Rise of the Triad – How to do a reboot like a boss.

Rise of the Triad has made its triumphant return to computer screens everywhere. It’s been almost 20 years since the release of the original, but this reboot has got me feeling all of the nostalgia. All of it. It’s not just that it’s reviving the Rise of the Triad franchise; Interceptor resurrected the whole feeling of 90s FPS games. It’s quite refreshing to take a step back to a time when your goal in an FPS was to shoot the bad guys, get a high score, find all the secret rooms, and then make your way to the exit switch. If you have any fond memories of Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, anything else that game companies really felt the need to inform us was 3D, or especially the original Rise of the Triad, then you owe it to yourself to get this game now and relive some of that fun.

Old school sensibility

Episode 1 Secret Level. Love the use of the old textures.

Rise of the Triad (ROTT) plays a lot like an old school FPS. Your character sprints at mach 5 through levels even when carrying two pistols, an MP40, a rocket launcher, and a possessed baseball bat. Weapons are weapons, not stat sticks and they don’t have an arbitrary rarity associated with them. The firebomb seems to blow guys up better than a bazooka, so just fucking roll with it until you’re out of ammo.

There are coins and ankhs that don’t do anything besides add to your score. What does your score do? It let’s you brag about being on the online leaderboard. In the original ROTT, those coins gave you an extra life after collecting 100, but thank fuck there are no lives to worry about in the new game. Seriously, I love me some old FPS games, but running out of lives is beyond frustrating. So you can have fun looking for switches to open hidden alcoves of coins (no need to actually push along every surface spamming the action key to find that one moving wall) for no other reason than to find all of  the secrets in a level. Certainly, it wouldn’t be an old school shooter if you didn’t progress level by level. None of that fancy ass open world shit here. Fight through an enclosed map (many of which are heavily modeled on the originals) and try to max all of the stats on the results page between levels. If you’re really clever, you can find the secret levels in each episode.

Unleash the arsenal

All eleven original ROTT weapons return in the reboot as well as adding knives for melee or net cutting. Part of the appeal of this new version is getting to indulge in the crazy, over the top damage dealing of liberally using rocket weapons against everyone. The “ludicrous gibs” has likewise made a return. If you’re not a big fan of gore, you probably aren’t going to be thrilled when eyeballs splat onto your screen and slowly slide down it. For everyone else, if you’re saving your rocket ammo, you’re doing it wrong. Just be careful not to unload that ordinance at close range. There are some modifications to the original weapons that are worth noting. Firstly, the drunk missile launcher now works like a dumbfire gatling rocket launcher with the primary fire; great for when you really need to pound a robot or boss (or robot boss) into the ground. Secondly, the firewall has an alt fire that acts like a machine gun that shoots fire bullets. What’s better than bullets? Bullets on fire. Even better is that you can now carry a rocket weapon and a mystic weapon on you at the same time. It’s always nice to keep an Excalibat on hand for rooms with fireballs.

Exceptionally challenging

Rise of the Triad may be based on a game from the mid 90s, but don’t let that fool you into believing it’s going to be easy. ROTT is full of challenging obstacles and puzzles that will likely cause even veteran gamers to make several attempts before finally getting it right. At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep better at night. It took me about 20 hours to finally complete it on normal difficulty, though that does include my brief pvp attempts. I have no idea how in the hell somebody could get the “Slow your roll, bro” achievement by beating the game in under 4 hours.

The only thing I really can’t talk much about is the pvp aspect of the game. It works just fine as far as I can tell. However, as I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, I’m rubbish at pvp. As such, I couldn’t really provide a fair evaluation of its merits or pitfalls. There as some extra characters to choose from and I had fun getting my butt kicked in the few matches I did play in. There are no campers in this game because everyone moves way too quick and there’s no sort of sniper rifle. If you like frenetic and gruesome PvP, I would guess this is your game.

While it’s possible part of my opinion may be clouded by nostalgia, I can’t say enough good things about Rise of the Triad. I’m so glad that this got to be its own thing so many years ago instead of ending up as a Wolf 3D sequel. If you’re an old school gamer that loved PC shooters back when PC was the only place to play them, you should really give ROTT a try. The controls are modern, so you don’t need to go back to arrow keys and the CTRL button to shoot, but it otherwise does a great job of capturing that fun feeling of a shooter that doesn’t take itself too seriously. If the fine people at Interceptor want to do a Hexen or Blood reboot next, I surely wouldn’t complain.