[MIDI rock music]
[typing]
Looking back at awesome first-person shooters from the early-to-mid-'90s,
several come to mind immediately.
Wolfenstein 3D.
Doom.
Duke Nukem 3D.
Tek War.
Wait... no one thinks of Tek War. How'd that get in here?
And one that soon comes to mind for me is Rise of the Triad,
published by Apogee Software in 1995
and developed by an internal team there
calling themselves "The Developers of Incredible Power."
This was a team led by none other than ex-id Software employee Tom Hall,
heading a team of talented people like Joe Siegler,
William Scarboro,
Bobby Prince, Joseph Selinske,
Steven Hornback and many others.
There's no doubt in my mind they were Devs of Incredible Power.
Just look at this feature list!
Unmatched realism, five unique characters,
thirty-plus levels across four episodes,
online multiplayer, 20 freakin' megabytes of game content,
and really...
cool...
explosions.
Well, why didn't you say so at first?
No other game has that!
Rise of the Triad was sold as shareware, like everything else from Apogee,
but you could buy it in the stores in this FormGen retail box.
Inside this glorious package, you get the game on floppy disks or a single CD-ROM,
and a manual filled with at least 20 MB of game content
and really...
cool...
explosions.
The hunt begins with some lovely logos,
letting you luxuriate in the loveliness of their logo-ness.
You're then gifted with the main menu's optional options,
like starting a new single-player game, multiplayer game, saving and loading,
the options, ordering, high scores, gameplay demos,
and an amazing quit button.
Honestly, this thing is fantastic.
Just look at all these ways to quit!
And each one of them is even accompanied by their own slightly disturbing sound effect.
[tires screeching]
[crash]
Starting a new game is a bit different than most FPS's,
since you're given the option of five characters to play as.
Each one not only has their own look and voice,
but unique, yet somewhat predictable, characteristics.
Like the big guy's slower but can take more damage,
while the smaller gal can't take as much pain, but is far more quick and nimble.
You then get an assortment of difficulty levels,
each one more cleverly worded than the last,
as was often the case with shooters back then.
Your journey then begins with a series of panels setting up the loose plot
for your incoming homicidal experience.
Basically, you're a member of the special ops team
known as the High-risk United Nations Taskforce, or HUNT.
While doing routine surveillance near the island of San Nicolas,
some patrolling douches decide to make violent love to your boat with high explosives.
While stranded on the island, you learn of a terrible plot of terribleness that must be stopped.
And instead of waiting around for proper backup,
you go in with guns blazing
and murder the crap out of everything
with really...
cool...
explosions.
If you're any kind of familiar with Wolfenstein 3D,
you may be getting a bit of a similar vibe here
just by the look of the weapons,
some of the enemies and level limitations,
like 90-degree walls and unchanging ceiling heights
and individual maps.
That's because it's running on an enhanced version of the Wolf 3D engine,
and actually began its life as a sequel to that game,
to be titled "Rise of the Triad: Wolfenstein 3D Part Two"
However, during development, they were contacted by John Romero at id Software
saying the project had been canceled,
likely due to not wanting conflicts with their upcoming project, Doom.
But since they had so much work done, Apogee kept the project going
changed around the required assets
and just went absolutely insane with the design,
now that they weren't restrained by the Wolfenstein brand.
And what resulted is this.
An absolutely wild and unique frag-fest of a game
that makes little to no sense when you think about anything that's going on in it,
and honestly, who gives a crap?
Like, seriously, this game is stupid.
So freakin' stupid, and *that*
is just the coolest thing, if you ask me.
I love it when games don't take themselves seriously at all,
especially when you have such limitations with what you can do in a game engine.
Just go overboard! Then you don't even notice the limitations.
Yeah, back then, sometimes you had to go bonkers just to make your game stand out,
and Rise of the Triad is a prime example.
Though at its heart, it really is a typical shooter from the mid-'90s.
You've got some basic controls for
running, strafing, shooting and interacting with the environment.
And like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom,
you don't even have a button for jumping.
You pick up health items for health
and guns and ammo for...
guns and ammo,
and of course, look for keys to open doors to get to the next level
that is rarely connected logically to the previous one.
But beyond that,
this game was practically like nothing else out there at the time.
For one thing, there are the weapons in the game.
You've got 11 of them here
in the categories of bullet weapons, missile weapons and magic weapons.
Yes...
magic weapons.
So you not only get things like pistols, machines guns and rocket launchers,
but you also get things like the Excalibat,
which can deal serious melee damage
and shoot exploding baseballs.
The Dark Staff, which fires highly charged energy spheres
that explode anything in their path.
And the Hand of God,
which not only makes you invincible
but turns you into a freaking god,
disintegrating any and all foes that dare cross you.
[echoing moan]
And even some of the quote-unquote "regular" weapons have weird twists,
like the Fire Bomb that releases a devastating cross-shaped explosion.
The Flame Wall, which shoots a rocket towards the ground
that proceeds to burst into a massive wall of fire
that incinerates everything in its path.
Except robots
because robots are just that freakin' evil.
And the Drunk Missile, which, uh...
fires five heat-seeking missiles in a drunken manner
that truly makes no sense.
