If you lose a life, you can kiss that cool gun (unless you save, that is).
Credit: id Software
If you lose a life, you can kiss that cool gun (unless you save, that is).
Credit: id Software
The balancing difficulty could also use some work. The lowest setting, I Can Play, Dad, is ridiculously easy for anyone with modern FPS experience, with loads of item pickups and enemies that are too slow to attack and don’t take any damage when they do manage to fire. The default “Turn them on!” the difficulty, on the other hand, feels borderline unfair at points with enemies that can take half of your health in a few shots.
While a few new enemies are slowly introduced once you get past the shareware levels, I can’t say any of them are all that interesting. After playing dozens of levels, I will say that I was not really looking for an “old weapon”, but a new weapon with an increased rate of fire.
Then there are the overall design decisions that are baffling from a modern perspective. Like many arcade games still popular at the time, Wolfenstein 3d keeps track of the numerical score during each game. The game also gives you a limited number of lives to play with, removing your weapons with each death (scoring enough points even gives you bonus lives).
But the game also lets you save at any time, making these features practically irrelevant for anyone looking to save in the toughest battles. And for a while Wolfenstein 3d keeps any damage you collect between levels, it requires you to start a whole new game when you complete a full episode with no obvious connection between them.
Look mom, one hand
The most interesting discovery I made in my new replay Wolfenstein 3d It was how well the game suited the mouse controls. Back in 1992, I probably knew very little about how to use a mouse, how to effectively aim a virtual gun with a mouse. This time I was delighted to find that the entire game could be effectively played with one hand without touching the keyboard.
