Rise of the Triad is certainly the spiritual successor to Wolfenstein 3D but so... so much worse.
Dark War starts off with a really satisfying arsenal and a large selection of power-ups, some of the best weapons found in a 90s first-person shooter for sure. Enemies are various and explode in an impressive amount of gibs, truly more than satisfactory for a 1995 shooter.
Unfortunately, it's all taken back by the worst level design we've seen since Hexen, under no circumstance should anyone ever attempt to copy Wolfenstein's level design, not only that - they managed to make it even worse and times as obtuse as Hexen.
The story behind Rise of the Triad is when Apogee licensed the already outdated Wolfenstein 3D engine to make a video game. Tom Hall, fired from id Software following a dispute with Carmack over design philosophy, immediately started working with Apogee on what would become "Rise of the Triad: Wolfenstein Part II". At the time, Doom was released, and Rise of the Triad was running on an outdated engine that lacked any z-axis for height differentiation, without the programming expertise of Carmack, stayed outdated by the time of its release far into 1995.
It's truly a shame because in all other aspects Rise of the Triad was a competent avant-garde game, with interesting enemies, satisfying weaponry, all taken back by the absolutely nonsensical map design of Tom Hall. Don't get me started on the gravity pads, why are they all over the place? They're a mess to navigate, nobody wants to deal with it. I guess they were trying to add some verticality or platforming to their shooter but did nothing to alleviate the eyesore.
Dark War starts off with a really satisfying arsenal and a large selection of power-ups, some of the best weapons found in a 90s first-person shooter for sure. Enemies are various and explode in an impressive amount of gibs, truly more than satisfactory for a 1995 shooter.
Unfortunately, it's all taken back by the worst level design we've seen since Hexen, under no circumstance should anyone ever attempt to copy Wolfenstein's level design, not only that - they managed to make it even worse and times as obtuse as Hexen.
The story behind Rise of the Triad is when Apogee licensed the already outdated Wolfenstein 3D engine to make a video game. Tom Hall, fired from id Software following a dispute with Carmack over design philosophy, immediately started working with Apogee on what would become "Rise of the Triad: Wolfenstein Part II". At the time, Doom was released, and Rise of the Triad was running on an outdated engine that lacked any z-axis for height differentiation, without the programming expertise of Carmack, stayed outdated by the time of its release far into 1995.
It's truly a shame because in all other aspects Rise of the Triad was a competent avant-garde game, with interesting enemies, satisfying weaponry, all taken back by the absolutely nonsensical map design of Tom Hall. Don't get me started on the gravity pads, why are they all over the place? They're a mess to navigate, nobody wants to deal with it. I guess they were trying to add some verticality or platforming to their shooter but did nothing to alleviate the eyesore.