Rise of the Triad: Dark War

"Trampolines and floating monks!"

If there was a triad of innovative first person shooters of the mid 90’s and Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were two parts of the whole then Rise of the Triad must surely have been the other part!

Rise of the triad (ROTT) sits between Doom and Duke in terms of technical proficiency. ROTT offers jumping (on bizarre trampoline pads!) and increased interaction with the environment, such as bullets holes and ‘stuff you can break’ like glass.

Whatever the plot of ROTT it’s bizarreness matches the other two games. As a member of ‘the hunt’ your mission appears to be to go into strange castle levels and shoot enemies who remind you of the Germans played in the war films of the 50’s and 60’s.

The maps themselves are well designed, but tend to look alike, unlike Doom’s more atmospheric maps or Duke’s colourful maps. You feel as if you have arrived at some strange part of the world where the castles are huge and littered with pressure pads, switches, trains of moving (or still) metallic saucers you can stand on and, most fun of all, plenty of freaky trampoline pads.

Not only that but what seems to be a hybrid of german actors from ‘the dirty dozen’ and ‘the great escape’ are out to get you! In keeping with this theme you can get pistols and a German machine gun but it’s the array of missile launchers that will stun (and occasionally blow away) the player. You can get a straight bazooka, heat seekers, ‘drunk’ missiles that fly around randomly, a twin bazooka, a fire breathing napalm thing and an earth shaking rocket that you need to stand well back from!

Later on in the game you’re treated to moving walls, burning walls, rotating spikes, fireball launching walls and plenty of other challenges. Power ups turn you into a flyer, a dog (yes really!), a junkie (shrooms mode) and, well…. A god (I think they took god-mode too literally!)

Special weapons come in the form of a staff of thunderbolts and, wait for it, a baseball bat called Excalibur!

End of level baddies are truly weird. A man in a cap that taunts you, a chap in a wheel chain, the infamous NME robot, a floating monk (didn’t I tell you about the monk levels?) and a caterpillar made out of heads!

Death match modes allow for genuine team play and offer variations on collect the flag as well as straight death match scenarios.

This game wasn’t as successful as the others of it’s time and nor was it as easy to do modifications for so there isn’t nearly the same support for it on the web. Nevertheless it’s a fun FPS with a real off the wall theme. Well worth the gamer’s time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/26/01, Updated 04/26/01