Here's a picture of a lemming trying to force a block of soap into the mouth of a pinky demon from Doom.
According to the readme, The Catacomb 3-D Adventure games are "graphics intensive" by design, meaning that you are in for a true visual feast once you begin play. Are you ready?
They also go into great length about how useful and awesome being able to save and restore your game at any time is. Can't argue with that; I missed it in Mace. Wouldn't have gotten anywhere in Killing Time without it.
Why am I thinking about this so much? According to the readme, I've already defeated Nemesis once before and he's right in front of me again now! I should be able to blast him to pieces with my magic palms.
No? Okay, Warrior.
If I pick 'Novice' he says 'Hah! Another NOVICE to feed my pets!'. I would have been fine with that. I'm great with animals!
Are you ready for some epic fantasy RPG action?
It uses licensed id Wolfenstein tech so we're knee deep in the unshaded, textured walls and block-based maps.
I've got one weapon,
Thankfully, the Wizarde-Warrior-Weaver is a true master of the arcane artes. He doesn't rely on some finite supply of mana or any such petty nonsense: he fires Missiles as fast as you can hammer the CTRL button and never runs out. And you better be able to hammer that CTRL button mighty fast because next to every single item is a zombie waiting to reveal itself.
Inside the chest were some single use
A lot of the time, destroyable walls look different to the regular walls, but in this first level they usually look like ordinary windows. Sometimes they look like walls without vines on, as well. You've got no choice but to fire constantly at every surface, hoping to reveal the next place you're supposed to go.
Which is a shame, because everybody likes a good secret, but you can't have secrets when you have to motonously blast every wall.
You know what else is funny?
I've found a purple gem by this point, so I can see the zombies on the radar. It's still very difficult to react using these cursor key controls.
I've taken a second to look through the audio options. At the moment, I've got the default PC Speaker audio enabled, which produced ear-splittingly loud beeps and whoops, as you'd expect. The alternative is Adlib audio, which makes most sound effects sound like somebody's rusting a crisp packet in your ear. The Adlib version of the footsteps and and powerups are much improved. They sound like old Midway cabinet sounds.
The only fear that this Garden is exposing is my fear that all the levels in the game will look exactly the same and I'll have to keep playing until I can find one which doesn't.
The lack of shading on the walls makes it quite difficult to gauge depth. The caption on the interface is the only clue you have as to where you are in the level, but you have to be paying attention otherwise you'll have no idea how 'The twisting hedges' connects to 'Heaven's Gate'. Some places don't have a caption at all. Would it have killed them to make the radar show a map of some kind?
As in: '*sigh* More zombies.' or '*sigh* Damaging blows!' or '*sigh* Accidentally exploded a potion.' or '*sigh* I'm lost.' or '*sigh* I need to find the Red Key' or '*sigh* Gotta keep shooting the walls so I can find the hidden room with the Red Key in it'.
These skeleton warriors are trapped behind a wall of powerups. If I collect or destroy them, they can come out. I decided to collect the Cure potion first and sidestep across to pick them all up (you seem to sidestep twice as fast as moving forwards). After that, I let them eat a stream of Magick Missiles from the Zapper items I've barely touched. The rapid-fire Missiles weren't even a different colour, which is a bit of a swizz.
This game was fun enough, if a bit easy. It really could have done without those zombies popping up out of the ground everywhere constantly. Not that it made the game that difficult; hitting an enemy with a Missile seems to stun it, so if you can time your CTRL presses so that you're firing fast enough to stun the enemy yet slow enough for the game to register them as distinct blasts, you'll take very little damage. You can see in the screenshot I've got 16 extra lives. I guess I'd need them if I continued on, but so far I've used about two.
Only having the one type of attack is a bit lame. Something that lets me hold down CTRL rather than tapping it constantly would be a great help.
Only kidding, Nemesis is rubbish. Click to see a super secret endingy picture that looks cool which I found in the readme.
WAIT! What's Nemesis doing there? Damn it! If he's in Episodes Two and Three of The Catacomb Abyss, that means you don't get to kill him in this one! Argh!
When are these games set, anyway? The manual compared my Zapper to a machine gun, and now we've got a machine gun turret to the left and that robot on the far right. I suppose when you can fire
This is getting confusing. I'm outta here.
Hi Ray,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this!! I'd mostly forgotten about Catacomb 3D--which I hadn't played since the early 90s--until stumbling across this post, but what a game. I actually really enjoyed it, as much as Wolf3d, if not a little more. I think I mostly liked the exploration aspect, which Wolf3d was a little lacking. I've also written a little mini-review at 0x38 - http://0x38.com/151292_By_Platform/151295_DOS/152685_Catacomb_3D - and of course I had to go fire up Dosbox and try it again, and it is a little tedious having to pound the control key repeatedly, but oh well. Think I'll try and play through it this weekend all the same, just for kicks.
Thanks again for the post,
Steve
This is like, way late and old, but this isn't "licensed Wolfenstein tech" -- the engine actually predates Wolfenstein. (And yes, John Carmack wrote it.)
ReplyDeleteCatacomb 3D was released in November 1991 by Softdisk and was programmed by Carmack, Romero, Hall and Blochowiak with art by A. Carmack. The Catacomb Abyss 3D was released in 1992 and was made by Softdisk *way after JC, JR, TH and AC had formed iD software (1991)*.
DeleteHere's what the credits for the TCA3D say:
Programming by Mike Maynard, Jim Row, and Nolan Martin. Art Direction by Steve Maines, Art Production by Steve Maines, Carol Ludden, Jerry Jones and Adrian Carmack. Quality Assurance by Jim Weiler and Judi Mangham. 3D Imaging Effects by ID Software.
Obviously iD were working on what would become "Wolfenstein tech" at that time, and TCA-3D uses "3D Imaging Effects" made by iD.
General announcement: it's NEVER too late to point out any or all of mecha-neko's mistakes.
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