Doom stands alone. And Doom II. They stand alone. Together. (Okay, I'll try it again.) Collectively, Doom and Doom II stand alone with each other, and in the company of each other, but by all other regards alone is the way of their standing. I sense I'm not being as clear as I'd like. What I mean to say is that Doom (and Doom II, which for the duration of this article shall be referred to collectively as Doom to avoid my having to write stupid and distracting comments like this one) has become more than a game. Legend? No, not that either. (Legends can't be proven, that's why we call them "legends" instead of calling them "history.") Doom, by sheer force of its popularity and influence, has become an icon, a standard by which all like it is ultimately judged. (If not by you or me, than someone else; they're always out there.) Like a force of nature, it simply IS. No matter what games may come along that surpass it in technical brilliance, people will look to Doom as the originator of the species. (Yes, I know Wolfenstein 3D came first, but it didn't have nearly the impact.)
When the first generation of Doom clones started to appear, I was glad. I figured that someone would take the groundwork laid by Id Software and expand upon it, building a better Doom. When I played them, my outlook darkened considerably. They were bad. I won't mention them by name (I've already given some of them their fair share of derision and humiliation, and some of the people involved still won't talk to me!), but if you've played them you understand the definition of a bad game. I began to lose hope. Maybe nobody COULD make a better Doom.
Now we're finally seeing some other high-quality first-person shooters hit the market. (If it's good it's a "first-person shooter," if it's bad it's a "Doom clone." Don't ask me where the negative connotations come from; they just point me at a keyboard and say, "Produce.") One of these is Rise of the Triad from Apogee, a company well-known for high-quality shareware titles (and former partner of id Software). A rushed shareware version has been available since late December of '94, which met with mixed reactions. I liked it, but a good number of my friends and co-workers didn't. Now we have a full-blown commercial version to evaluate. You'd think that with an extra two months or so Apogee could have made some improvements. Surprise! They did! Now many of those same people who wouldn't give ROTT the time of day before are blasting away at evil monks with flamewalls and drunk missiles. Apogee, ya done good (again)!
One of the first things I noticed is that the game performance has been improved over the shareware version. My computer at work has a video card that runs like Ronald Reagan on Quaaludes ("Well . . . I don't recall refreshing the screen at any time while I was in office."), and ROTT was abysmally choppy, but now it runs quite well. On a system with a good video card it's as fast as you'd want it to be. (Maybe faster.) Also, Comm-Bat (ROTTeese for "Deathmatch") play over our net was choppy to the point of stupidity û on ANY video card û and now it's as smooth as an untroubled pool of spilt blood. But I'll get back to that later.
Rise of the Triad has a plot, and I'm gonna tell you about it. Don't worry, it won't take long. You're a member of the HUNT û the High-risk United Nations Taskforce. (No, there's no option to name yourself Harry Tasker.) You're on a recon mission investigating possible occult activity in the Oscurido Monastery on San Nicolas Island, 20 miles west of LA. Bad stuff happens. They blow up your beautiful boat and two HUNT members. You find out that the cult is doing nasty evil stuff, and that they've recruited a couple well-financed freaks. Bombs have been placed all over Los Angeles. The dry cleaners couldn't get the blood stains out of your leopard skin bazooka holster. Your mission is clear: KILL EVERYTHING ON THE ISLAND. Oh, and to find the transmitter to stop the bombs from going off.
You wouldn't expect the folks at Apogee to churn out a second-rate Doom-alike just for profit, and it's obvious from the get-go that a lot of effort went into this game. Your surroundings look terrific. Gloomy castle-like walls of the first group of levels is offset by the Mario-like jump pads and staircases made up of silver discs floating in mid-air (suspended by the cult's evil magic, just for continuity's sake). ROTT makes use of atmospheric effects like fog and lightning, resulting in a creepy, threatening atmosphere. (This never quite matches the naked fear that Doom can rouse in some players, but it's pretty damn good all the same.) The enemies (the human ones anyway) are the result of digitizing live actors, and they look great, if a little cartoonish when they hit a jump pad and go flying through the air. Armed guards brandishing pistols and machine guns (and the occasional bazooka) give way in later levels to life-sucking and fireball-tossing monks and deadly robots. To make matters worse, the levels themselves are stocked with objects specifically designed to cause you great pain. Spinblades û ghastly knifeblades on revolving pillars û often crowd your path, making the slightest misstep an adventure in bloodletting. Rolling boulders come after you like you're Harrison Ford. Flames burst out of holes in the wall and jets in the floors and ceiling. Moving walls want nothing but to decorate their surfaces with your internal organs. It's not a friendly place.
