Mortyr (2093 - 1944)

Frequently known as the "spiritual successor of Wolfenstein" before its release, this game was made on IC Engine, which was used in Monkey's Adventures and Wolfschanze 1944: The Final Attempt. The sequel of the game: Mortyr II, was released in 2004.

Okay, so this is a first-person shooter that, in terms of gameplay is almost the same as Quake or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the whole game is divided into two episodes: the first one is set in 1944, and the second one is set in a futuristic era, each one with its respective weapons selection, similar to Daikatana. It's also the first WW2 first-person shooter where you can easily see German airships fly above.

The game takes place in an alternate history in 2093, where the Nazis won the WWII and the Reich rules the earth. This not only brought terror of Nazi dictatorship, but also mysterious weather changes, leading the world to an Armageddon. General Jurgen Mortyr thinks that the Nazis are somehow responsible for the growing number of disasters and weather changes. To prevent the destruction of mankind, the general Mortyr sends his son, Sebastian, back in time, with the mission to investigate and stop the events that led to the Nazi victory.

The game is known for its inability of installing adequately, to be more accurate, the installer won't work adequately when you try to run it from a downloaded copy or even from an original copy of the game, an alternative installer is required just to install the game, and even with that, the game won't open on new operative systems, if you're wondering, it's also extremely hard to find patches to make the game run on those operative systems. The cherry on the top of the cake is that the game is not compatible with most virtual machines (yes, including VirtualBox), as it crashes when you try to start the game, forcing you to get a computer with Windows 95/98/ME/XP just to play it, and trust me, those can be very pricey and difficult to obtain as of now.

Despite having a plot, it's all written in the game manual, the game itself gives no sense of a story progression, and if you don't have the manual with you, you will not understand what the game is about, what are you fighting for and/or why the game suddenly transitioned into a futuristic shooter.

While the game features many detailed lighting effects for the era it was released, the general graphics of the game look worse than Half-Life or Unreal, better looking games that were released a year before this game. Most of the textures look terribly muddy and pixelated, and in a very similar way to Daikatana, the characters never move their lips, making the character models look quite strange and weird. Despite having bad graphics in general, the game features many good visual effects, like the floor reflections or the lightings that can be seen in many of the cathedrals.

The illumination used in most of the levels is not adequate, as some levels can get pretty dark and it's hard to know where are you going to, specially in the first levels of the game and the levels based on the futuristic era.

Some objects like the magazines of the MP-40 or the weapons dropped from the enemies look quite big, however, when you pick them up, they look smaller in your field of view. Speaking of weapons, you have a very decent selection of weapons, which consist of WWII and futuristic weapons, some of them inspired in real modern-life weapons, unfortunately, you can't use futuristic weapons to kill 1944 era Nazis.

For some strange reason the blood of all the characters is pink instead of red, making you think that you're playing a first-person and military version of Danganronpa, and taking in count the previous point, the blood texture looks terribly muddy.

Due to the poor programming of the game, the frame-rate is terribly inconsistent and it's not capped, meaning that the game performance and physics depend entirely on the speed of the CPU of the computer, even using an old CPU like a Pentium III will make the game run incredibly fast, and it just gets worse on modern operative systems, as the game will run incredibly fast, being completely impossible to do anything unless you decide to cap the game framerate with the help of an external software, like RivaTuner.

The game also has a good amount of bugs and glitches, one of the best examples is the one that will make your character to emit his breathing sound repeatedly when you get out of water and press the jump button against a low altitude zone.

Moving the mouse will also make the crosshair move on the zone you moved the mouse and it takes a few seconds to restore to the default position, meaning that the crosshair is not fixed in the center of the screen by default, due to this, there will be times where you can't hit an enemy from a far distance, even if you're aiming at the dead center.

The AI of the enemies is absolutely broken, the very first enemy you kill in the game is standing in front of a stained glass, but he will not react to the sound of your footsteps at all, even if you stand right to him, he will not react unless you move in front of him. The regular enemies you kill in the game are not more competent, as most of the times they tend to run back and forth until you shoot them and die, and sometimes they can even get stuck with the design of the levels, however, despite the stupidity of the enemies, fighting them it's a complete headache for these reasons:

• They all have a perfect aiming in all of the difficulties available, even on the easiest one.
• Sometimes the enemies can spawn behind you when you're clearing a zone without any kind of warning.
• Fighting more than two enemies in a single zone is almost impossible because they can also kill you really fast at close quarters, and this gets much worse when you consider that they also have perfect accuracy.

The enemies are often placed in the most inconvenient places, for example, near the beginning zone of the game, there is a sniper that will shoot you right after you exit from the drain tubes, giving you a very little reaction time.

The hit detection is also terribly broken and poorly programmed, the worst example of this is the fact that explosions can kill you even if you are hiding behind a wall, but there is more, for some reason, the enemies take much less damage if you shoot them through a bridge or even through a corner, as it can be appreciated here.

The main character suffers from an exaggerated damage from the falls, even falling from a very low height can make you lose half of your life, as it can be appreciated here.

Most of the levels have no continuity between them, for example, one area can consist in a castle located in an snowy environment, and then you can appear in another area that has no relationship to the previous one.

The puzzles are the best definition of generic, consisting in finding a key, pushing a button and then opening a door, and since most of the levels have a great amount of these "puzzles", they end up being tedious and boring.

The game campaign is very short, as it can be finished in less than 4 hours, and as usual for many games of the era, the campaign has no replay value like collectibles or multiple endings.

A great part of the game has no soundtrack or ambience sound effects that could make the levels more detailed and appropriate for the pacing that the developers could've wanted for the game, and the few tracks that are in the game are terribly uninspired, consisting in only four generic military instrumental tunes.

The sound design sounds horrible and glitchy, some weapon sounds can feel very delayed or even don't make any sound at all, like the weapon that looks like a Galil with a grenade launcher. The sound design is even more broken on new operative systems, as a white noise sound effect can sound randomly for no reason, and this sound effect is incredibly loud and annoying, which can make the things much worse.

The voice acting is also minimal, the only entities that have some voice acting are the enemies, being the German soldiers the main ones, and their voice acting is completely horrible, specially because of their death sounds that sound extremely exaggerated and fake, like if a junkie was trying to sound like a dying person, the main character also makes some strange sound effects when picking up some health object, like if he was moaning.

Unsatisfying ending, after killing the final boss and reaching to a main core, the main character will just plant a bomb and then it explodes, without showing anything else or explaining if this was enough to achieve the main goal of the character or not. It even resembles the ending from Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days because of how bad and confusing it is.

As odd as it is, the idea of an fps involving WWII thematics and time travels is kinda interesting, if the game had a better gameplay and a more influentive plot in the game, it could've been a great game and a real spiritual successor for Wolfenstein.