Archive for November, 2008

The Spear Of Toti

By
Zombie_Plan
Published: November 22, 2008Posted in: Mods, Total ConversionsTags: ,
The Spear Of Toti

The Spear of Toti. This time I play the third game by Toti, creatively named The Spear Of Toti. I would play the first two before this, but according to Toti’s manual:

Sorry for my English, I speak Spanish.

Whoops, wrong paragraph…anyway, he says his first two games are nowhere near as good. So, I’m not going to subject myself to them. LETS GO.

After 5 minutes of play… I can’t stop laughing; not in the good way. You start the game in a room full of treasure. Theres an obvious pushwall with a heap of ammo and a machine gun. The next room is a badly designed mess of random blocks of walltiles. The only enemies are hiding in two offshoots of this room, guarding the Master Cup treasures. They’re worth 7,500 as noted in the manual, and this is only the worst idea ever. He’s placed whole groups of them in each of the hallways, the group’s points adding together to give you another life. You’d think that a treasure that valuable that it’d give the player more lives would be hidden a little better.
And that’s not even the worst map. The secret level is left as a wide open plain full of mutants, half of which glitch and disappear (a common side effect to the openness of an area). There are so many mutants that you need to either be super quick and constantly strafing, or you need a chaingun; the latter is easier.
The rest of the levels are just as simplistic, the third is just a spiral which gets smaller and smaller, and the fourth is just a couple of rooms, you walk in one, get the key, open the door for it, get the key, then go through the other door to the exit. Level six is SO retarded, I’m going to level it at that. The mapmaking skills are so terrible I can only hope the reason for it is Toti got bored with the mod and just pumped out stock levels. NO effort whatsoever seems to have been put into the maps, and that makes me cry.
The only interesting fights are those against a couple of the bosses (Mainly the Colonel, which bears a stricking resemblance to Schabbs).

The sprites are all borrowed and extremely obvious where they’re borrowed from. End Of Destiny is the first and most noticable rip. I don’t know why but most games I play use borrowed content.

I’m sorry Toti, but if this is your latest and best game, I truly shudder to think what your other games are like. I’m going to lie on my bed, curl up and cry.

One last thing:

AHH!, A Dog! (The dogs are extremely dangerous.)

EGO 3D (Demo?)

By
Zombie_Plan
Published: November 7, 2008Posted in: Demos, ModsTags: , ,
EGO 3D (Demo?)

So I stumbled upon this game awhile ago, gave it the 30 second treatment I so often do with Wolfenstein games, then let it gather dust.
But today I’m bored with no internet and watching Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, and I realize I havn’t done any wolfing for awhile. So here is the demo of Ego 3D.

I have no idea what the game is about; the readme, Read This!, and everything else, is written in German (I think). So, for the sake of cliche, YOUR OBJECTIVE IS TO GET THROUGH STUFF AND REACH A THING WHICH INVOLVES KILLING A BOSS. That’s what it’s most likely about…

There’s not much to say about this game. We start off in a “forest” type scenario, wandering around. The game features alot of “borrowed” sprites. There are some from Super Noah’s Ark 3D (the status bar), and a couple of other popular mods, but they all blend together fairly well. The map is fairly windy but remains navigable. The level has a lack of enemies, with the few that ARE present dealing a fair bit of damage. There is plenty of ammo pickups littered around the map, which in my mind is useless unless you intend on shooting the scenery; while the author made the enemies’ attack do more damage, he kept their health the same. Coupled with the already mentioned small number of enemies present, the amount of ammo is really unnecessary.

So there’s really only one thing I actually wrote this review to talk about, and that’s the way the level ends. You get to the door, and you walk over an end level trigger. There’s no level completion screen or intermission screen, or anything of the sort. All there is, is the Get Psyched loading screen for less than 3 seconds. Then the next level starts from where it ended. This is an interesting effect, making it seem like one big seamless level. I’ve seen the idea thrown around on the Die Hard Wolfer forums awhile ago as an idea for a way to create a larger level, but never actually implemented to my knowledge. The only thing I would of liked to see was the ability to travel backwards into the previous level, ala Blake Stone, creating a more real sense of a “large” level.
The effect could even be used to create a “world” in the style of games like the Grand Theft Auto series.
With that said, the second “level” is for the majority, empty, and I assume that is because it is incomplete. So I’m not going to bother discussing it.

As a final note before signing off, if anyone knows of another game that incorporates a similar version of level progression, hit this up with a comment so I can check it out.

Wolfenstein 3D (SNES)

By
Zombie_Plan
Published: November 7, 2008Posted in: Official GameTags: , , , , , ,
Wolfenstein 3D (SNES)

WHY ARE ME REVIEWING GAME WE ALL PLAYED BEFORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
Heh, that “1″ wasn’t intentional…for once!

So I decided for something different, to check out the other versions of Wolfenstein besides the classic PC version most of us are familiar with. While alot of us know about the various versions have come out for the Mac, SNES, and GBA along with other versions (both commercial and non-commercial), alot of us havn’t played them. This could be lack of time, lack of systems to play them on, etc.

Anyway, through the power of…reverse procrastination (what’s the opposite to sitting on your ass?), I’ve decided to review one or two as I find them. Here’s the first review.
DISCLAIMER: Until now, I’ve only played the PC version, as such, assumptions made about the MAC version may contain traces of fail. Update: They do.

The PC version needs no introduction, so lets look at the version made for the Super Nintendo. It’s going to be difficult to avoid comparing it to the original, so I’m not going to try resisting. In the slightest. And for the record, I’m using an emulator.

