Rise of the Triad Review
It's a real blast from the past... for better or for worse.
You see, there's one thing I can guarantee such a patch won't fix. I'm not sure whether Interceptor Entertainment were too blindly caught up in creating a tribute to the original game's level design - which is inadvisable in the first place - to stop and ask whether it was a good idea, or if they were simply under the delusion that this was somehow part of the challenge, but whether out of arrogance or sheer foolishness, Rise of the Triad commits the most heinous of crimes by including occasional mandatory first-person platforming sections. Some are over solid ground, some are over lava, some are over bottomless pits, but they all share one thing in common: the ability to make you want to snap your keyboard over one knee and bludgeon the nearest bystander to death with the splintered halves. This is a game where even the default character choice runs faster than a motorcycle and jumps like they've strapped armies of fleas to the underside of their boots, so what kind of madman thought the best way to break the pace would be to force them to bounce around and land on something that might as well be a floating sixpence? If you're running out of ways to keep our high-octane murder spree fresh and interesting then you should go pour your efforts into a powerup that turns us into Brian Blessed or a weapon that remotely detonates people's testicles. You don't, under any circumstances, tear us away from our murder spree and tell us we have to navigate some platforms over a river of molten rock while dodging a timed barrage of fireballs, because that isn't interesting or fresh. It's frustration, distilled, and it's a damn shame because the rest of the level design is really not that bad at all. Not stellar by any means, but never dreadful.
If you get tired of the single player - you shouldn't, though advanced stages of rage are perfectly natural - then you can give the multiplayer a try, and I'm pleased to report that it's a bucket of fun in a chaotic explosion-laced sort of way if you can ignore the fact that it's about as sophisticated as two foam cups and a piece of string. You could write the total list of game modes and maps on the back of a business card and the option for custom maps is - despite promises from Interceptor Entertainment - still temptingly greyed out. It's a shame that I wasted that foam cup analogy half a paragraph ago too, since it's the exact mental image I'd like to have handy when I mention the game's latency issues. It's pretty clear that the multiplayer is going for the mindless frag-fest trophy at any rate, since trying to have a serious competition with this kind of net-code is like trying to organise a karate tournament in a ball pit.
Here comes the part where I get all narky about things that sound insignificant but still managed to get on my nerves. Boss battles, as ever, are an unwelcome blemish on the game, though I've basically given up on the industry learning how to do those properly so it wasn't a disappointment so much as a dreaded chore. All you need to know is that the first one is a bullet-hell arena, the second spams unavoidable minigun fire while repeating grating voiceovers, the third is a spinning dispensary of pain and crushed dreams, and the fourth is, in defiance of all previous trends, a bit underwhelming. Several design choices seem almost deliberately crude, such as the lack of visual hints as to what a switch looks like, or the extremely poor indication of what doors need what keys. Perhaps strangest of all, amid countless examples of ideas copied verbatim from last century, Rise of the Triad fails to include any save capabilities beyond a checkpoint system run by a chronic amnesiac, which is a shame since being able to save every few seconds might have really taken the edge off the platforming sections.
Interceptor Entertainment deserve pity, they really do. Rise of the Triad feels like a labour of love; a game created by people out of their passion for the original. If Wikipedia is to be believed, they weren't even all paid for their work. Sadly it's a labour of love that's badly in need of a patch, and possibly some lessons in 21st century game design. Like many remakes, it makes the fatal mistake of being too afraid to change the formula and ends up scooping up a lot of unpleasant design decisions along with the finely-balanced action. It's still a good game, and it's certainly never dull - incidentally something that will earn any title a prized position on my hard disk - but its quality depends on how prepared you are to push through its numerous faults. Rise of the Triad is a game that I can't give the thumbs-up to in good will, at least not with so many disclaimers hanging off it, so I instead encourage you to think of it like a second-hand sports car and make up your mind thus: it's cantankerous, inefficient, crafted largely from pig-iron and a bit ugly when all's said and done, but when you're out under the shining sun with a henchman's intestines in your hair and a firebomb launcher in your hands, you'll know you're playing something special.