Credit:
id Software
If you lose a life, you can kiss that cool gun goodbye (unless you saved, that is).
Credit:
id Software
The difficulty balancing could use some work as well. The lowest setting, “Can I Play, Daddy” is laughably easy for anyone with modern FPS experience, with lots of item pickups and enemies that are extremely slow to attack and who inflict barely any damage when they do manage to get a shot off. The default “Bring ‘em On!” difficulty, on the other hand, feels borderline unfair at points, with enemies that can take out half of your health with just a few stray shots.
While a few new enemies are slowly introduced once you work past the shareware levels, I can’t say any of them were all that interesting. And after playing through dozens of levels, I’ll say I was really jonesing for a new weapon that didn’t just amount to “the old weapon but with an increased rate of fire.”
Then there are the overarching design decisions that are perplexing from a modern perspective. Like many arcade games that were still popular at the time, Wolfenstein 3D keeps track of a numerical score throughout each playthrough. The game also gives you a limited number of lives to play with, removing your weapons with each death (accumulating enough points even grants bonus lives).
But the game also lets you save at any time, making these features practically irrelevant for anyone who wants to save-scum through the most difficult fights. And while Wolfenstein 3D retains any damage you’ve built up between levels, it requires you to start a completely new game when you complete a full episode, with no explicit links between them.
Look ma, one hand
The most intriguing discovery I made on my fresh replay of Wolfenstein 3D was how well-suited the game is to mouse controls. Back in 1992, I probably barely knew how to use a mouse, much less how to effectively aim a virtual gun with one. This time around, I was delighted to find that the entire game can be effectively played one-handed, without touching the keyboard at all.