Wolfenstein 3D

STORY/GAMEPLAY
The setting is Nazi Germany, circa 1943. Your mission is to infiltrate the Nazi fortress Castle Hollehammer and find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust (Iron Fist), the Nazi's blueprint for building the perfect army through genetically engineered soldiers. Rumors are that deep within the castle the diabolic Dr. Shabbs has perfected a technique for building a fierce army from the bodies of the dead! Captured in your attempt to grab the secret plans, you were taken to the Nazi prison Castle Wolfenstein for question and eventual execution. Now for twelve long days you've been imprisoned beneath the castle fortress. Deep in the belly of a Nazi dungeon, now you must escape. Along the way, you'll encounter a number of enemies, such as patrol dogs, SS guards, or mutants, that you can kill in order to obtain more ammunition or health.
There aren't any platforms or ledges, so aiming is always on the horizontal axis. As for weapons, there are only four: a pistol, a knife, a machine gun, and a Gatling gun.
Wolfenstein 3D is actually just a first-person shooter roaming around the castle's corridors, opening doors and getting into rooms, shooting Nazi's. You start with your pistol and a knife, but you can find and pickup a machine gun, and a Gatling gun. Ammunition is not unlimited, so be careful spending your bullets. More bullets can be found scattered in the rooms too. Aiming is always on the horizontal axis, and the accuracy of a weapon diminishes with the range of a shot. Points can also be scored by killing all enemies in a level, collecting all treasure, finding all secret areas, or completing a level under a par time
Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995, and surely worth a try nowadays for everyone either not born or missed it back then!

GRAPHICS/SOUND
Other than the Nazi decor, the game's graphics are average, but its rudimentary 3D graphics were revolutionary, so a high score here is deserved! Enemies are humorous and colorful, but they're also somewhat pixilated. The surroundings suggest a prison-like setting, complete with jail cells, decaying skeletons, and the appropriate furniture, but the overuse of right angles and rectangular corridors becomes repetitive rather quickly. The game is broken up into levels, each of which is a flat plane divided into areas and rooms by a grid-based pattern of walls and doors, all of equal height.
The game fortunately supports Soundblaster (and AdLib) sound hardware for the sampled sound effects of the standard boom type explosive noises and voices, along with the rat-a-tat of your gun, all along with nicely-composed midi themes, that matched well to the game's atmosphere.