Last Night I Had a Dream About WolfPack

Very few reading this will have heard of it but, if our demographic numbers are in any way correct, there should be at least a handful that have.  So allow me to take this moment to educate the former and fertilize that faint memory for the latter.

Back in the early 90's you would have found a young Mr. Christ in a few places. If you were a betting man, however, I would direct you to put money on that small folding chair in front of his Amiga Computer. That is where I spent a whole mess of time in front of a flickering screen focusing intensely on two games in particular. One was Wolfenstein 3D (the father of the modern FPS which should require no introduction) and the other was WolfPack.

Developed by NovaLogic in 1990, WolfPack was an early edition submarine sim that focused on the U-Boats of World War II.  For its time, WolfPack was actually ahead of the curve. Allowing for computer controlled enemy, and tactic orders that could be given to an entire fleet of U-Boats or convoy, depending on which side the player was controlling.  Of course it may seem somewhat trite by today's standards, but back then it was almost like playing a multiplayer game. Remember, this was a time when there was no real online mutliplayer to speak of,  so any advancement in computer AI seemed like a huge step forward.

But what really allowed WolfPack to stand out was the simplicity of it. All the controls you needed were located on one screen, a world map opened with a press of a button for adding in patrol routes, but that was the only other screen you ever needed to visit.  Other than that it was just you patrolling the waters looking for convoys to attack. In a way, this type of gameplay mimicked the feel of an old school 3D shooter like Wolfenstein 3D by its very ease of use, and the sense of plodding destruction that was conveyed to the player.

The sounds of the game are classic low-bit ecstasy. In a world were we are completely surrounded by high caliber sounds and complex orchestration there is certainly something to be said for being in a dark room and hearing those old school blips and bleeps. For how stark and infrequent they were there was always something very grandiose and startling about them. They were not bogged down with high production. They would stand alone in a sea of silence and suddenly spring forth to convey the action that was happening on screen.

One could argue that the enticement of some older games have been lost in recent iterations simply because they have lost focus of the simplicity that made them so much fun in the first place.  I would hate to denounce the detail that has gone into war games like Silent Hunter and modern shooters like Bad Company 2, but I would argue that there is a place for the type of experience that was had in the early Wolfensteins.  Moden Wolfenstein games have simply tried to be too deep in my opinion.  Wolfenstein 3D was not about "The Veil" and magical zombie Nazi's as much as it was about getting out of a castle, shooting Nazi's, finding secrets and collecting treasure. If anything, it is the Serious Sam games that are much more like Wolfenstein games than anything thats come out in recent memory.

As for WolfPack, there were a few expansions but never a sequel and, honestly, I quite like it that way. I can't help but to think that the feel would be lost through over development and a sense of competition. Thankfully we can still play it if we like, and I welcome you to do so if only to get a taste of the way things used to be. If anything, just to experience a little of the gaming history that brought us to where we are at today.