5. Weird weapons & character designs
Many expansions does have stuff in terms of level designs. Some of them do add or replace weapons like Duke Caribbean. Why are all guns in these expansions so blue? I agree with majority they look more like toy guns than real ones. Some characters looks slightly better than their Spear of Destiny/Wolfenstein 3D counterparts. Yet mutants are replaced by mutant bats holding gun turrets. The worst looking enemies of all are attack dogs. In most Wolfenstein games Nazis use German Shepherds as attack dogs. What the hell happened to really screw up their attack dogs? Not only the dog's breed is wrong but why in the holy hell are all of them dark blue. Nothing about their design makes sense at all making them very out of place. They replaced all enemy voice overs with terrible laughable ones. Yes to some degree they sound slightly more German. Honestly audio isn't very good here especially both expansions are reusing Spear of Destiny's soundtrack. Don't get me wrong it works for Spear of Destiny just fine. You expected they would change some songs or make an new one entirely. Nope you have the same exact soundtrack. Even weapons doesn't sound very good that really takes away from playing them.
4. Terrible level designs
Most of these levels are terrible for so many reasons. Some of the absolute worst level textures I ever seen. Some levels has terrible enemy placements resulting in you dying a lot with little to no way around them. Some are very tedious levels that involves constantly finding secrets to process. In Wolfenstein 3D & Spear of Destiny getting lost isn't so bad. But in both these mission packs getting lost could take a lot longer to figure out where to go. Some level textures not only sticks out in your mind for the worst reasons. They don't fit the theme they're meant for at all. Very strange colors & textures that are horribly dated even back then. Somehow the boxes from Doom series makes an surprising appearance in Floor 21 of Mission 3.
3. Both mission packs has the same bosses that are too similar to Spear of Destiny's bosses
Yes they changed all bosses from Spear of Destiny into new ones. But not much changed as they still fight similar to the bosses they represented. All voice overs by original bosses are oddly present. In fact among defeating an boss level, the replaced bosses names appear instead of new ones. At least in Duke: Nuclear Winter the final boss was very different from those of the main game. The only new boss to have original sounds is Robot whose replacing Death Knight.
2. Their covers are too similar to Spear of Destiny's
Yes many expansions especially those not authorized reused their respective game's cover to an degree. This is an very strange case as both Mission Pack covers are almost the same as Spear of Destiny's. I am not kidding they barely changed anything at all just the title. Now talk about laziness I'll show some okay expansion covers more worth looking at. I could name a few more but why bother if it's so obvious they didn't try making it look good.
1. Half-Life: Blue Shift
2. Final Doom
3. Duke: Nuclear Winter
1.Despite story descriptions, both follow the same exact story as Spear of Destiny
Most expansions have very different stories from their main games. What's weird is both mission packs follows the same level set design with bosses included. Both share the same ending from Spear of Destiny instead of an new one. Basically an company called FormGen allowed someone to recreate Spear of Destiny twice to call it as expansions. No an expansion should be an possible follow up without being another major game. Thus if it doesn't continue the story in any possible way. How could it actually be an expansion? Oh okay I could excuse BJ was too weak from facing the Angel of Death. Shortly he loss the Spear of Destiny with Nazis not having it. Suddenly Nazis get it again forcing BJ to go after it again. What I don't accept is this technically happened three times. We are talking about an guy who willingly took on the Nazis like Doomguy took on demons.You would think after going through it again BJ would keep it away this time. At least in all expansions I shown in this blog entry has different stories with their own endings. Not only that all three of them do prefer much more from their original games too.
I hope you guys enjoy this because I'm directly following this up with another Wolfenstein blog entry. Regardless I will consider getting more into those games as I am an fan of id Software. Especially Doom II is my personal favorite among all that I played from them. Until next time I'm Jack Red and I'll see all of you later.
I used to play a lot of Wolf3D and SoD as a kid but always avoided these mission packs because I did not own them. Later learned they suck so I forgot about them until recently.
ReplyDeleteNow I finally finished both YEARS later and they just well, suck. Hilariously enough, I found this blog by googling "spear of destiny mission packs blue" :D
Why? I wanted to check if there are any jokes because it seems people noticed SOME developer had a serious deep blue fetish. I do not get it one bit...
We talk a lot about cash grabs these days but back then you also had them in some form. Apparently, there was a SoD super pack which contained the original SoD and these two packs for over a hundred dollars? Wow. What a scam. One cool game and two copies.
As you pointed out, it is maddening both packs are the SAME FREAKING GAME!! Terrible.
I have no idea who looked at them and approved them but hey, money is money.
The only cool enemy design I found was The Axe and he was also pretty challenging in Ultimate Challenge. That is it.
I honestly couldn't say it any better nice job man. It is a real shame indeed. I also don't like Extreme Rise of the Triad.
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