Posted March 31, 2012
First of all, I'd like you listen to this song from the game, as the music will do more to put you in the right ROTT mood than anything I could ever write about the game:
Lee Jackson - Havana Smooth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1jDm_UqAnk
Now I want you to ask yourself: What could you expect to find in a computer game made by Quentin Tarantino (the director of films like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill)? Stylized gun fights to groovy latino jazz music? Probably. Lots and lots of gore? Certainly. And a sadistic sense of humour? Most likely. A bunch of obscure pop culture references? Surely.
But even though this FPS game makes you feel like you're the main character of a Tarantino film, it is very, very original. In fact, Quentin Tarantino had only just released Pulp Fiction when the ROTT came out, so the stylistic similarities between the shooting game of Apogee and the trademark shooting style of Tarantino are probably coincidental.
Oh, and except for having style, ROTT was also did a lot of things for the first time in FPS history. Most importantly, this was the game that came up with a CTF multiplayer (named Capture the TRIAD) mode. It also has a lot of other nice things, such as multiple playable characters with different stats, personalities and even other races and sexes than Caucasian men. Even today, in 2012, non-Caucasian heroes are very rare in FPS games, as are women - though heroines tend to pop up a lot more in THIRD person shooters for some strange reason!
ROTT also had something as unusual for an FPS game as a random level generator! The only other FPS game I can recell having that feature is Soldier of Fortune 2. ROTT also allows you to look up and down, fly and jump. Ware those things also firsts in the genre? Well, the game was released on the very same day as Heretic, which had looking up/down and flying too. Jumping was on the other hand something that ROTT probably introduced, but to do it you'll have to step on a launch pad. Or get the hillarious Dog Mode powerup. Or a very big gun called Fire Bomb, as well as an Asbestos Armour to protect you from the deadly explosion as you do your rocket jump.
Rocket jumps, launch pads and CTF. Does it sound familar? The very components that make up newer multiplayer stalwarts like Q3 Arena/Quake Live were first introduced in the "Quentin Tarantino" game!
Oh, and don't listen to people nagging about the game engine being dated compared to that of Doom! Sure, the Doom engine gives the level designers the possibilty to making smoother horizontal edges, but that's the one and only thing that's more modern with Doom! On every other account, ROTT is the more advanded game. You can shoot out light sources to make the room go dark, mark walls with bullet holes and blow up a whole bunch of different furniture instead for just plain old exploding barrels! You can also watch weather effects like fog and lightning - and the room taking a turn for the greener when you release the poisonous gas to choke your enemies - as well as yourself, if you don't find a gas mask soon!
Except for gas there are a huge number of different traps, by the way. Probably five different ones that burn, five more that cut and yet another five "misc" traps. And there are a lot of different enemies, maybe not more than in Doom 2 but certainly more than in Doom 1. Just like in Blake Stone 3D, the foes of ROTT are baby steps towards more advanced AI for FPS enemies. For example, one foe tries to throw himself to the side like a goalkeeper in (soccer) football and another one can play dead. Some of the bosses are rather advanced, most famously the Nasty Metallic Enforcer, a though boss that's actually quite adept at avoiding your missiles by strafing! And no less impressive than the collection of foes and traps is your arsenal of weapons! - At your disposal are akimbo pistols, a vintage WW2 MP40 machine gun and six different missile weapons that do things like burning your enemies to crispy piles of bones. On top of that you can wield powerful magic weapons like the Darkstaff, the Hand of God, the Biting, Barking Nose of Dog and the mysterious Excalibat (that's right, an Arthurian baseball bat!).
Finally, I want to ensure you that graphics are very good for their time. While the resolution is no sharper than that of Doom the artwork is just plainly better looking, both the painted stuff and the digitalized photographs (the enemies are scanned in pictures of the devteam dressed up in guardian uniforms and "occult order" robes). And should the graphics still be too mid 90s for your taste you can always download GLROTT - a source port in the vein of ZDoom and FuhQuake that adds Windows nativity, computer controlled multiplayer opponents, mouse aim, hi-res graphics with 3D accelerator support, networking via the TCP/IP protocol and more!
If there's anything to complain about it's that the single player levels get tedious if you play several of them in one sitting. The pattern of the level design is repeated time after time again - find iron key -> open iron door to unlock the part of the level where the silver key is located -> find the silver key -> open the silver door to unlock the pattern of the level where the gold key is located -> repeat and repeat again! But you can luckily save the game wherever grow tired, do something else and then come back ready for another level. That's not really an excuse for the level designers over-reliance on key hunting, though. Why didn't they just make the levels shorter with just a start and a goal and maybe ONE locked door in SOME of the levels? Don't ask me! But those who made ROTT levels were hardly alone with their key finding abuse, this kind of level design sadly pestered Wolf 3D, Blake Stone 3D/Planet Strike, Doom 1 & 2, Descent 1 & 2, Heretic, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and to a perhaps slightly lesser degree: Quake and HeXen 1 & 2. The first games to really deviate from this beaten path were perhaps Quake 2, Unreal, SiN, Shogo and Half-Life.
But those games came later. ROTT stood well up to the competition when it came out, and that's not only if you ask me. Lots of people seem to think that 90 degree wall thing made ROTT flop, but it was actually well recieved critically and a minor commercial hit, as far as I've heard. I don't know when the false engine limitation runined ROTT rumour began to spread. Either way, I hope that this review killed it and that ROTT from now on shall be associated with the Quntin Tarantino feeling intead. After all, these are the days of the hipsters, and what could make a hipster more hip than playing an obscure computer game that was Quentin Tarantino when Quentin Tarantino himself hardly was QuentinTarantino yet?
