@~And now, this issue's "something different" is .... Rise Of The Triad and Doom 2 Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx A few issues back I looked at Wolfenstein and Doom and drew a few comparisons between the two games, deciding that Doom was, by far, the better game. Maybe it was a bit unfair looking at Wolf and Doom as Wolf was, really, the forerunner to Doom, so Doom already had a distinct advantage. But now here is an opportunity to compare like with like. After the deluge of Wolfenstein games the next big 3D first person shoot-em-up from the Apogee stables was Rise Of The Triad. After Doom was Doom 2 from the iD stable. Both were released in the same year and both had very fine heritage. The story line for these kind of games is pretty immaterial. All you need to know is where are the guns and what are the enemies. Oh, and which button is the one that fires the aforementioned weapons. So, how do they play and how do they compare? Rise Of The Triad ----------------- ROTT places you in a fortress on a mythical island which has been taken over by an evil organisation. You job is to kill everything that moves. The control methods used for this game are similar to those used in all of the other games of this ilk with movement being achieved by the cursor keys, Control, Alt and the Spacebar firing your weapon, strafing and opening doors respectively. The other controls you get in this game are the abilities to look up and down, as well as fly. Yes, you can fly. Unlike most 3D games ROTT is in full 3D which means you can jump (by using the springy pads dotted around the levels) as well as looking around the game from any angle. This is a huge improvement over games such as Wolf and Doom as it adds an extra dimension to the game and gives you the extra sense of actually being in the world. The extra manoeuvrability, though, isn't put into as much practice as it was in games such as Dark Forces, but the ability to shoot high and low is still there. The actual graphics are very good, being standard VGA. The scrolling is very smooth and there is little loss of detail in the distance. The sound is also very good with nice meaty sounding weapons and a pretty good soundtrack. Right, that's the formalities covered. What are the weapons like and are the level designs good? Well, the weapons are a mish mash of guns. You start off with the lowly pistol as in most games and can progress onto machine guns as well as a really neat-looking double pistol (whereby you heft a pistol in each hand and fire two rounds instead of one - it looks cool and when you start doing tricks with the two guns you can also impress your friends). Those are your standard weapons which, strangely, have infinite ammunition. After those you can collect a host of heavy duty weaponry such as bazookas, flame throwers and drunken missiles. The drunken missiles are the best (and messiest) as they fire lethal projectiles in a random spread in front of you, taking out most people in sight. The trouble with these weapons is that they have limited ammo and once the ammo has run out you lose the weapon. Also you can only carry one of these guns at a time, meaning that you have to run around some levels like a headless chicken trying to find the right weapon for the job. This idea of juggling weapons with limited ammo is innovative but seems slightly strange to me. I am far happier with a set range of weapons which I can whip out whenever I need to - as long as I have the ammo. Still, ROTT's method definitely adds a level of strategy to the whole process of maiming your opponents. The level layout reminds me of a platform game, strangely enough. As well as having standard areas like those present in Doom you must also be able to use your movement skills to their highest degree to get the really powerful weapons or nipping into the secret areas. Around the levels there are little pads which, when you step on them, shoot you into the air. In the air you can control your descent as if you were gliding. This isn't very realistic, but adds an extra kind of puzzle to the standard 'press the button and run for it' variety. Also around all of the levels are floating platforms (some moving) which must be traversed carefully or else you may fall to your oblivion. Apart from enemies (of which there are only a few - snivel) there are also 'natural' obstacles such as fireballs being thrown across a room in intervals, or fountains of fire or spiky things thrusting up from the floor. All of these add to the difficulty of getting around a level. Apart from collecting weapons and food (to regain health) you can also pick up a number of power-ups which will let you do a number of things, such as have a trip, become a God or fly, all adding to the variety found in the game. So, is it violent? I'd say. It's violent, gory and sadistic. A good example of the violent gore you'll find in the game is if you whip out your drunken missile and face a huge number of human opponents. Fire the missile and watch as the enemy explode in fountains of blood and gore. Now wait a second... here it comes... look, a flying eyeball covered in blood. How cute! Don't worry, guardians of morality, you can turn these effects off, but they just add to the fun in my opinion. So, is it a good game? Yeah, pretty darned good. It's like mixing Doom with a platform game but with slightly slicker graphics and a better engine. The only gripes that I have with the game was that it was far too easy. Even on the hardest level I found myself carving my way through the enemy and it was only until the last couple of levels (when I came across some robots and really tough