Many people don't give the credit that wolfenstein 3D so deserves for being the game that started the whole first-person shooter genre. Many people credit it to doom. But truly, doom was just a game that came way after it, and naturally because it did, it had more advanced game play and graphics. But would we have had a doom if wolfenstein never came around?
For those of you who are unfamiliar with even the name of wolfenstein 3D, it is an action based game where you have to run around, escape from a nazi base, and then later stop nazi operations. With a plot like that, how can you go wrong?
In the start of the game, you have a knife and you build your armory up form their from killing guys. You get a pistol, semi-automatic, and ultra machine gun. Once again, how can you go wrong with those weapons?
This game offered more than running around and killing the same old guys with the same costume running around. In fact, it even had dogs that you had to master your way around (actually you had to blast your way through them). Certain soldiers with better ranks had better guns and different costumes. It also had bosses that you had to fight! Most of you don't understand how revolutionary all of this was. Just the mere concept of it allowed other games to spring forth.
Wolfenstein also had a few tricks in it that made the game play more fun. Many of the walls in the German fortress were littered with secret passages! Now if this wasn't a new idea, i don't know what was. You would walk around and if a certain wall looked suspicious, you could try it and often times it opened up to a room full of treasure! Not only that, there is often secret passage ways within secret passage ways.
Besides the new ideas that were brought forward in this game, it also offered the 3D quality that so often was only 2D in games before it. Instead of running around in just 2 directions, left and right, you could now go a full 360 degrees rotation. Because of this, the game went to a new level of fun with the excitement of not knowing what was behind you.
Another amazing new feature this game brought was the option of changing the difficulty of the game. This option which is now put in almost every game (as almost every option i have talked about is) made every level of gamer able to play. It didn't matter if you were a beginner, you could still play this game by changing the difficulty to it's easiest setting.
If you got to good for the easy setting, you could almost make the game new again by making it harder.
And so, i hope with this review wolfenstein 3D will get the credit it deserves as the one who started it all.
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