***** 5/5 *****
Lee Jackson - Havana Smooth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1jDm_UqAnk
Now I want you to ask yourself: What could you expect to find in a computer game made by Quentin Tarantino (the director of films like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill)? Stylized gun fights to groovy latino jazz music? Probably. Lots and lots of gore? Certainly. And a sadistic sense of humour? Most likely. A bunch of obscure pop culture references? Surely.
But even though this FPS game makes you feel like you're the main character of a Tarantino film, it is very, very original. In fact, Quentin Tarantino had only just released Pulp Fiction when the ROTT came out, so the stylistic similarities between the shooting game of Apogee and the trademark shooting style of Tarantino are probably coincidental.
Oh, and except for having style, ROTT was also did a lot of things for the first time in FPS history. Most importantly, this was the game that came up with a CTF multiplayer (named Capture the TRIAD) mode. It also has a lot of other nice things, such as multiple playable characters with different stats, personalities and even other races and sexes than Caucasian men. Even today, in 2012, non-Caucasian heroes are very rare in FPS games, as are women - though heroines tend to pop up a lot more in THIRD person shooters for some strange reason!
ROTT also had something as unusual for an FPS game as a random level generator! The only other FPS game I can recell having that feature is Soldier of Fortune 2. ROTT also allows you to look up and down, fly and jump. Ware those things also firsts in the genre? Well, the game was released on the very same day as Heretic, which had looking up/down and flying too. Jumping was on the other hand something that ROTT probably introduced, but to do it you'll have to step on a launch pad. Or get the hillarious Dog Mode powerup. Or a very big gun called Fire Bomb, as well as an Asbestos Armour to protect you from the deadly explosion as you do your rocket jump.
Rocket jumps, launch pads and CTF. Does it sound familar? The very components that make up newer multiplayer stalwarts like Q3 Arena/Quake Live were first introduced in the "Quentin Tarantino" game!
Oh, and don't listen to people nagging about the game engine being dated compared to that of Doom! Sure, the Doom engine gives the level designers the possibilty to making smoother horizontal edges, but that's the one and only thing that's more modern with Doom! On every other account, ROTT is the more advanded game. You can shoot out light sources to make the room go dark, mark walls with bullet holes and blow up a whole bunch of different furniture instead for just plain old exploding barrels! You can also watch weather effects like fog and lightning - and the room taking a turn for the greener when you release the poisonous gas to choke your enemies - as well as yourself, if you don't find a gas mask soon!
Except for gas there are a huge number of different traps, by the way. Probably five different ones that burn, five more that cut and yet another five "misc" traps. And there are a lot of different enemies, maybe not more than in Doom 2 but certainly more than in Doom 1. Just like in Blake Stone 3D, the foes of ROTT are baby steps towards more advanced AI for FPS enemies. For example, one foe tries to throw himself to the side like a goalkeeper in (soccer) football and another one can play dead. Some of the bosses are rather advanced, most famously the Nasty Metallic Enforcer, a though boss that's actually quite adept at avoiding your missiles by strafing! And no less impressive than the collection of foes and traps is your arsenal of weapons! - At your disposal are akimbo pistols, a vintage WW2 MP40 machine gun and six different missile weapons that do things like burning your enemies to crispy piles of bones. On top of that you can wield powerful magic weapons like the Darkstaff, the Hand of God, the Biting, Barking Nose of Dog and the mysterious Excalibat (that's right, an Arthurian baseball bat!).
Finally, I want to ensure you that graphics are very good for their time. While the resolution is no sharper than that of Doom the artwork is just plainly better looking, both the painted stuff and the digitalized photographs (the enemies are scanned in pictures of the devteam dressed up in guardian uniforms and "occult order" robes). And should the graphics still be too mid 90s for your taste you can always download GLROTT - a source port in the vein of ZDoom and FuhQuake that adds Windows nativity, computer controlled multiplayer opponents, mouse aim, hi-res graphics with 3D accelerator support, networking via the TCP/IP protocol and more!
If there's anything to complain about it's that the single player levels get tedious if you play several of them in one sitting. The pattern of the level design is repeated time after time again - find iron key -> open iron door to unlock the part of the level where the silver key is located -> find the silver key -> open the silver door to unlock the pattern of the level where the gold key is located -> repeat and repeat again! But you can luckily save the game wherever grow tired, do something else and then come back ready for another level. That's not really an excuse for the level designers over-reliance on key hunting, though. Why didn't they just make the levels shorter with just a start and a goal and maybe ONE locked door in SOME of the levels? Don't ask me! But those who made ROTT levels were hardly alone with their key finding abuse, this kind of level design sadly pestered Wolf 3D, Blake Stone 3D/Planet Strike, Doom 1 & 2, Descent 1 & 2, Heretic, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and to a perhaps slightly lesser degree: Quake and HeXen 1 & 2. The first games to really deviate from this beaten path were perhaps Quake 2, Unreal, SiN, Shogo and Half-Life.
But those games came later. ROTT stood well up to the competition when it came out, and that's not only if you ask me. Lots of people seem to think that 90 degree wall thing made ROTT flop, but it was actually well recieved critically and a minor commercial hit, as far as I've heard. I don't know when the false engine limitation runined ROTT rumour began to spread. Either way, I hope that this review killed it and that ROTT from now on shall be associated with the Quntin Tarantino feeling intead. After all, these are the days of the hipsters, and what could make a hipster more hip than playing an obscure computer game that was Quentin Tarantino when Quentin Tarantino himself hardly was QuentinTarantino yet?
***** 5/5 *****