Ludicrous Gibs! If you were a PC gamer through the early 90s, that phrase should put a big dumb grin on your face. It was the text message that popped up to accompany an enemy exploding violently into a cartoonish cloud of meat (often containing 3+ eyeballs per human, oddly) in Apogee Software’s Wolfenstein-esque Rise Of The Triad, and also the first common usage of the term to describe such splatteriffic delights. A couple of months ago, a pair of dedicated fans (El Zee and 5HFifty) released Return of The Triad, a standalone update/remake of the game, based on the ZDoom engine.
Rise of The Triad was not a serious game. The goofy photo-sourced enemy grunts never menaced, the 50s style tin-can robot enemies elicited chuckles, and the guns were a mix of overtly cool (John Woo style akimbo pistols, complete with unlimited ammo) and patently insane (‘drunk’ missiles that went everywhere but where you aimed them). The level designs were straight-up insane, too. There was never any attempt to make the levels feel like anything other than pure videogame environments. Jump-pads, spinning blade walls, giant spinning keys to pick up to open new areas and powerups such as the almighty lightning-throwing God Mode, and its knee-biting counterpart, Dog Mode.
Return of The Triad brings all that back, sprite-based floating platforms and all. The pointedly plot-free campaign included is 11 levels long, all new, and taking advantage of the updated ZDoom engine, allowing (where appropriate) sloped walls and floors rather than making the entire level a blocky cuboid expanse. The levels themselves are remarkably huge and complex, much bigger than their counterparts from the original game, so you’ll get a good few hours of play out of this fan-made update. If you’ve got a nostalgic buddy or two available via LAN, there’s also six multiplayer levels included for deathmatch sillyness, and the full campaign should be playable in co-op as well.
The Return Of The Triad site itself spells out how to get this gleeful little update running, but it’s simple enough – download the latest ZDoom or GZdoom (ZDoom is software rendering and supports Macs, GZDoom uses 3D acceleration) engine and unpack that. Then unpack RoTT to the same directory, and run ‘rottTC.exe’ – simple as that. This is a fun little throwback to the earliest days of the FPS, and well worth a play if you want something a little lighter and less serious than most modern fare. Well worth the download, especially if you were there first time round during the 90s.
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