Hail from Poland. All hail Vader! Posted May 30, 2012
Making sure I don't miss any European countries representing themselves as their country's bastion of metal to the world, it was
only a matter of time before I got around to Poland. If I haven't gotten to whatever country you can think of, hold your horses and give me time!
Anyways... Since Morbid Angel decided to follow in the footsteps of Marilyn Manson, there was nothing left in the field of death
metal to fill that void. That being beautiful, harrowing, wicked, and melodic riffs done like only Trey Azogthoth can.
That would be fine if Morbid Angel was an industrial band to begin with, but they're a frickin' death metal band.
Apparently someone forgot to remind them before they got back together and put out their last abomination (meant in a bad way) of an album.
Well, worry not. Enter, Vader. With a name lifted straight from the big-bad in Star Wars, you know these guys would have
to musically do the equivalent of destroying an inhabited moon with this fully operational death star! Er, I mean, kick some
ass with their appropriately pointy guitars. Whatever... Just listen, ok?
Dies ist gut, nicht Scheiße, du Katze Bauer! Posted May 30, 2012
Before the advent of 3D cards and all that zazz, we played with squirrels and rocks, and we were glad! Wait wait...
Too far back. Let's start over. Before id Software created their swan song Doom and set the world on fire
with a graphical arms race extraordinaire, they were cracking holes in 3D spaces, albeit in a cludgey fashion via tackhammer and toothpicks.
How you say? Same as they did later with Doom, just with far more restriction. I welcome you to Ray-casting.
Basically, for each line of the screen, you cast a single column out until it hits a wall, calculate the distance and section
on the wall, and scale that strip accordingly. If all this sounds excessively technical, then all you need to know is
, for it's time, this meant ground-breaking graphics with a mandated 90-degree orthogonal angle between walls.
Looking back now, the graphics are a bit clunky, but that doesn't stop these games from being a ton of fun. Think of it like this :
Imagine your favorite 8 and 16 bit arcade games got together with a modern first-person shooter and had a group orgy with
a little irreverence for lube. Lives, treasure, loot, and plenty of gratuitous violence thrown in. Yeah, it's great!
Great enough that many companies started requesting licenses for the Wolf3D engine for their games. This happened
enough times that it became an inside joke at id and "Let's do another $50k xcopy" was John Romero's response to any new requests.
Even id decided to put out a store-only version about the Spear of Destiny, which was reputed to pierce the side of Christ
and yield victory to whoever possessed it. The game was much more fast-paced and had a boss every 5 or so levels instead of every 10. Wolf3D and SOD got promptly
banned in Germany for it's use of the Horst-Wessel-Lied nazi theme song.
I'm sure the Third Reich would've been proud, but let's just say Germany was not having it. That, or the rampant amounts of swastikas (borrowed straight from the Thule Society),
and Hitler's face plastered everywhere. Yeah, can't see what problem they'd have with that... Bunch of weirdos.
The spin-offs were pretty damn good too. Good ol'-fashioned run-and-gun in first-person style. Granted, they hadn't gotten
their mouse controls very refined yet, so to-this-day the best way to play is a Gravis pad or other
4 button joypad of some sort. Even with just Keyboard and mouse, the game was rockin! And the aforementioned
spinoffs were no slouch either. WW2 in arcade form not your style? How about a scifi theme ala Corridor 7 or Blake Stone? How about
a Die Hard direct plot ripoff in Operation Body Count? You've got options. Even the games like 8-Bit Killer done intentionally in this
style were a solid night of fun. If you want to crank it up a notch, try out some of the tools below to alter
the graphics or make new levels. Taking a look back on good ol' Wolf3D, it captures one aspect that many games these
days are sorely lacking in : straight fun minus all the ultra-serious bullscheiße.
