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 *****

This review shows exactly what's wrong with this game. It was underrated when it was new, it's overrated now. Yeah, the game introduced some original and hilarious features, but they are all quite gimmicky in nature, none of them make ROTT a really good game. And the technology wasn't as advanced as the game's fans want others to believe it was which can be seen in the game's extremely bland level design. Also the fact that you will spend most time using the MP40 because it's the most powerful weapon that does not need ammo, doesn't really help it. I understand that some people really like this game but really... when you're being really honest you've gotta admit that Doom was the better game. Sadly I have to admit that I consider even Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone more enjoyable than this one, despite the fact that their technology was even more primitive.

Well, Doom (late 1993) was released about a year before ROTT (late 1994), so that alone make Doom a more important piece of gaming history. Doom 2 (sometime in '94) was also released before ROTT, and Heretic on the very same day. I also think Blake Stone 3D came very late in 1993, although not as late as Doom, so that shows that id Software definitively had the upper hand over Apogee whan it comes to technology, which is hardly suprising when it was they who developed most of it in first place.

But if we pretend ROTT had come out a year before Doom, I'm not so sure Doom would have been so successful. I guess it would still have been praised for introducing level designs that aren't based on blocky grid systems, and of course for introducing the shotgun, but apart from that I'm not so sure how Doom would have impressed the world.

That said, I personally love Doom and the more aggressive, circle-strafing playstyle it allows by having most of the monsters shoot projectiles instead of instahit bullets.

Yeah, although hypothetically switching release dates by as much as a year really isn't justifiable, especially considering how fast things developed back then and how much people ripped each-others ideas off (although I must admit that 1994 was not that much of a big step in comparison to what happened in 1993 or 1995). What surprises me is that the developers of ROTT seem to have learnt nothing from Doom. Doom had more varied weapons which you had to switch according to the situation, in ROTT it's either MP40 or the one launcher you're currently carrying. The variety of launchers would have been a much more powerful feature if you could carry a whole array of them and switch them accordingly, the limit of carrying one of them on the other hand means that if you're facing a big group or a particularly tough enemy, you use whatever you have at your disposal.

My biggest concern with the game, however, is probably the level design itself. It's not just about the orthogonal walls, it's not just about the lack of special features such as different heights, stairs and so on - somehow all the textures are pretty generic, as are the objects and traps. Even in Wolfenstein you would regularly get the impression that a particular room serves a certain function such as a prison cell, a torture chamber, officer's quarters or a weapon chamber. In Doom the level design was somewhat more abstract than in Wolf but the architecture was even more impressive with brigdes leading through silos holding acid, there would be canals filled with water, open and closed areas in one level, (often invisible) triggers would make some really weird stuff happen such as slowly making making a bridge disappear so that you would have to run if you didn't want to end up in acid or a sea of enemies. Many triggers would also reveal narrow passages and other kinds of secret areas (and for a large portion of the game you would really look up to finding a new gun that would expand your inventory, not just give you some gimmick for half a minute). Not to mention that ROTTs method of creating more interesting structures via hover platforms and bitmapish girders often leads to confusing constructs which especially during comat may be annoying (it has happened very often to me that I had a line of sight towards an enemy but couldn't hit him).

And then there's also the enemy design. In Doom you would encounter lots of enemies who shoot slow procejctiles, flying enemies, enemies only having melee attacks and they would have pretty original designs. Even if some of the enemy behaviour in ROTT is somewhat original and interesting, such as the guys shooting nets or others making siderolls or the occasional grenade throw, they all felt rather generic and bland imho which is probably somewhat tied to the fact that the developers heavily relied on digitized actors. I must say that I would have even appreciated if some of the badly drawn monsters from Blake Stone would have made an appearance.

But yeah, as much as I complain about ROTT: I appreciate its twisted style and some of its original ideas. However, that's why it's even more painful that some technical limitations and creative decisions made it rather shallow and weak in its overall gameplay.