Starting up the game you’re greeted by an animated globe with a concave picture of the iD software logo. The title screen and menu are original, with many differences from the PC version. The difficulty and sound features are toggled on the main menu, along with…mouse?

The SNES had a mouse?

And instead of a save/load option there’s a password menu where you type in the password for the level you’re up to, as in most games of the time.

Starting a new game, you’re greeted with a nice scrolling intermission screen, where they’ve evidently stolen the artwork from Spear of Destiny’s end screen. No episode select; the thing runs with seamless levels.

From the very start of the gameplay you know this isn’t a basic port of the PC game. The weapon images and status bar lend themselves from the MAC version, and you aren’t even starting in a dungeon. Seems rather than escaping the castle, we’re infiltrating it now (I actually read the “mission briefing” for once…woo). Which is cool I guess, it’s differnt while the maps still seem to keep some of the layout of the PC versions. I’d like to mention that while on the first level all the secret areas from the PC version are present in this version, there’s apparently more added. BUT WHO WOULD WANT TO LOOK. The sound effect for the pushwalls make my ears bleed. They sound so bad, I cannot emphasize that enough.

There are a fair few improvements besides the addition of intermission screens. The doors move noticably smoother, and the death sequences are much nicer. Oh, and a flamethrower and ROCKET LAUNCHER. Awesome.

Now, while the rocket launcher is an awesome addition, it at the same time helped me find a real shortcoming with the game. I spent the first 4 levels trying to work out which button swapped weapons. I couldnt find a way to switch from the pistol to the knife, and later when i found the machinegun and chaingun, I still couldnt find it. I’m one of those players who prefers the machinegun over the chaingun so I don’t waste ammo. It wasn’t until I found the rocketlauncher that it started letting me swap weapons. Even then, I found myself only being able to swap between the chaingun and rocket launcher. That’s right; BJ has enough strength to carry both a chaingun AND a rocket launcher, but can’t keep his pistol with him.
What a dick.

While some sprites are borrowed from the macintosh version of Wolf, the majority are ported from the PC game. And badly I might add; the enemies don’t bleed and the majority of references to Nazi Germany are gone. I don’t really see the point in editting out blood since you’re KILLING the people anyway. Blood or no blood, kids are going to know that guy isn’t getting up. But when I say badly, I don’t really mean them, I mean this sort of thing:

The developers should of noticed things like this…and you know, FIXED the shading so the textures flowed a bit more consistently. And who the fuck decided to turn the dogs into giant rats? WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING.

AAAANNNDDDD moving back to the positives I’d like to talk about controls. Movement is nice and fluent and one of the best things is that the SNES controller is taken full advantage of, in that you can strafe using the shoulder buttons. This effectively enhances gameplay, much like in games like DOOM. Later levels are more challenging, and I found bosses really difficult so i thank god for this ability. Well, not Hans Grosse. He didn’t even shoot me, what the?

On that note, I found alot of enemies wouldn’t actually attack until they were really close, giving me more than ample time to kill them before they even try to land a hit.

I realize I’m jumping back and forth between everything, so I’ll end this no saying it’s a great spin on Wolfenstein, it’s great that an “official” Wolfenstein 3D game was made with many features that are replicated in many many unofficial mods made in the community.
Like any game it has problems, but they don’t really take away from the gameplay and it’s still a fun experience.

Planet Nexion

By
Zombie_Plan
Published: November 7, 2008Posted in: Mods, Total ConversionsTags: , , ,
Planet Nexion

In a galaxy far far away, where a Read This! requires the biggest words one can come up with, there is Planet Nexion

Select Graphics Mode
===============

a. Black & White
b. NGA – Nexion’s Color Mode
c. Quit

What…the? This obviously isn’t going to be the usual Wolf experience.

And it wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever played a Wolfenstein mod thats left me with a bigger headache than this one. Regardless of whether you selected option A or B, the game is still in it’s majority, black and white.

So you’ve travelled to another planet in a distant solar system, where there is no such thing as a colour printer, and the walls are made of barcodes. Enemies are alien yet speak english, murmuring a desire for brains.

I’d love to say I loved the map layout, but the lack of colour makes the game a real eyesore, and things blended into each other too easy; the solid black on black/white on white made it hard to navigate occasionally. The mapcolours made seeing the zombie enemies difficult at times because they blended into EVERYTHING ELSE. Thank god the floating brain enemies and weaponry had a little colour in them or I’d be screwed.

And while we’re on the topic of enemies, TOO POWERFUL. It’s hard enough trying to aim when they shoot you and you “blackout” (nice feature idea though), but when they do so much damage it’s difficult to survive past 3 or 4 shots, well, I found it really hard to get past level 1, in fact, 2 hours of playing and I still havn’t gotten past it. I either suck or the game is too hard, and I’ve given up anyway.

Enough of that though, the game has some interesting features, such as the blacking out I just mentioned (clever referencing to last paragraph). It reminds me of Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Then there’s the animated health monitor, an obvious reference to Blake Stone (Not including all the “borrowed” sprites :-P ). The compass doesn’t really seem to serve a purpose apart from HEY LOOK YOU KNOW WHICH DIRECTION YOU’RE FACING. Still, it’s another nice addition that I don’t believe has been used before.

Annoying, but with nice ideas underneath the wrapper. I’m sure others will enjoy it, but when it comes to graphically bi chrome game modifications (LOOK I CAN USE BIG WORDS TOO NEXION!), I’d rather wait and see if Vectorstein ever sees the light of day.

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