(Sorry, no screenshots with this review; DOSBox doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with me today in that regard.)

Everyone knows Wolfenstein 3D, right? It’s one of the most legendary video games of all time, debatably the one that made the PC a viable gaming platform and not just a work machine. And while it may not have been the first FPS game (actually, the debate over which was the first FPS is quite the murky one, though I tend to side with the early Atari quarter-eater Battlezone), it was the first such to strike a chord with players. Thus did Wolf3D beget Doom, which begat Quake, which begat one of the most successful genres in the history of our little hobby.

But what most people might not realize is that, in between Wolf3D and Doom, id and Apogee (partners in the Wolf3D phenomenon) actually had another title to tide us over until their demon-splattering romp through Hell was ready for its first release. And unlike Wolf3D and most of id/Apogee’s other offerings, this one would bypass the shareware route and go directly to store shelves.

Spear of Destiny (PC, 1993): Spear of Destiny is actually a prequel to the Wolf3D scenario, and features the same gameplay as its more famous parent – blowing away Nazis during the height of World War II. In this case, the impetus for all the carnage is an intercepted Nazi communiqué indicating the Germans have come into possession of the “Spear of Destiny,” a golden lance that according to legend pierced the side of Jesus Christ at the Crucifixion (also known, especially to fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion, as the Lance of Longinus). The Spear, it is said, can confer upon its bearer any wish he or she so desires… and you get no prize for guessing what Hitler’s wish would be. Needless to say, he must not get it!

That, of course, is where you come in. You are William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz, top secret agent for the Allies, and your task is to infiltrate the Nazi stronghold where intelligence suggests the Spear is being kept, eleminating any and all resistance along the way to reclaiming the artifact. Twenty-one levels of Nazi goons, reanimated corpses, mazes, secret passageways, and potential deathtraps stand between you and your goal. And when you finally do recover the Spear, the game’s still not over, because then you’ll have to face… ah, but that would be telling!

Essentially, Spear of Destiny is a commercial version of Wolf3D. It uses the same gameplay engine, the same graphics (for the most part), and the same enemies as its more famous progenitor. This does tend to work against Spear in the long run, since it can’t help but come off as just a bunch of new levels for an older game, with no real innovation to speak of. From a marketing standpoint, FormGen (distributors of Spear) erred severely by not truly playing up the game’s lineage; although the words “A Wolfenstein 3D Adventure” did appear in small text on the original retail box cover, Spear really didn’t suggest at any other point in its documentation or gameplay that it was related to the already-famous shareware game. Apparently, FormGen was counting on the screenshots on the box and the identity of B.J. Blazkowicz to suggest the connection to the consumer in those pre-Internet Explosion days. Perhaps if they had called it something like “Wolfenstein 3D Part II” it would have sold in better numbers and thus be better known to us today (as id would later do with Doom when its own retail version hit shelves); alas, such was not the case here.

Despite the familiarity of the trappings, Spear remains a fun and playable blast-fest, especially if you liked Wolf3D the first time around. It does have a different sort of feel to it; the mazes in Spear are, on the whole, more cramped and twisty than the ones in Wolf3D, and the secret caches of healing and ammo seem fewer and farther between. Enemies also tend to rely more on stealth tactics than in the earlier game. “Deaf” guards, ones that will only react when you enter their line of sight (and thus cannot be lured out of hiding by firing off a round or two), are more plentiful in Spear than in Wolf3D, making for some downright deadly ambush areas – especially given the tighter corridors in Spear that offer far more limited visibility.

There is only one new item to collect – a box of ammunition, worth 25 rounds a pop. (In Wolf3D, ammo was only available in clips of 4-8 rounds apiece, depending on whether you found the clips lying around or pilfered them from the bodies of dead guards.) Otherwise, everything is much the same as in Wolf3D; the weapons are the same (knife, pistol, machine gun, chaingun), as are the enemies you face (dogs, brown guards, blue SS troopers, white officers). Even the bosses, despite featuring new sprites, tend to fight using similar tactics to bosses encountered during the Wolf3D missions.

