Wolfenstein 3D (MS-DOS)

Developer:

id

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

DOS, SNES, Mac, Jaguar, 3DO, GBA, Apple IIGS, PC-98, Archimedes, etc.

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Today on Super Adventures I have another requested game for you: Wolfenstein 3D, or (Wolfenstein 3-D according to the title screen). And it's got the Nazi Party's theme tune playing right now as its title song, that's just... great.

This of course is the earliest first person shooter ever made, except for all those other ones that came before it. Even if you don't want to count things like 1974's Maze War, 1980's Battlezone, or even 1987's MIDI Maze, you've got id Software's own Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D released a year earlier. Granted they don't have assault rifles, but they're so similar in style and gameplay to Wolfenstein 3D that it's hard for me to look at them and say they're not the same genre.

Either way this is definitely the first of the Wolfenstein series; except it kinda isn’t as it was inspired by a 1981 stealthy action-adventure called Castle Wolfenstein and its sequel Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. When id Software realised the trademark had lapsed and was up for the taking, they took it and made their own series out of it. And I don't blame them, as it's a cool title.

Is it the first World War II themed first person shooter at least? I've no idea, but let's say yes. Medal of Honor, Call of Duty... they're all this game's fault. Anyway, I have played Wolfenstein 3D before, but not recently and not for long. In fact I've never even finished a single episode, so that's what I'm planning to do now.

The Saboteur (PC)

My selfish stylish sexy sandbox shooter starting with an 'S' series stretches on to its third game: Pandemic's swan song The Saboteur. Yep, this was the final game ever made by Pandemic Studios, which kind of sucks as I love everything I've played by them. Mercenaries was one of the best open world sandbox games to follow Grand Theft Auto 3's lead, and I had some good times playing the Star Wars: Battlefront games in multiplayer. So I've got unreasonably high hopes for this one, and if it lets me down at all I'll be distraught.

The game came out for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but I'm playing the Windows version because... well, it's a lot easier to get screenshots out of it. I've heard that this is a bit of a bad port, especially on PCs with modern processors and an ATI graphics card like mine, but I made it through the dodgy PC version of Saints Row 2 so I'm sure I can handle it.

(Click any screenshot to open up a 1280x1024 resolution version. Yeah yeah I know it's not exactly what you'd find on deadendthrills.com.)

Call of Duty 2 (PC)

Today on Super Adventures I'm playing a Call of Duty game, in an effort to make every other game on the site look more unusual and obscure by comparison.

I remember liking this one when it first came out, but it's been a long while now since I last saw it and the military shooter genre wasn't quite as played out back then. The single player campaigns in COD games get a bad rap these days and I'm curious to see whether my fond memories of this one will evaporate in the harsh cynical light of the modern day.

(Click the pics to expand them into exciting new resolutions, usually around 1280x720.)

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (PC)

Fans of murky faded screenshots rejoice, as today I'm taking a quick look at a classic World War 2 first person shooter (again).

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is the third game in the franchise after PlayStation exclusives Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor: Underground. Weirdly though, this never got a console release; instead the Xbox, PS2 and Game Cube got their own game a few months later called Medal of Honor: Frontline which was never released on PC. Maybe they just wanted to make sure each system got a game tailored to the machine's strengths, or maybe it was a deliberate scheme to confuse and annoy me, I don't know.

But what I do know is that 22 of Allied Assault's developers (including the lead designers) went on to form a new company called Infinity Ward after this and spent the next seven years building up a rival WW2 FPS franchise of their own that went on to achieve a certain measure of success. So I suppose you could say that this is Call of Duty 0.

(Click the pics to view in x-treme 1280x1024 resolution. I'm sorry folks, I've got a retro monitor so all I can get are retro screenshots.)

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (PC)

Now that's the kind of picture I like to see when I put a video game on.

Today I'm playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein, third in id Software's Wolfenstein franchise, though it was developed by Gray Matter and Nerve. This was actually Grey Matter's only game before they were absorbed by CODBlops devs Treyarch, though they'd made games like Redneck Rampage and Kingpin: Life of Crime in their previous life as Xatrix Entertainment. Perhaps not a very interesting fact, but I just wanted an excuse to type CODBlops.

Here's another potentially underwhelming fact: I've played and finished this game before, so I'm not coming into it even slightly unaware of what to expect. Though I'll make every effort to pretend to be surprised.

(Click the gameplay pictures to expand them into exciting new resolutions.)

Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (PC) - Guest Post

I'm playing Commandos!

It's a real-time tactics game that follows a fictionalised account of the actions of the real British Commandos (Wikipedia link) during World War 2!

I've been told that Commandos is really hard so I'm going to play the tutorial first. Click the pictures to see PNGs.

Medal of Honor (PSX) - Guest Post

"Are you ready to rise above and beyond the call of duty?"

I see what you did there! Except this came out before Call of Duty! Argh, I don't know what's real any more!

Hey, click on the images to view them not as evil JPGs!

Call of Duty (PC) - Guest Post

An epic tale of one cat's war against everything.

(Especially your bandwidth. There's a lot of pictures today... and you can click them to view them at 1280x1024!)

Offensive (MS-DOS)

I'm guessing it's got something to do with war.