RPGs: Stop Making Bad First Impressions 
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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Okay, so it might not be THE Castle Wolfenstein, but it’s a castle in Activision’s upcoming Wolfenstein game, so we’re running with it.
Now that Hitler is dead, it’s time to backtrack, stealing the Spear of Destiny back from the Nazi’s in part two of Activision’s Wolfenstein animated graphic novel series.
The original Nazi-killing first-person shooter returns next week, as Activision announces the release date for Wolfenstien 3D for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network.
The silliest, the biggest, the baddest Wolfenstein of them all, the original Wolfenstein 3D, is due for a release over Xbox Live Arcade, a product page on the service’s website has revealed.
I remember back in the day making rudimentary maps with DEU for my mates to play co-op and deathmatch games in. Years ago I attempted to relive those days in Half-Life and Half-Life 2 using Hammer. Sadly, my success was limited; I think the addition of a real third dimension screwed with my brain.
I know I could have spent a lot more time playing and a lot less building if I’d had a tool like Oblige. It randomly generates maps for a variety of games based on the Wolf 3D/Doom engine. These include Heretic and Hexen, among others.
Wait, weren’t these games made in *gasp* the 1990s? Yes, they were, but I don’t see anything wrong with a bit of nostalgia every now and then.
As far as settings go, you can input a seed (for the random number generator), the game type, and values for monsters, health and weapons. You can even select between single-player, co-op and deathmatch modes. Doom 2 is the best supported, with Wolfenstein 3D being the worst. Doom, Heretic and Hexen are decent.
If you can scrounge up a copy of one of these games, I suggest you give Oblige a whirl. You might be surprised by the results.
Oblige [SourceForge, via Blue's News]
Yes, other games came before it, but that’s just nitpicking: for 99% of gamers, the first-person shooter genre kicked off with Wolfenstein 3D, which turned 16 yesterday. Happy birthday! Having played through the original only a few months ago, it’s funny how, sixteen years on, I still had more fun with Wolfenstein than I do with most modern FPS games. Maybe that says something about the pure, arcade pleasures of the game. Or (more likely) it says something about the appeal of mowing down a mechanised Hitler with a chaingun while stuffing your face with plates of bbq chicken. [via Wired]
