've played.


Wrath of Earth looks pretty neat, but aaaaa, those faces. Everyone's face in that is horrifying.

[louisg]

Huh! I didn't know about some of these like Wrath of Earth and CyberMage. Is Nitemare 3d the one with the sample that says, "save it for later!"? I always thought it was Ken's Labyrinth, and have been quoting it for years, but haven't been able to find it again

Re: Wolfenstein: I have the best memories of playing that one, but I think it's filled with a lot of cheap instant-death. The ease at which you die makes the gunfights a lot more intense than many other FPS games, but it makes it kind of memorizey too. Maybe my mistake was 'activating' some enemies and running away, but you can die in that thing just by opening a door if an activated enemy happens to be right on the other side.

On the other hand, I just played through the whole 1st shareware ep. of Blake Stone, and it's pretty decently balanced! There was one cheap moment that kept killing me, but on a whole, it fixes a lot. The automap really helps, too. I like all the additions: The informants, the barriers and switches, one-way doors, the vending machines, and a huge Doom-like difference between the enemy types such as enemies that shoot dodgeable projectiles, ceiling turrets that you can only kill with some weapons, energy balls that bounce around, floating drones that try to run into you... all pretty nice additions to the Wolf formula. My two biggest gripes is that I don't think some enemies have a 'wounded' state like in Wolf/Doom, so you can't manage crowds the same way (and it's not always easy to tell when a shot connects), and also that a lot of enemy death animations are just slow and muffled, which takes away from the intensity of the firefights.

I also tried revisiting ROTT. I do remember liking the shareware ep, which had a lot of moving walls and traps, but I was playing Dark War and kind of marveling at how much of my play time was spent mindlessly shooting at enemies with underpowered bullet weapons. Every enemy seemed to take 5 or so seconds of continuous fire before they go down. Just like, BANG!-hurr!-BANG!-hurr!-BANG!-hurr! repeat x20000. Maybe I'm playing it wrong..? I remembered it being way better than that. Should I always be using rockets or something?

Yeah, re: the topic, I'm mostly just interested in that first wave of FPS games. That can include stragglers which were trying to be like Wolf but which ended up coming out way too late. But not stuff with Doom-like level complexity. I think the Doom/Dark Forces/Marathon style was a really huge step forward, but these oldies have a charm too. Looking at FPS history, I think you can mostly break it down into discrete generations where certain design fads happen, mostly having to do with whatever new stuff technology makes available/easy.

I also forgot the Pie in the Sky games like Lethal Tender And I'd almost count Operation: GunBuster from Taito, which is a brilliant years-ahead-of-its-time deathmatch FPS running on their sprite-based F3 hardware. Yeah, I am pretty sure those walls are all sprites.

[BIL]

Re: Wolfenstein: I have the best memories of playing that one, but I think it's filled with a lot of cheap instant-death. The ease at which you die makes the gunfights a lot more intense than many other FPS games, but it makes it kind of memorizey too. Maybe my mistake was 'activating' some enemies and running away, but you can die in that thing just by opening a door if an activated enemy happens to be right on the other side.

Enemy fire is hugely more damaging at point-blank, something I've always loved about Wolf3D. It makes the tighter environments nerve-wracking even if you've long since memorised all the enemy placements, since inevitably you'll have multiple enemies alerted and running around an area after firing your first shot.

I wouldn't say it particularly enforces memorising, though. You just have to be on guard at all times, especially when going around corners or opening doors, like in real life (or so I've read). Since the latter can be seen and shot through by enemies as soon as they begin to open, it's important to never be standing in a doorway. Hit "open," strafe away to one side, wait, strafe back in and go through. If there's no room to strafe and I think something's on the other side, I usually let rip as the door opens, or back away to minimise proximity... that scenario can be a bit unfair.

One of the keenest memories I have of early DOOM (on a friend's PC that could actually run it properly) was firing at a monster as a door came down in front of it, and seeing the bullet visibly strike the door. That was a huge moment after so much Wolf3D! To say nothing of enemies no longer being able to fire through each other at you, and even fight each other if differing types had a friendly fire incident.

DOOM Tangent: Brutal DOOM actually reinstated Wolf3D-style bullet passthrough for each variant of zombie gunner, something I actually find an improvement (differing types will still hit each other and infight as usual). Combined with the hyper-aggressive BDOOM AI, it means a pack of riflemen can now make Alex J. Murphy / Sonny Corleone out of you, instead of disintegrating into an infighting mess.

[BIL]

I wish it had sidestep keys for proper KB+M controls, though.