But if the designers are gonna be that mean with the environment, they've gotta give you some helpful stuff too, right? RIGHT? Well, yes; lots of it, actually. Guard gruel and priest porridge (hot and cold) can be found to give you a moderate boost in hit points, and monk crystals and healing basins do an even better job. Ankhs are found all over the place, usually suspended in mid-air and often accessible only by flying off a jump pad, a la Super Mario Bros. Collect 100 of them and you get an extra life. This is fun, but I don't really see much use in it. Is there anyone out there who actually lets himself die and start again with nothing? If you're out there, please wake up. Armor exists in the form of bulletproof and fireproof vests. Gas masks are there for, well, when there's gas. There are also power-ups like God mode (invulnerable, 8 feet tall, shoot power orbs that travel through the level calling people home) and dog mode (invulnerable, 2 feet tall, the bite of a pitbull at a Slayer concert).
And let's not forget the weapons, which rule absolutely. You start off with a lousy pistol, which you can immediately upgrade to two pistols. (I love Harvey Keitel in "Reservoir Dogs," so this scores BIG points with me!) Add to that a chaingun, and revel in the fact that the bullet weapons have unlimited ammo. (I guess they figure that these HUNT people come seriously prepared.) Beyond that you get missile weapons like bazookas and heat-seekers, as well as some serious pyrotechnics like the firebomb (big fire all over, don't be there) and the flamewall, which shoots a missile that impacts on the ground, sending a wall of fire rushing at the bad guys. (Remember Sarah's dream sequence in "Terminator 2?" It's kinda like that, only funny.) You even get a couple of magical weapons: the frighteningly powerful dark staff and a magically charged baseball bat to make your enemies go splat.
Which means it's a good time to talk about the game's violence. If you thought Doom was gruesome, keep a spew bucket handy for this one! ROTT is billed as the most violent action game ever, and it doesn't lie. There's an option to tone down the gore to nothing, but those of us playing on the most disgusting setting (which I figure is about 99.999999999990016% of us, but I'm using a Pentium) will be treated to some sights that would make Hershel G. Lewis (director of "Blood Feast," "2000 Maniacs," and "Color Me Blood Red," for those of you without culture) grin from ear to ear. Bad guys explode. Their heads fly off. Their eyeballs fall back to earth right in front of you. Chunks of pulped monk meat hit the ground with a splat. Moving walls flatten people with sickening sprays of blood. My God, it's beautiful. Sometimes a guard you've shot will even get up on his knees and beg for mercy. I love that! It always makes me feel like Mr. Blond (again a "Reservoir Dogs" reference) û "Was that as good for you as it was for me?" It's a moral imperative that someone write a patch that plays "Stuck in the Middle With You" as background music.
Like all first-person shooters should, ROTT supports modem, serial, and network play, what it calls Comm-Bat games. Network players can blow the ever-loving hell out of up to ten other players, perfect for groups of kill-crazy freaks like the staff of IE. ROTT also offers by far the most options for multi-player games of any product I've ever seen. You can set gravity, speed, light levels, point goals, and even change the goal of the game around; a favorite option of mine was a Comm-Bat game called "Capture the Triad," which is like Capture the Flag with heat-seeking missiles. If any one game can make you and your computer-owning friends get together and buy network connections, this is it.
In many technical respects, the people at Apogee have indeed built a better Doom. The graphics and sounds are better, the light sourcing is dynamic (meaning that when you destroy a light source the area gets darker), and the elevated walkways and jump pads make it possible for you to stand directly on top of or below another surface, something not possible in Doom. Still, Rise of the Triad has to have one weak spot, and that spot is its levels. From a technical standpoint, ROTT loses some ground to Doom because all its walls are at right angles to each other; non-orthogonal walls do make a considerable difference. Also, the levels just aren't as well-designed as those in Doom. That's not to say they're bad; the levels in ROTT can be very clever, but those of Doom were often awe-inspiring. But to be totally honest, I didn't find myself noticing that much. ROTT contains so much eye and ear candy, and so much highly satisfying action, that I found myself overlooking the right angle walls, and overlooking them easily.
I think Apogee has done a terrific piece of work here. Let's face it, any game that makes one of our editors yell "Holy shit!" repeatedly has got to be pretty striking. For Doom fans looking for new challenges, new weapons, and new levels of brutality, this is a must-see. The level architecture may not be as inspired or technically masterful as in Doom, but Rise of the Triad is packed with great graphics, some of the best sounds I've heard in a long time, and more violence than a theater full of sociopaths watching "Pulp Fiction" on PCP. If blowing (pixelated) people apart û -and I mean APART û is your thing, you've found your game.
