Rise of the Triad: Dark War (1994 Video Game) User Reviews

"Rise of the Triad: Dark War" is a blast!

[Spartan_234 · 10/10 · 29 July 2005]

"Rise of the Triad: Dark War" is more fun and addictive than Doom. Part of what makes this game so fun is its innovative design that adds to immersion. No other previous game has had fog, thunder with properly delayed lighting, levels with multiple floors, the ability to fall off of a level and die, looking up and down (this is a first for a game using id Software technology, but also appeared in System Shock two months earlier) and even how to set the violence level in case your kids play it! Rise of the Triad has all of the good things that make a first-person shooter tick. State-of-the-art graphics (for the time, of course), realistic sound, catchy music, totally awesome weapons, impressive level design and very detailed textures make your immersion into the game last quite a long time. This game is also funnier than any other first-person-shooter at the time. When you get a "God Mode" powerup, you turn into an invincible ten-foot-tall dude that makes retard sounds and fires out "Godfire" that disintegrates your enemies. "Dog mode" turns you into an invincible two-foot-tall dog that bites your enemies. The "Drunk Missile" weapon fires out five heat-seeking mini-missiles and makes a funny noise.

Did I mention that this game is as violent as hell? It's rated Mature for a good reason. Parents, if you do not like your children playing games where your rocket launcher can blow bad guys up into gory bits, or if you find an eyeball or severed arm flying up to your screen objectionable, this is not the game to buy for your kids. Thankfully, the game takes advantage of a "Parental Lock" that allows you to adjust the amount of blood and gore you see in-game. It can be very easy to exploit, though: all you have to do is delete the game's config file or reinstall the game, and the violence level is set back to its normal gory goodness.

I couldn't find anything wrong with the game, at least, if you have a computer that's capable of running it. This is a DOS-based game, and therefore, it has plenty of difficulty running under Windows NT/2000/XP. If you turn the sound effects off, the game runs fine, but it's just not very fun playing without the sound (unless, for some awkward reason, you found the sound effects to be annoying.) Playing the game under an emulator like DOSBox allows the music/SFX to work correctly, but the game runs slow. The best way to run this game is to run it on any computer with Windows 95/98/ME that meets the system requirements for the game. You don't need to boot into DOS mode, either. For me, the game ran perfectly under Windows 98, but the sound effects froze the computer up under Windows 3.1.

One of the best first-person shooters ever, and the best for its time, Rise of the Triad will please most fans of the genre.

Wolf3D engine on steroids

[gelziabar · 9/10 · 14 November 2006]

While I do not expect any one to try out this game for reasons besides nostalgia, this game did achieve a lot when one considers that it used the primitive Wolfenstein 3D engine and took it to a whole new level, especially in texture color depth and rendering. It was also wonderfully gory and fast paced. The retail version was packed with goodies and various game modes including the insane dog mode. The weapons were powerful and there were more levels than one could imagine. It even had an attempt at storytelling which was a big thing in those days. While ROTT may not be remembered when compared to games like Doom, it was fun and revolutionary in its own way.

Rise of the Triad is good dos game ever!!

[sky_rain-07853 · 10/10 · 3 October 2018]

I played shareware version of Rise of the Triad. It is released from 1995, But it has 3d environment and strong and cool weapons. I will buy registered version of Rise of the Triad. Rise of the Triad must remembered.

One of my favorite video games.

[Gurtinator · 2 March 2005]

At first glance, this game doesn't look very impressive. Its plot is pretty thin--military team tracks down a cult on an island, one guy stands guard, he hears screams inside and no one returns, and since there's no way off, he decides to go in and start killing. This came out a year after Doom, and was very similar: get keys, get guns, open doors, shoot stuff, find exit. While Doom had monsters from hell, this game had human baddies and no chainsaw. It appeared to be just a lamer version of Doom quickly replaced by newer, more advanced games.

However, this game is awesome. The music is great, the bad guys are cool, and the action never stops. This was the first game to have a parental lock, and with good reason: this game was gory. It made Doom appear tame by comparison. If someone blew up, the blood spattered... and you might be treated to a limb or an eyeball (with optic nerve still attached) falling to the ground.

The sadism never stopped. These bad guys had friendly fire, and it'd be fun to watch them accidentally walk into the path of a flamethrower or spinning spike wheel. You could shoot them a few times with a pistol or machine gun, and they'd get down on their knees and beg for mercy. Their voices and death screams were good too.

The weapons were something else. There was no mêlée weapons, because pistol and machine guns had infinite ammo. There was the usual bazooka and heat seeking missile (but no throwable weapons.) Then there were the good weapons: the drunk missile, which fired 5 heat seekers at random angles; the firebomb, which caused a huge fire explosion; the flamewall (a personal favorite,) which sent a wall of fire across the floor and burned anyone who got in its path; and the Excalibat, a baseball bat that could fire a barrage of baseballs at someone. Lastly, there were a bunch of pickups, ranging from mercury mode (you fly) to God mode (invincible, shoot magic death ball from hands,) dog mode (bite people or bark and kill them,) elastic mode (the old bump off the walls,) shrooms, etc.

The levels were tough, and the bosses were even tougher. There were random spikes and crap to hit you, and lava walls were very prevalent. It was very easy to fall off the side of the map to your doom. As for fun stuff, boy was there fun stuff! This is one of the few games where cheats actually make the game more fun! Turn on exploding gibs, and the bad guys will always majorly explode when hit with a big gun. There's a cheat code that has the game load with the president of Apogee at the time's head going around in circles and making belching noises to funny music, changes all the level names, and makes immature noises as they load. Lastly, in the picture of the military team at the beginning of each level, one character is wearing bunny ears at Easter, another wears a green hat for St. Patty's Day, etc. Also, there are loads of secret passages just waiting to be found, as well as the biggest secret in the game--the head I just mentioned hiding somewhere in one of the levels.

At the time, this was a really great game. Sure, the graphics suck now, the gameplay is a bit jerky, the sound isn't the best quality, and the game gets a bit repetitive at times. Like Doom, there's no jumping, but there's a step in the right direction with jump pads. Even by today's standards, it's gory as hell, even if the blood does look a bit fake. If you ever find this game, I recommend playing it. Although no longer distributed, it's probably floating around some junk stores and at garage sales. Apogee released the source code for it, so feel free to download that. Also, even though it's still copyrighted, there are some websites specializing in "abandonware" that have the full version of the game recompiled from the source code. Most modern computers will need a free DOS emulator like DOSbox to run something this old. **** of ****