Well, shit. Turns out I could've just been playing the ZDOOM Wolf3D TC instead. This is awesome. Youtube of old version. The player has "Wolf3d-style movement" disabled, so it bobs like DOOM - it's enabled by default for classic stationary viewpoint, and there's no DOOM-style splattering blood from wounded enemies in the current ver either. Blood does get on the walls ZDOOM-style, very convincingly too - looks exactly as you'd imagine if Wolf3D had featured such things (except when it gets on the space between jailbars >_>). And there's DOOM-style bullet impact puffs on walls too, which I like. Gives more sense of perspective. All options are under "Control" in the main menu.



Better than the real thing. Playing SOD for the first time, on Death Incarnate, and it's intense as hell. Fucking stealthy Nazi cyber-zombies! Imma play this for a while.

[Ed Oscuro]

Just like, BANG!-hurr!-BANG!-hurr!-BANG!-hurr! repeat x20000. Maybe I'm playing it wrong..? I remembered it being way better than that. Should I always be using rockets or something?

No, I agree that's a failing of the game. Ideally, the only time you want to use a firearm is if you've run out of rockets, so then you switch to the MP-40. Don't shoot the handguns, you lose Democrat Bonus 1 (Democrat Bonus 2 is to eat / consume everything in the level with psychedelic properties). The game wants you to use rockets and only rockets most of the time (very hard to get the no-handguns bonuses for the first level, as you're still picking up items!) and these little things mix up game flow, especially if the level isn't super generous with rocket pickups.

The game should have been better about its inventory system (two keys wasted on the handguns you're not supposed to use, huh, and only one rocket launcher can be carried at once? Not sure if that would be a good or bad thing for deathmatch...) and for rocket use (obviously it's kind of dangerous to play with certain weapons, like the "big explosive cross of doom laid out on the floor," without enough space. The firewall might be good close-in but you shouldn't waste ammunition on single enemies. So it goes.

Something else which starts out fun but ends up being just a chore is trying to chase those sky trails of ankh items for bonus lives. There's really no point to it for playing.

Of course, getting the Bonus Bonus (a special bonus for achieving all the other bonuses in all the levels) requires you do other super tedious things, like eating all the food (seriously? Lots of self-damage) and escaping the level with only a little health.

Many things in the game seem to be kind of based around the idea of pinball...don't know how else to put it. Lots of "bonuses" and "special modes," and you (the player) will spend a lot of time hopping mad and bouncing off the walls...

The full list of bonuses is found here:
http://archive.kontek.net/rott.classicg ... index.html

[louisg]

No, I agree that's a failing of the game. Ideally, the only time you want to use a firearm is if you've run out of rockets, so then you switch to the MP-40. Don't shoot the handguns, you lose Democrat Bonus 1 (Democrat Bonus 2 is to eat / consume everything in the level with psychedelic properties). The game wants you to use rockets and only rockets most of the time (very hard to get the no-handguns bonuses for the first level, as you're still picking up items!) and these little things mix up game flow, especially if the level isn't super generous with rocket pickups.

I guess I should be playing it by running past guards when I run out of the rocket and not bog down fighting them unless I have to. Weird game balance.

Man, I saw this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDhhE10uSiU ... and this is a game I wish existed! Like, when I see this kind of stuff, it's hinting at this super-fast arcade-style balls-out FPS game that nobody ever made. That sure isn't ROTT

But I think for all its failings, ROTT was more of a step in a good direction than where FPSses ended up going. It was a game first and foremost, not some syfy-channel-original-movie quality narrative, and not just an experiment in cinematic atmosphere. They put stuff in because they thought it was fun, not because it had to make sense. It was a *videogame*.

[lilmanjs]

You guys want a challenge? Just go and play this. Uses most of the graphics from The Lost Episodes, but does it quite well. No dosbox required. The Golden Episodes:
http://www.veracottis.co.uk/TGE_SDL.ZIP

[BIL]

Another cool thing about Wolf3D ZDOOM TC - doors can no longer be shot through, by either the player or enemies. So no more getting blasted in the face by a guard you couldn't see as the door slides back. Good change, I hope it doesn't get written out.

[Ed Oscuro]

I guess I should be playing [RotT] by running past guards when I run out of the rocket and not bog down fighting them unless I have to.

But then you lose points and bonuses!

[louisg]

OK so I put on ROTT: The Hunt Begins, and I think it's much better than the full version is, at least within the first few levels. The shareware episode grabs you, varies levels up right off the bat with all kinds of moving traps, and doesn't feel repetitive to nearly the same degree as, say, level 2 of Dark War. I think there may even be more rocket launchers scattered around. I wouldn't say it's consistently great, but there are these glimmers of brilliance in it.

It's funny, I think a lot of games then loaded up their shareware episodes with all the best levels. I mean, it makes sense, but yikes.

I also realized I'm playing on a pretty easy setting because I get my ass kicked on the default, so I'm wondering if maybe combat is boring because my tactics are crap. Any advice?