In a nutshell, Spear is the definition of “more of the same.” However, given that Wolf3D retains a dedicated fan following to this day, maybe that’s not such a bad thing to be. So if you loved Wolf3D but have played out all sixty original levels, here are another 21 to put your trigger-finger and secret-finding brainpower to the test. As an added bonus, the fact that Spear isn’t anything like as popular as its parent game means there also isn’t as much “cheat material” (maps, etc.) available on the Internet for it. It can really be like that wonderful feeling you had the very first time you played Wolf3D, when you truly didn’t know what was around the next corner and you began to get that sinking feeling of dread…

Actually, I lied a little bit. It’s not 21 levels. (Eighteen “normal” levels, one for the final boss fight, and two hidden mazes.) If you get Spear from id’s own download store (just $10) or through Steam, you also get a pair of “Mission Packs” that effectively bring the total number of “new” Wolf3D levels to 63! The Mission Packs, sometimes known in the Wolf3D community as the “Lost Episodes,” offer new graphics and new challenges, and are essentially the first “total conversions” available on the commercial level.

Unfortunately, some dedicated fans of the original games don’t think much of the Mission Packs. First and foremost, they were not developed at id or Apogee; they were done by FormGen themselves. This necessarily gives them a different sort of “feel,” an inferior one in the eyes of some. Additionally, some of the new graphics have almost a “sci-fi” sort of feel (you might even recognize one or two wall textures from Doom, which had just come out around the time the Mission Packs hit store shelves), which might detract from the verisimilitude of the circa-WWII scenario; “space Nazis” is how I’ve heard it described by at least one wag. With that having been understood, the Mission Packs do succeed in giving the game an almost entirely new atmosphere, and are challenging in their own right. Put it this way – there are far worse amateur episodes for the original games floating around the Internet. Plus they’re being tossed in with the modern re-releases of Spear as virtual freebies, so you really can’t complain; if this were 1994 and you had to pay around $20-30 for each Mission Pack, you’d have more reason to gripe about it.

There’s nothing at all here in the way of innovation even when it was first released, but die-hard Wolfenstein fans should give Spear of Destiny a spin. Just like Wolf3D itself, it provides gamers with hours of cathartic, blast-em action that really satisfies any blood cravings you might have. I’m not joking – this game can be almost as good as a punching bag in your basement for working through whatever frustrations you may have. Get it all out of your system here, and you’ll be one peaceful kind of guy in real life. (That’s something else Mr. Thompson never took into account before tarring and feathering all video games…) And unlike more modern FPS games, it can run on systems with very low resources (it runs like a dream on vanilla DOSBox) and takes up less than 20MB of hard disk space.

Besides… everyone loves blasting Nazis, right? (Well, everyone of a bloodthirsty mindset, at least…)

If you love FPSs at all, Spear of Destiny is well worth your time. Kudos to id for making it available to modern audiences at such a reasonable price.

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active: The Goonies II
2. Retro-Active: Impossible Mission
3. Retro-Active, Part II: Temple of Apshai
4. Retro-Active: Top 10 Retro Puzzle Games NOT Called “Tetris”
5. Retro-Active, Part I: Jumpman

1 Comment »

1. 
   Shawn M.
   September 28, 2008 at 11:33 pm

   Good write-up. I remember SoD fondly — that, Descent, and Civilization, were pretty much all I played during my early PC gaming days. While I didn’t play any of the mission packs, I do remember some of the mods for Wolfy 3D, such as “ultra-gore” (severed body parts everywhere!).

   You’ve heard that a new Wolfenstein is in development, right? From what I’ve seen, it’s taking a heavy occult turn, with one of the main features of the game giving B.J. the ability to phase into a parallel demonic universe in order to solve puzzles.

   [Reply]

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