men) that I had to bother with the heavy-duty weapons. Also there were quite a few areas where it was just me and my gun - nothing to point either at! Doom 2 ------ In Doom 2 you continue on from where you had left the original game. Having wandered (successfully) through the pits of Hell you re-emerge to be confronted with the Earth, being taken over by the denizens of hell. The game takes you through your adventures to enable humanity to escape the planet, rid the planet of the demons and then progress into Hell to confront the biggest demon of 'em all and rid the universe of the accursed demons forever. All in a day's work is what I say. The first thing that strikes you is how similar it looks to Doom. In fact, apart from a few things that I will cover later on, it is exactly the same right from the control methods, graphics, graphics engine and sound effects. So, nothing has changed on that front. That's not to say it looks poor - the graphics for Doom were darned good and these still are, with the inclusion of new textures for walls, ceilings and floors as well as lots more open-space play (ie you're outside). The new things in this game are where it is important - a new weapon and newer (and badder) monsters to kill. The only new weapon you get your hands on is the super shotgun. Like the shotgun in the first game (which is still present) this eats up shells, but instead of firing one every shot, it fires two. You loose twice as much ammo, but get three times the killing power. Oooooh YEEEEEEES!!!!!!! The new monsters are simply divine. They look good, they're tough to kill and make the game soooooo much harder. You now have former commandos who go at you with chain guns, you've got Pain Elementals who spit out flaming heads at you, you've got the Mancubus who is a fat, bloated geezer who has two fire throwers instead of hands and, when he sights you, shoots out six fireballs very quickly - one of which can fry you to a cinder. You've got mini Barons Of Hell, mini Spider Masterbrains and Revenants - skeletal warriors which fire homing missiles! Oh, and you've got the worst enemy of them all - the Arch-Vile. The Arch-Vile is a tall, spindly white demon who runs around VERY quickly. His main form of attack is a firestorm which acts just like your BFG - killing and maiming anything in sight. More than one hit from this and you're dead. Apart from this, though, ol' A-V can resurrect the dead. Yup, that Cyberdemon you've just killed with your last rocket? Guess who's just brought it back to life...? Apart from these new monsters very little has changed from the original Doom except from the fact that it is thirty levels long and isn't split into missions. Other than that it is just as frantic, just as furious and plays in just the same great way. BUT it is far, FAR harder. In Doom the most enemies you may have faced would be about fifteen in a room. Now Doom 2 doesn't think twice about piling thirty or forty monsters at you. This would be all well and good, but there is one small problem - the issue of ammo. The number of enemies present has increased but all the new monsters are tougher - they take many, many shots to kill. The ammo, though, hasn't been increased the same amount. So, whereas in Doom I always had loads of ammo spare - enough to have quite a bit of fun with barrels etc. - in Doom 2 ammo is always a pressing issue. In fact, on the hardest level, there were three times during the game that I had completely run out of ammo and was left running into rooms full of imps and zombies just wielding my chainsaw. Not that I'm complaining, though. Doom, I felt, was over too quickly and it was just a matter of being the one with the biggest guns. In Doom 2, however, whole new concepts are thrown up such as dodging and conserving ammunition - if you aren't making 90% of your ammo hit a monster then you won't make it through the game on the harder levels. The levels have also taken a small turn for the better. In Doom you could almost believe that you were running through a deserted space station. In Doom 2 the levels have been designed with a view just for the enjoyment of playing the level, and not some overall image. This leads to some really great levels such as Barrels O' Fun (a level filled with exploding barrels and monsters - not a good combination). One slight drawback, though, is that some of the levels have large, open spaces which makes some rooms on a couple of levels jerky and if you can't kill the last enemy quickly the whole thing becomes unplayable. Overall, though, this game has offered far more entertainment than Doom ever did. I didn't suffer the same feeling of tenseness in Doom 2 as I did in the original, but this was replaced by an indescribable feeling of confidence mingled with the fact that I new that I had one of the hardest tasks I'd ever had to do. Conclusion ---------- Again I must say that iD's game wins out over Apogee's offering. Although little has changed where Doom 2 is concerned, where it has changed has led to the greatest up-turns in the playability scales that I could have imagined. That's not to say that ROTT is a poor game - it is good, but not when compared to Doom 2. If there were loads more enemies and a feeling of helplessness then it would have been a much closer affair, but the atmosphere just wasn't right. Also I completed the shareware version in just a couple of hours where as Doom 2 took me about ten hours of continuous playing to complete it on the hardest setting. So, go and get Doom 2. There are 1001 new WADs for the game and the original should keep all but the most Doom-hardened player going for a good couple of weeks. - o -