Review: Projekt Vertilgung

Details

Title: Projekt Vertilgung
Creator: Zach Higgins & James Ingham (Verdammt Software)
Released: 27/12/2002
Length: 22 Levels (2 Secrets)
Level Format: Continuous
New Story: Yes (22 Pages)
Graphics: Original plus some new and modified
Sound: Original
Special Features: Shattering glass, breakable pillars, 8 weapons w/ 4 ammo types, additional health items, 2 artifacts (God & life modes) and additional difficulty level.
Dos/SDL: Dos
Initial impressions: From the very start of the mod you can see that this has been very professionally done. The makers have shown a lot of care, by Version 1.4, when making the mod, something so many modder’s lack when making & releasing a mod these days. There are many features that the creators have taken time to include to rise this above the standard fare.

Gameplay: The game play is very straight forward as there are plenty of locked doors in every level so it is very easy to know where to go and when you find the key, where to come back to then progress onwards. Never once was I left wondering in what direction a key that I’m looking for is in or where I need to go, to go through a locked door once I have found it's key.

Guard placements are fairly simple with a stand in the doorway and shoot scenario always the simplest way to clear a room.

Mapping: The mapping is unfortunately quite simple, the levels aren’t huge and there are too many mazes for my liking, especially level 16 which is just one big huge maze for the whole level. The level designs are fairly simple and always have a common path from start to finish. There are very little traps and surprises for the player at any time. Secrets have been used liberally and are usually fairly easy to find, I was able to find 100% of secrets on a lot of levels without having to search much of the level at all. 2 of the levels, (1 & 7) require the player to find secret passages to access most of the levels features. Level 1 has its elevator within a secret area, the location of the secret is extremely obvious but hidden none-the-less. Level 7 has the exit elevator very near the start but the nearby secret passage takes you to the other 80% of the level.

Secret Level 50 is a reverse of E1L1 of the original set with only some very small changes. The only difference is that the player starts at the end elevator and works backwards toward the start. The guards however are all dead and the level is inhabited by 1 lone ghost. This adds a little more interest to a level that everyone could play with their eyes closed although it is still very easy to simply bypass the room that he is in and finish the entire rest of the level without being followed.

Level 16 is just one huge maze which becomes extremely annoying after about 3 minutes when you realize that this is all the level is. I really don’t like this type of level and I usually just give up searching for secrets, and 100% all round, and try to get off the annoying level as soon as possible!

Likes: The Graphics are beautifully done through all facets of the mod except for the fact that the makers have retained the ugliest wall from the original wolf set – the blue prison wall. This wall seems really out of place as predominantly most walls are grey in the mod. Why the guys didn’t use a grey prison wall theme as well frankly baffles me but the rest of the wall set is very professionally done. My favorite wall was the grey brick used on level 1 with the wanted poster of BJ on it (as seen in the screenshot below); this wall however is hardly used through the rest of the mod, much to my disappointment.

Dislikes: It is impossible to get 100% on every level as the calculation percentages at the end always seem to not be 100% across all 3 counts. A lot of times my secrets count was either 95% or 99%, a count that is impossible with there only been usually about 6 secrets on each level.

There are some minor sound errors as well as some of the digitized sounds override the others and sound all together will disappear for several seconds at times when there are multiple sounds occurring at once.

The Sniper rifle is just simply not powerful enough as it takes at least 4 direct shots to kill each guard, this should be a 1 shot, 1 kill if shooting at a guard from behind. This flaw makes this weapon useless when shooting at more than 1 guard.

The Story, 22 pages is just far too long to be bothered reading. Don’t get me wrong, I love that people take the time to write a new story for their mod but anything over about 6 pages is too long in my opinion. When I’m playing the game I’m not thinking back to all 22 pages of the story I’m thinking about the few main points of my objective that could easily have been summed up in 6 pages. This becomes especially annoying if I have to spend 15 minutes reading 22 pages and then the mod is boring and I don’t play more than 5 minutes of it.

Ratings
Dean's Score: 7/10
Difficulty: Nothing too difficult here, especially for an experienced player.
Best Level: 2
Worst Level: 16

Wrap-up: The effort put into creating the game was obviously large and would have taken a while to produce such a mostly bug free exe. The mod is beautiful to look at but the music doesn’t seem to really convey any mood into the mod and the mapping is just too simple to really put any surprises to the player. This is still a nice mod to play and one that someone new to mod playing would get more challenge out of than an experienced Wolf player.

Where Can I get it?: You can download the mod (Version 1.4) by clicking HERE or by clicking on the screenshot at the top of this post.

Disclaimer: All reviews are only my opinion when playing the mod and are not intended to discredit anyone or the hard work they have put into creating their mod.