Graphics

Engines. Big engines!

The Mortyr developers designed their own engine to this game, so at least credit them for that much. Highlights include reflections, architecture, and nice little touches, which we'll explain later. Graphic settings were more than plentiful, allowing lesser systems to play. Unfortunately, for the graphic card elite, there was only 16-bit mode with resolutions up to 1024x768. True, nobody really plays above this resolution with current video cards but it would have been nice to have the option to do so as the months go by in the 3D industry. I run a TNT2 Ultra/Celeron 450 and I maxed out everything including resolution and never dropped below 30 frames p/sec. Lesser machines should be able to handle this game without much trouble.

Zounds! Mind control

Achtung baby!

Levels

This game is filled with tons of little details that add that finishing touch to the level. Bits of Nazi propaganda are everywhere, a poster here, a banner there; the levels were fairly ornate with statues and sculptures. I found myself pausing to look at the posters and some rooms that just looked pretty darn good. The use of structures such as the U-boat pens were pretty cool too. Vehicle design wasn't too shabby either, it's pretty sweet to come outside and find a zeppelin flying overhead.

The ability to break windows was a nice feature in this game. Whenever one was shattered, the glass would fall to the ground making a terrific sound. The last of the great eye candy was the reflections. They would show almost everything, Nazis, explosions, the walls. It would have been perfect if I could have seen myself.

Explosive reflections. Whoa

The Reich Daily Times

Mortyr does have some pretty decent outdoor scenery. Snow scenes in outdoor settings are rather prevalent, nothing great but the addition of footprints was nice. The sky isn't active and rain and water scenes weren't too impressive by comparison to other engines. Don't worry about frame rates chunking, the engine handles pretty well with large open areas.

One thing that got annoying was that I started to run into rooms I know I had seen in other levels. By that I mean the room was almost identical to the other one. In once instance, the only thing that kept too rooms from being completely identical was one missing hole in the ground; even the sounds were the same.

All The Small Things

Zooming in this game has to be some of the smoothest I have seen to date. For a few seconds I was baffled as to how it worked. This didn't seem to work too well with the mouse buttons so I keyed it to TAB. The game lets you zoom with any weapon at all which I guess means you have a new fangled bionic eye or a scope on every weapon. My only fault with this was the long time it took to retract back to normal vision.

Where's Slimer?

Gehenna ripping it up

Despite some nice touches, certain aspects of the graphics bothered me - like fog just disappearing if you jumped or walked forward. It wasn't a gradual disappearance; it went away in chunks, huuuge chunks. One room was covered in fog and had a staircase going down to a lower level, but the second you went below the upper room's height, the fog just magically went away. This is strange because fog is generally going to go down if it has the opportunity. That brings me to my last gripe, the gibs. There are none! I saw a little blood hit the wall when I shot an enemy but there was just an overall lack of gore. I don't need a lot, it's just that when I hit a person with an anti-tank weapon I don't expect too much of him to be left over.