Wolfenstein 3D Review (PS3, PSN)

The once-influential FPS hasn’t aged well.

Wolfenstein 3D: the one that started it all. A landmark in videogame history, this iconic title was released in 1993, and became influential in shaping the ‘First Person shooter’ (FPS) genre as we know it. Now it’s for sale over Playstation Network though, to answer the fans’ questions about how the game holds up today.

Set in WWII, the story follows American soldier William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, in his quest to escape from the titular castle, overthrow the Nazi regime, and of course face Mr. Hitler himself. As you’d expect, the PSN title is a port – but of the PC version, which had slightly tweaked music – and included are 6 episodes (the first three, and the nocturnal missions). Each has a total of 10 levels, but only 9 need to be completed as the last is secret. So that comes to a possible whopping total of 60 stages of Nazis, and the odd end of level boss, to blast your way through. Not bad at all.

You have some basic controls to get you through this. The left analogue stick moves your character forward/backwards and strafe, the right stick turns your character, R1 to fire, X to activate doors, and hold down R2 to sprint. Short and sweet. There are no headshots or aiming your gun up and down – just point in the direction of the enemy and shoot. Luckily, Wolfenstein 3D isn’t too fussy about you needing to aim 100% perfectly at an enemy, as your bullets will still connect to them even if you’re slightly off. Forgiving, but necessary, since there’s no crosshair.

More accurately, these levels are ‘floors’ of the castle, and finding the hidden (and always, always behind a locked door) elevator at the end is your ticket out of there and to the next one. So it’s a classic case of “collect the gold key and find the door”, which was rife in FPS games of the period. You’ll come across many a Nazi on your way, who’ll shout exclamations when they spot you and do the same or shriek hilariously when killed, albeit a bit garbled. Hearing “Mein Leben!” never loses its amusement factor; it’s just a pity that some voice samples are more of an incomprehensible mess than others. The sound effects of the weapons fail to pack a punch as surprisingly the machine gun sounds like a pea shooter, and you’ll be accompanied by looping background music. Although there are a variety of these, they range from marching-style beats to abnormally cheerful. However, it’s the door opening and closing sounds that will gather pure disdain. This is not a casual ‘click’ sound. This is clunking, reinforced steel, which bangs as it slides open. Fair enough you need a sound effect, but why so noisy?

Hearing “Mein Leben!” never loses its amusement factor

And it’s ironic because in your never-ending quest to find the end of each level, you’ll be hearing this sound again and again. With heavily pixelated enemies, the graphics weren’t particularly spectacular at the time of the game’s release, and they aren’t now. The ceiling and floors of the castle are always a plain dark colour and the same wall textures, colours and props are used over and over again, with that freaky effect of objects somehow facing you wherever you stand. Apart from a few stock Nazi-themed pictures and posters, you don’t get a feel of being in a castle at all, rather a concrete jungle constructed by someone with an awful taste of décor. As a result many areas look the same, the floors are large and twist and turn frequently. Add to this the fact that there isn’t any kind of in-game map, and you’ll be getting lost. A lot. It’s here where Wolfenstein 3D becomes more of a maze than a shooter, its glaring frustrations becoming all too obvious. You’ll kill the majority of a levels enemies and then have no clue about where you’re supposed to be going; you desperately try to memorise where you have and haven’t explored, using the littered corpses of downed foes as a trail of breadcrumbs. Searching the same areas over and over is not fun.

No, it’s the Nazi blasting that is fun, and that’s a compliment coming from a first-time Wolfenstein player. It goes without saying that wiping out roomfuls of Nazis is always enjoyable, and this is when Wolfenstein 3D is at its best. The game still manages to retain some sense of excitement and caution (though some use of lighting to crank up the atmosphere wouldn’t have gone amiss), with that feeling of Nazis being able to pop out at you any moment. There are many occasions where you’ll enter an apparently empty room, only to turn round and swiftly get your face blown off by that sneaky foe that was hiding behind a wall, or open a door to be met face-to-face by a room full of enemies. Opening a door to have an enemy yell “Spion!” in your face really does catch you off guard if you weren’t expecting it, and can even be jumpy. You literally don’t know what’s behind that door or around that corner.

The problem is that unless you have the enemy in plain sight, when you’re getting shot at you often have no indication of where the bullets are coming from, so will need to spin around madly to find your attacker. Add to this that enemies can take away huge chunks of your health at a time, and Wolfenstein 3D can be a tough cookie on the harder difficulty settings; so survival is helped by strafing madly back and forth from around corners or behind doors. Doing well depends on being prepared, but a lot of the time, it’s simply impossible to be prepared for opening a door to about four Nazis at once. You’ll end up saving frequently because you never know when you could be progressing along nicely, only to be downed by a cheap shot from an enemy that you never even saw coming. Dying sees re-loading that game save, because I doubt a lot of gamers will start the level from scratch. This really highlights just how trial-and-error Wolfenstein 3D can feel at times.

Luckily, you’ll come across ammo and health, in the form of med kits, dog food (?) and plates of chicken. Apparently, Nazi strongholds had a lot of food lying around on the floor, or so it seems. You can also pick up pieces of treasure for a satisfying jingle which are usually found behind hidden passages, found by interacting with certain walls. At the end of each level you receive stats based on how many secrets and treasure pieces you found. It’s hard to find them all, so a good nugget of replay value you might get out of the game is to go back and try to collect all treasures – it’s a challenge. Outside of that, though, another play through just for the sake of it is unlikely because with the exception of the boss battles, no levels particularly stand out. Try to think back to the high points of the game, and they’ll merge into one. The helping of levels is generous, and since navigating them all can take a while, it’s unlikely that you’ll be breezing your way through all six episodes in one night. However, like that old saying goes, we should focus on quality over quantity, and Wolfenstein 3D doesn’t seem to advocate that. It’s the kind of game I’d recommend playing in short doses; get totally lost on one level for ages and you might decide you’ve had enough and leave it for a while,. Besides, playing for long periods at a time is where it becomes so apparent how samey Wolfenstein is.

Overall, Wolfenstein 3D is still the same game that many grew up with, but sadly it hasn’t aged particularly well; this will be especially apparent to those who’ve never played Wolfenstein 3D before and aren’t looking through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. This review may come off as harsh towards a classic, but it is simply no excuse considering the fact that there were better competitors around. For example DOOM – also a landmark FPS released only a year after, and a better quality one which has come out on top in standing the test of time. Despite its flaws though, Wolfenstein 3D is still an enjoyable, guilty pleasure and so is rated average. For a piece of gaming history at £3.99, you can’t really go wrong… even if it is just to play episode 3 for the unintentionally hilarious confrontation with Hitler in a Mecha suit.