Out of all of WSJ’s games, I’ve always had a soft spot for Weapons of Vengeance. The game never made it past being a demo and forever sits incomplete with just five levels, due to restrictions in the engine preventing Wolf Skevos-Jones from doing everything he needed with the game.
The plot for the game seems to be a loose variation to part of the story for Return To Castle Wolfenstein; a secret weapons facility has a secret “venom” minigun along with other biological and chemical weapons, and it’s up to BJ to locate it. As happens in a few games (including Trench Warfare), BJ was part of a team that got attacked, and he’s the only survivor.
One of the most entertaining features is also borrowed from Return To Castle Wolfenstein; the game features eleven weapons, which to my knowledge makes it one of the Wolf3D games with the most weapons featured. The weapons are pretty much replicas of those in RTCW, including dual colt pistols, flamethrower, and even a paratrooper rifle. Some of it seems a little excessive, but it’s really fun for changing things up. There’s a range of enemies, including machine gunners, and even a tank, and for the most part, are very prolific.
The landscape is very mazy, with it taking forever to find my way around. The scenery is very much the same in the outer areas, almost turning it into a game of trial and error to find keys and level endings. Luckily, after the first few levels, the gameplay finally takes place indoors…well, underground anyway, making things much easier navigation-wise. So, WSJ puts a little twist on it by including ladders you can climb up and down to extra areas. Definitely a fun little extra, but in the areas where there’s around sixty billion ladders in a room to choose from, it’s downright confusing. Despite all the confusing paths the maps were definitely not boring, with plenty to shoot and find.
It’s a pity that out of all the games Wolf Skevos-Jones made, this had to fail production wise. Of course, that didn’t stop someone else making lower quality sequels to it (we’ll look at those some other time…when I want to cry), but it would still be nice to see this one day finished.
The Plan:
I plan to first construct a machine that allows me to turn movies into reality, and enter them. From there, I’ll enter Back To The Future, and steal the plans for the flux capacitor. Making that, I’ll work it into a guitar hero controller, and use that to go back in time. Finding my way to WSJ’s house, I’ll walk in, and give him a copy of Wolf4SDL, and explain what happens. He makes the full game with no restrictions, the game is done, and eureka! I win at life.
This of course, has the consequences of disrupting the rift in time and space, but it’d be worth it to see a full version of this game.
Great Scott!
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Good review and a great – if underdeveloped – game. Wolf makes some of the best “traditional” Wolf3D mods, which are probably my favourite genre. Personally I would have preferred a few less weapons, although I think I read somewhere that WSJ intended WOV to be a kind of weapons showcase, so it’s understandable that he put so many in.
Thats true; personally I’d like to see him start modding again, and bring out something on the SDL engine, that would be interesting.
Nice review, Zombie_Plan. It’s interesting to see someone else’s take on the mod. Apparently, there’s a “Weapons of Vengeance 5″ now, and I haven’t even finished the first one… this is heavy (to borrow another Back to the Future reference.) But who knows? If I have enough time, I may go back and finish it later, though it would require massive redesign.