Though, for some reason, you can only hold four weapons at once,
with only one of them being either a missile or a magic weapon.
I guess this is a somewhat realistic limitation on your character, but...
when the rest of the game beats realism to a pulp
with a magic baseball bat, what's the point?
Then you've got the different pickups in the game,
many of which I don't think I've seen in any other game since.
In addition to normal things like health pickups and the like,
you also have these collectible coin things with anhks on them.
They're often out of reach,
so even though you can't jump, you can use jump pads
to hurl yourself into them and collect them for points.
If you collect enough of them, you'll earn an extra life.
And yeah, you have lives in Rise of the Triad.
Which is kind of confusing since you can simply save your game anywhere
and reload at any time, but whatever.
Some people like high scores.
Then you have power-ups
and these are quite unique.
In addition to the previously mentioned God Mode,
you also have one called Mercury Mode,
which allows you to fly around the level for a limited time,
letting you find all sorts of otherwise inaccessible secrets.
You also have a couple power-downs,
like Elasto Mode,
which decreases friction to the point that you're bouncing around the level like a pinball,
and Shrooms Mode,
which puts you under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms.
I, uh...
I have no idea why, but, hey, the rest of the game is a bit of a trip,
so why not?
And lastly, you have Dog Mode,
a dyslexic form of God Mode
taken to its literal meaning.
Dog Mode not only gives you God Mode,
but turns you into a dog.
Yup. Run around barking and biting at enemies
until you morph back into your human form
Animorphs-style.
And it is fantastic.
Seriously, why hasn't there been a full first-person shooter made with the idea
of taking down bad guys as a dog?
Beyond all this, it's mostly pretty standard stuff
for a game of this time period and using this engine.
I mean, yeah, there were some serious enhancements to the engine,
like shootable windows and objects and jump pads
and varying types of lighting and fog
and aiming up and down and such, but it's still a Wolf 3D-based game.
The levels get *really* complex before long,
and some of them are actually up to the equivalent of one million square feet large.
You'll probably be wandering around for ages on certain levels
just trying to remember which area had that one pushable wall
that hid that one frickin' key.
And on top of all the regular navigation,
you've got a plethora of secrets and Easter eggs in every level.
So there's certainly no shortage of content on offer here,
however convoluted and overwhelming it may feel
after long periods of play.
Now don't get me wrong, it's way more entertaining to me than Wolfenstein 3D ever was.
But it's still not as continuously playable to me as something like Doom.
And I think that's got something to do with how Doom is just sort of a masterwork
of just enough complexity balanced with fine-tuned gameplay.
Nothing really feels extraneous in Doom.
Whereas in Rise of the Triad, I start to tire of all the weird jumping puzzles,
the bizarre key locations,
the annoying power-downs and even some of the weapons.
Like the Split Missile, which while kinda cool,
just feels clunky to use.
But still, the game is so chock-full of so much craziness
and such cheeky personality
and fine, little details that just make you smile
that I find it absolutely engaging every time I start it up.
At least for a couple hours or so.
And taking a look at its contemporaries, it just stands out from the rest,
with its bloody eyeballs and middle fingers flying at the screen.
And that's just the single-player.
There was also the multiplayer mode known as Comm-bat,
which is impressively full-featured for a deathmatch experience back then.
Lots of modes to choose from,
tons of maps to play in,
plenty of options to enable and disable,
and even the ability to customize the look of your character,
at least somewhat.
I never really played this mode back in the day because...
I didn't have a connection that allowed me to do so,
much less friends that owned the game.
But it's something that at least impresses me now
just by how chock-full of stuff it is.
And the ROTT experience does not stop there
because there were multiple versions of the game released.
We've been looking at "Dark War" here,
which is the main full version of the game.
But there were multiple versions of "Dark War,"
some with more features or more levels.
And the one you can get today on places like GOG.com and Steam
are the most full-featured of those,
known as the "Site License" version.
But there was also a version called "The HUNT Begins"
which was a shareware game containing ten levels unique to it.
You also had several level packs released by other vendors
and some for free online,
as well as an official one known as "Extreme Rise of the Triad."
This was put together by two of the original developers,
Tom Hall and Joe Siegler,
and contained 42 more- difficult new levels by them,
as well as the full level editor, some user-made levels,
sound files and more.
There was even a randomized level generator program released for the game,
which, like the one for Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny before it,
allowed you to randomly generate both single-player and multiplayer levels
using the set of parameters you provide it.
And that's still not everything I can mention about this game,
but suffice to say, I think Rise of the Triad is worth seeking out.
If anything, it's worthwhile because of the revival of the series in 2013,
developed by Interceptor Entertainment,
and I think experiencing the game's roots
helps appreciate the new one all the more.
And even though I get a bit tired of the game's formula before too awful long,
I still like going back and playing it every so often.
So I'd say it's worth reliving if you remember it from the past.
Or if you have never played it but want to play a mid-'90s FPS game
that doesn't give a crap about anything,
goes insane on you and just tosses ludicrous gibs in your face,
then Rise of the Triad is definitely the game to check out.
[MIDI rock music plays]