Beyond a jumble mess of platforms and side scrolling games came out a true hero of the FPS era. Welcome Wolfenstein 3D!
The story goes that you play an All American Hero B.J. Blazkowicz (sounds very Polish though...) tries to escape from the Nazi stronghold only to encounter hoards of Nazis (including the infamous SS), Blazkowicz's eating hounds (seriously they only attack you, the hero), mutants (well they are pretty limited which was a real shame) and of course the final bosses - all six of them.
Armed with a knife (don't bother) followed closely by the machine gun and then eventually the wonderful ammo-chewer chain gun you are simply a one-man tank of pure Nazi bulldozer.
The game itself is painfully long and I mean pain. It was fun for the first three episodes however if you are a fan of mazes (especially episode 2 map 8, episode 3 map 7, episode 6 map 2, 7 and the secret map 10 - you have been warned) and looking at the same old textures then you are truly sick. Go and see a shrink.
However the creators did suck me in of adding secrets rooms (again what a enduring pain to search for them however I did eventually had a knack of getting the idea of where to search for instead of searching every-single-inch-of-pixelated-repeativite-wall-from-end-to-end...ahhh) to locate that bonus exit to see those secret levels (which I did locate five out or six and yes I did find the Pac-Man level - now that was very cool indeed however I was hoping it was Pac Man level 256...that split screen level...nevermind). Also the controls are very simple to use - just point and shoot. No heavy tomes to read.
The idea of earning points is a little odd. You see that you gain points to earn yourself an extra life - sounds cool right? Wrong. Why? There is also a save system where you can save at any point. Not that I do save every 2 seconds however playing at 'Bring it on' you start to make love to that idea...
The music score, even in midi format (it was hot-property in the 90s) is calming to hear. Even though I most likely look like Blazkowicz at less than 10% life for the vast majority of the last three episodes (that prelude missions) trying to conquer those %^$# mazes and searching for those &^%$ secret rooms to achieve 100% rating, the midi sooths the savage beast.
Graphically the game can be a lot better. As mentioned above, there was only one episode that the mutants show their stuff. I was hoping there were more enemies to kill as the engine was descent. I guess that was Blake Stone, Corridor 7 and Operation Body Count was good for...right?
Overall, if you are a fan for mazes and I mean a F.A.N., can tolerate repetitive levels then go and load the game. However as mentioned in the very first sentence of this review, this game when it was released in 1992 is a definite landmark of a decent FPS and stands out extremely proud considering the jumble mess of platform and side scrolling games.
A matter of interest...overall:
95% kills
70% secrets
80% treasure.
Auf Wiedersehen.