Quakecon started yesterday and to celebrate Microsoft have added another swathe of id Software and Bethesda games to both PC Game Pass and the Microsoft Store. That's not all, either, as there's also an id-themed freebie over on the Epic Games Store this week, and more Bethesda games going cheap in various sales. Here's everything you need to know about what's going on where.
]]>In the age of years-long development cycles, it seems miraculous that Wolfenstein 3D, a game that spawned the modern-day FPS as we know it, was developed by six people in just six months. The story of Wolfenstein 3D’s development makes for a fascinating time capsule of those early days of game development - a milestone in gaming history that underlines just how much the industry has grown over the decades since.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves a bit. The origins of Wolfenstein 3D, a gloriously violent game that paved the way for the even more gloriously violent Doom, can be found in a somewhat more cutesy series of titles: the Commander Keen series. id Software made four of these side-scrolling platformers for MS-DOS in very quick succession between 1990 and 1991, and studio co-founder John Romero tells us that the team was definitely ready for a change.
]]>It has been a bizarrely busy week for Wolfenstein 3D mods. In the past six days, there's been three impressive total conversions released for the great grandaddy of the modern FPS, two of which are entirely standalone. We've got pirates in The Golden Parrot, we've got vampires in Project X: Insurrection and we've got a bizarre tribute to an even more bizarre DOS game in Nitemare: Hugo's Revenge. It's proof that if you give fans the right tools, they'll keep hammering away until the cows come home, leave and then come home again. Take a peek at the three games below.
]]>For a series built around the deconstruction of Aryan bodies, it’s taken a long time for players to take the hint that Wolfenstein’s ubermensch William Blazkowicz is Jewish.
That hesitation betrays our definitions of Jewish identity as old-fashioned, and also reflects that the few prominent Jewish characters in games play into and reinforce stereotypes. While Blazkowicz is the most high profile character to break the mold, what does it say about games that the most diverse representation of a Jew we’ve seen is simply whiter than most?
]]>Well done, everyone. Between the festival of catharsis that was Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus and Call Of Duty's return to World War 2, we've officially put shooting virtual fascists back on the menu. Jolly good show.
Still hungry to grind some more into kibble? Here's a couple of free treats to keep you going until Wolfenstein 3. Granted, the goose-stepping villains in Doom mod Shadow of The Wool Ball and its sequel Rise Of The Wool Ball are cats, but they're pretty villainous, and unless you're happy with the Planet Of The Adorable Hedgehogs being ground up into kitty litter, you're going to have to shoot a few.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I've been trying to remember whether I had some sense when I first played Wolfenstein 3D that I really, truly was playing the future of videogames. It did seem landmark, but back then, age 12 or 13, every new game seemed landmark to me - each was a brand new experience, both because I was so young and because so were videogames.
]]>Do you remember a time when Wolfenstein hero B.J. Blazkowicz was a grinning, bum-chinned sprite with shiny blue twinklers rather than a morose sad-eyed man in a broken world? I've enjoyed several versions of Wolfenstein over the years, and perhaps none more so than The New Order, but I'm still fond of the first 3d title in the series. And I fucking love Doom. What a pleasure it is, then, to find Blade of Agony [official site], a GZDoom-based mod/sequel following the continuing adventures of Blazkowicz. It looks spectacular.
]]>Some folks seem surprised that Doom levels and mods are still being made but, as Andrew Lloyd Webber taught us, love never dies. People are still making Wolfenstein 3D mods, you know. Why, just the other week, a new Wolfenstein total conversion came out!
I point out Batman: No Man's Land [ModDB page] partially because I smiled seeing a new Wolf3D mod pop up in my feeds, and partially because I've been here almost a year and still not posted about Wolf3D (well, not properly). Sorry. I suppose I'll mention a few other Wolfenstein bits too.
]]>The last time I tried to play the original Wolfenstein 3D was a few years back, on a netbook. It seemed like a good idea at the time. About half an hour later my contorted, shrivelled fingers revolted, crawled out of their sockets and attempted to end me.
They failed, of course, because fingers detached from hands cannot exert significant pressure. So it is that today I am able to play Super Wolfenstein HD, a free game created by Broforce devs Free Lives for the Indies vs. Pewdiepie jam. You may already have encountered Where Is My Hammer: Destroy Everything from the same jam. Super Wolfenstein HD is loosely similar in concept, except everything is Nazis. So much Nazis.
]]>I'm fascinated by attempts to remove violence from first-person shooters. One Wolfenstein 3D mod replaces enemies with giant coloured marbles and turns hanging skeletons to hanging pot plants, yet leaves in all the Nazi symbolism "in order to keep the original 'spirit' of the game." That is, I think, a serious attempt at de-violenceing. More jokey is Happy Doom, where "you are a little boy who has a basket of flowers" and give them to "cloud people" to make them happy and sleep.
Super 3D Noah's Ark, a game I never knew existed, was wholly serious. It's essentially Wolfenstein 3D, and built on the Wolf3D engine, but with Noah running around the Ark, 'feeding escaped animals' using high-powered catapults. And now it's been re-released.
]]>Word on the grapevine (Twitter) has it that there'll be some big, noisy game announcement at 2pm, but at the time of writing I have no idea what it would be because no-one tells me anything. Probably because RPS has insulted pretty much everyone by now, but oh well. In the aim of providing vaguely timely news, I have pre-written the below post ready to have relevant keywords inserted and/or removed once I find out what the game in question is. Let's see how well I do! Edit - nailed it.
[GAME NAME]WOLFENSTEIN: THE NEW ORDER is a REMAKE/SEQUEL/REBOOT/RIVAL/ HOMAGE OF/TO [OLD GAME NAME] WOLFENSTEIN 3D, developed by [COMPANY NAME] MACHINE GAMES and to be published by [COMPANY NAME] BETHESDA.
It's been interesting to watch Disney's Wreck-It Ralph get showered with acclaim for being "the best videogame movie ever." I say that because, well, "best videogame movie ever" doesn't really mean anything. Heck, most announced films based heavily around games have yet to even reach a point where they could safely be called "existent" - let alone "good." World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Deus Ex, and, er, Asteroids are all buried somewhere in Hollywood's screeching bowels, but will they ever see the light of day? Who knows. And now Wolfenstein's rejoining that venerable roster - with the co-writer of Pulp Fiction (the one who wasn't Quentin Tarantino) attached, no less. I vote for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Mecha Hitler.
]]>Good heavens, Saturday was the 20th anniversary of Wolfenstein 3D. That makes us all older than the oldest oak tree. The classic robo-Nazi-shooting FPS is credited with having made the first-person shooter a thing that people knew existed, and if you've played it recently, you'll know it's still brilliant. You haven't played it recently? Oh, well now you can.
]]>It's Wolfenstein 3D's 16th birthday. Happy birthday Wolfenstein 3D! Now you can have sex with the other games.
Despite being an id game, it was published by Apogee, now 3D Realms, and they've taken it upon themselves to celebrate this momentous age.
]]>
![קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/honkai-star-rail-bronya-fu-xuan.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]")
