The game that spawned the first person shooter genre.
User Rating: 7 | Wolfenstein 3D: The Claw of Eisenfaust SNES
Wolfenstein 3D for the SNES is a port of the PC classic by id software. Its one of the first FPS games that helped define the genre. Set during WW2, you play as B J Blazkowicz - The "One Man Strike Team" who is sent to infiltrate German castles in an attempt to stop the evil Staatmeister from taking over the world. Pretty cheesy yeah. You carry out a series of missions that involve getting from A to B while killing loads of Nazi's and picking up treasures along the way, with a boss fight at the end of each mission. The levels are maze-like but very basic - just rooms, hallways and doors. The aim of the game is to get a high score by finding as many treasures and secrets as you can. Your points at the end of each level are determined by the amount of enemies you killed, the amount of treasures and secrets you found and the time you finished it in. Thats about all there is to it. It all get really repetitive after a while and doesn't improve. There just isn't a huge amount of variety to it or much depth. You could try to beat each levels times at speed runs or get every secret and item but after doing that there's only a little replay value if any. There are lots of levels so it isn't exactly a breeze. It has enough enjoyable part to keep you interested until the end.
It is not much to look at graphically. The fake 3D is way too apparent and the clipping is horrendous. Animations are far from varied and the whole look is just bland. Even for its time its pretty bad. Most games that were out then looked better. At least the sound isn't too shabby. The background music is catchy and suits the game. The sound effects are, well... good enough. Nothing memorable in the games presentation really. It gets the job done.
Taking into consideration that this came out over 10 years ago I obviously can't compare it to anything recent. So really this game has decent gameplay marred only by controls - which is where most of the difficulty comes from. The replay value of Wolfenstein 3D is not bad if you're into mindless shooting or finding all of the secrets. It probably helps if you have the level codes and cheats too. Overall the game accomplishes what it set out to be which is a basic shoot 'em up. Other than that it gets a bit tedious after the first play through, looks and sounds about average and gets old fast. This was a classic in its day but it definitely hasn't stood the test of time. I would only recommend it to people who are hardcore old-school gamers or collectors. 
