Rise of the Triad: The Ludicrous Edition
2025-11-16
"Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition" for €5.99 in the Nintendo store, so I thought why not. I am mostly interested in the new episode which uses an updated features from the engine, which I find amazing in a case of a game from 1994. Notes to follow soon maybe because I already started 2 other games and I don't wanna spread myself thin.
2025-11-17
What is ROTT
"Rise of the Triad" is an FPS conceived by Tom Hall, one of "Wolfenstein 3D" creators who additionally started working on "Doom," before he left company (semi-voluntarily from what I remember). It uses an extended Wolfenstein engine, which gives the game a weird vibe that I wasn't able to describe in the mid-1990s: all the walls have 90-degrees angles and they're just blocks of the same height. And yet, there is jumping and something of the floors: build with mid-textures.
This made the game semi-outdated and semi-updated at the same time when it came out. "Doom" and "Doom 2" already had floors and ceilings at different height, and "ROTT" itself was competing at its premiere with "Heretic" (albo built with Doom engine) and "Descent" (with 360-degrees gameplay); not to mention "CyClones" that were release a couple of months earlier. What it lacked in terms of tech, it made up with brutality and humour. The game doesn't treat itself seriously and this helped a lot.
Revival
As such, it slowly slid into obscurity. It kept a cult status, but gameplay-wise, there were better positions. There was a new version in 2013, but I never played it. And now Nightdive Studio gives us a refurbished experience. While there were some ports over the years, I managed to run one once and it wasn't the smoothest experience, so I abandoned. This version looks and feels like back in the days. I expected nothing less from Nightdive.
Multiplayer
What helped "ROTT" when it was still fresh was creative multiplayer, with up to 11 players (Doom: 4, "Duke Nukem 3D" 2 years later: only 8) and new modes apart from co-op and deathmatch: there was Capture The Flag and a variant of tag where one player would have weapons and others wouldn't and all they could do was to run away; then the weapon would change player in an interval. I never tried that, but the games magazines would praise that.
But I don't care about multiplayer.
Brutality
I mentioned brutality and it looks fairly contained in 2025, but it was the first time when the enemies would explode into blood. There was also the infamous eyeball flying towards the screen. There were also enemies getting down on their knees and begging not to shoot us (which we had to because they would play dead and attack us at their convenience; and that was a new level of brutal in 1994). It's all still there, but we've made a great step since then.
The Ludicrous Edition
The Ludicrous Edition has some quality of life adjustments, like changes around monks HP (they were apparently bullet sponges) and other balance-related things, and there is finally a HUD that shows health instead of those green bullets or whatever they were (there is a total of 6 different versions plus none). Other than that it's good ol' ROTT.
Ah, you can choose soundtrack in one of 3 versions: OPL, midi, and Andrew Hulshult's remaster for the 2013 game. And it's pure joy.
I heard there are some adjustments to the engine itself, I think around the lightning, but I cannot spot anything specific, though this might be due to not remembering the original game so well; it's a very strong memory but vague.
As promised, I went directly to the new episode which was done by Nightdive people and is supposedly using the aforementioned engine adjustments. The gameplay is very ninetish and it's the first time in a while that I found the map indispensable because due to the nature of the engine the environment is confusing. I don't treat it as a bad thing but as the part of the charm. But still. This makes the maps more of a puzzle. You can't just shoot your way through.
Weapons
ROTT had an interesting design around weapons because you have only 4 slots: for a pistol, two pistols (the 13-year-old in me: "It looks cool"), a machine gun, and the fourth weapon. The first three have unlimited ammo because why not and the fourth is a dynamic slot: we can have only one bazooka-like weapon at any given moment. If we find another one, they will get swapped. You can always go back for a weapon you abandoned earlier.
The selection is quite memorable: there is a normal bazooka, heat-seeking rocket launcher, missiles that splits into sides (not always practical), a drunken missile launcher (like a swarm of rockets flying in general direction of shooting), there is a wall-of-flame scorching any enemy into a skeleton, and a bomb straight out of Dyna Blaster that explodes into four directions and you better not stand in the way because otherwise you're going with it. :D
There are also special, timed weapons: Excalibat (a sacred/magical baseball bat), a Hand of God that comes with immortality and shoots powerballs that follow all the visible enemies dematerialising them, and then, and that is not a joke, we can become a dog that bites the enemies and opens doors with its paw. The Hand of God raises the point of view and the dog view is lower. As I mentioned earlier, the game does not take itself seriously.
So, there you go: you exercise a bloody carnage wherever you go in a mazey and confusing locations (Civvie compared those maps to "Apogee's Backrooms") and it's a very high-octane mix. But it's a boomer shooter as hell, and if you don't like them, then there literally nothing for you in "ROTT." I like it but I remember it from 30 years ago, so.
2025-11-19
Due to the "Wolfenstein 3D" engine being the base here, the game has very odd aesthetics.
So, the map is build with square blocks, but unlike Wolfenstein, they're not of a wall's height (though, on some maps they are) but go up to the sky. But the texture stays. And a button is yet another block with buttons on each side. I am partial to these ridiculously tall maps, so "ROTT" delivers hard". And due to its blockiness, there is a mathematical proportion everywhere.
2025-11-22
The first boss
The first boss killed. For some reason he's named "General" John Darian, as in the rank being written in quote marks. I guess the cult makes the military title not legit. Hard to say because the game has logic of its own.
PRO TIP: Shoot him with rockets.
I also met my first monks and they make me think of "Blood." Along with goriness, both titles seem to share something in common, with "Blood" being a distant cousin of sorts.
But I also noticed first examples of textures only at the ground level, with the rest of the block having a less adorned look.
Also, the whole island with its traps, like rotating blades and fires shooting everywhere, have a distinct James Bond Villain Fortress vibe. Realism: 0%, fun: 200%.
2025-11-23
I can't imagine building any other game with "Rise of the Triad's" engine. Those square blocks of the same height are so distinct that that's it. Although, I started picturing Egyptian-themed total conversion. Or some sort of alien world could work too.
It's also a game that is not really interesting for a spectator. I recorded a couple of videos about Doom maps and I can hardly imagine a gameplay with commentary of "ROTT." It's a fantastic piece of action when you're in it but not much for the outsiders. It's like a post-modern game that knows fully well that is a game and does not pretend anything else.
2025-11-25
The first actually pretty map
As much as the game gives me joy, I haven't found a map that would please me visually, which I blame on engine itself: there's just not much to work with. But yesterday I played "Mist Opportunity," which has to be the first map with fog, and it was just beautiful. The fog could help, though. It's like a couple of fortresses in an otherwise empty field. What I liked was that the fortresses were reconfiguring and opening up as the level progressed, which was a bit mind-boggling.
(As a side note: I really thought that I won't have much notes after the initial thread. But here we are.)
I think what was improved engine-wise was lightning and now lamps give a light in its immediate radius. Normally it's merely a curiosity, but the level before "Mist Opportunity" is set in some sort of inside which is dark and lightened only by those light sources. But this is "ROTT" and all of them can be destroyed, so after a heated debate with cultists and guardians, I ended up in pitch-black surroundings. I had to shoot in the dark and figure out if I should continue from shouts and the map.
Because I'm saving, I mostly use the MP40 machine gun. A pistol is too weak and two pistols, as much cool as they look like, are too slow and don't trigger the pain state of the enemies so well (though I heard they are more powerful). So, either MP40 or a current bazooka. Seems a poor choice, but I recalled that when I was playing "PowerSlave Exhumed," I said that I could go on with M60 for most of the game. So now I got what I asked for.