Rise of the Triad: Dark War

Very few FPS games have a distinctive sense of humor. Duke 3D set the (low?) bar for cheesy one-liners and gross-out, whereas ROTT is all about a goofy sense of fun along with the gibs. The first FPS I can remember with dual weapons, and some absolutely insane special items (god mode and dog mode especially). The attitude even seeps into the main menu, with various death sounds playing on exit. Good, solid fun with a simple level editor, too.

A true classic. The secret-society & agents angle was great fun. Other reviews will cover everything so I'll just add 2 key points. 1) The attraction of this game is surprising. My -wife- played the entire game through to the end! She's never played an FPS before or since, but I was slacked jawed to see her glued to the screen for days with this one. 2) The greatest feature of R.O.T.T. is *** MULTIPLAYER ***! You simply MUST fire this up with some friends. The weapons are smart, innovative and hilarious. Nothing is more satisfying that making the perfect shot with the split missile, sending both rockets around some barrier in the level and sandwiching someone on the far side, out of sight. ;-p Oh yes, and always play ROTT on Xmas Eve...

This is one of those games that definitely didn't take itself seriously. Despite its age, its graphics are surprisingly competitive, through the use of photographic player models. The puzzles and maps are still challenging, and the hilarious variety of weapons never leaves you without creative ways to make people explode.

Oh yes, Rise of the Triad. Considered to be the king of the "Doom Clones" for a time, it was quickly overshadowed by LOL 3D Quake. Now, Quake did (eventually) bring us Team Fortress and Threewave CTF, bur ROTT had about a dozen or more Multiplayer game modes BUILT IN. I also consider ROTT's single player game to be superior to Quake in that it's simply more addictive than Quake's. I also find ROTT's graphics to be superior to Quake. yes, Quake had polygons, but they were blocky. SkyNET blocky. Yes SkyNET/TFS came after Quake but the models were incredibly primitive. Though, this was caused by technical limitation of the tiem. ROTT used sprites, BUT (as mentioned earlier) they were digitized art of real people, which made them look VERY believable when compared to Quake. tl;dr: ROTT got shafted in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a great game and deserves to be played in some form- the grab bag of extra maps that you get with the game through GOG makes for an INCREDIBLY replayable game.

I remember immediately falling for the dark world of this game: endless spaces, moving walls, unheard-of weapons (wall of fire!), freaky enemies (priests in particular). A very welcome blast from the past, thank you GOG.