Talk:Wolfenstein 3D/GA3
Latest comment: 7 years ago by Indrian in topic GA Review
GA Review edit
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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 17:57, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
I'll be happy to review this article on one of the true milestones in video game history. Comments to follow. Indrian (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
Wow, did I really volunteer to review this almost a month ago?!? Hit a busy patch in my life with a new job and such, but here I am, ready to give this article its due! I will be posting this review in chunks as I get time to review.
Lead edit
Done"Wolfenstein 3D is a 3D first-person shooter video game" - The term "3D" here is tricky. The game is not really 3D, as there is no movement along the z-axis and all the objects are 2D sprites. Its a 3D perspective, but just calling it a first-person shooter gets that point across. That's a perhaps overlong way of saying we can safely do without the term here for clarity.
- Dropped
- Done"the player assumes the role of a World War II Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz, as they escape from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein" - The player is assuming the role of a character that is escaping, yet the sentence discusses the plot as if the player ("they") is the one escaping rather than B.J. I don't care how it is fixed, but the sentence needs to be consistent in how it refers to player vs. character actions. This problem crops up a couple of other places in the article as well.
- Fixed so that the lead/gameplay are out-of-universe (the player does X), while the plot is in-universe (Blazkowicz does Y)
- Done"the game's flat levels" - I get what you are trying to say here (the whole no z-axis thing mentioned above), but I am not sure "flat" is the best way to convey that.
- Dropped it, and added a bit when discussing the engine about it- "In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes." I'm going to leave the "3D" bit there since that was the goal, even if he stopped at 2.5D, since the discussion is better suited to outside of the lead.
- Done"using Adrian Carmack's artwork and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince" - This clause feels tacked on to what is already a pretty long sentence. Should be rephrased so it stands on its own.
- Done
Gameplay edit
Done*"Each level is themed after Nazi bunkers and buildings, real and fictitious, though the level design does not correspond with any real location" - Awkwardly worded. Are the level layouts really based on actual Nazi structures, or is it just the iconography and the like?
- Done
Done*"can be found behind pushable walls hidden in levels" - While this is the common nomenclature, it does conjure images of physically pushing against the walls in game as opposed to spamming spacebar everywhere to see what happens.
- Done; also done in Development, though I lose my stealth pun that Hall was pushing for pushable walls.
Development edit
- "the team agreed to produce a series of games for Gamer's Edge, one every two months" - For how many months. Pretty sure all the common sources give the details, but I don't have them in front of me.
- None that I've seen do; Masters of Doom just says "one every two months", as does the IGN article about the early history of id- it lists 8 games, but doesn't have ScubaVenture. The Apogee FAQ lists 7 games + ScubaVenture, but is missing Shadow Knights; SYNTHing them together makes 9 games over 18 months, which seems right, but I don't have 1 source that says that.
- Done" Ideas from the Deep, now formally established as id Software, used some of these games to prototype ideas for their own games" - This may work better as the topic sentence of the next sentence, which currently begins by describing some of the new ideas the two Carmacks explored in these games.
- Agreed, done.
Addressed or commented on all points above here. --PresN 16:37, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
- So far so good, I will continue my review below. Sorry again for the protracted nature of all this. Indrian (talk) 15:06, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Development Round II edit
- Done"Romero and Hall came up with the ideas for the game" - Ideas is a rather imprecise term. I take this to mean the game play elements and design aesthetics, but of course the technology by Carmack and the art by the other Carmack also count as "ideas" in a broad sense. The language just needs to be tightened a little bit.
- Done
- Done"The team ensured that the presentation of the game made the feeling that they wanted" - Poorly worded. "Made the feeling" needs to be replaced with something else. I have been doing a lot of rewriting of this section myself during the review, but wanted to leave this one to you since you will have the best idea of what you are trying to convey with this thought.
- Done
- Done"with Adrian Carmack creating violent animations for enemies being shot, and adding music and sound effects by Bobby Prince, who had previously worked on some Keen games for them, so that the guns would sound exciting." - This part is a bit of a mess I'm afraid. No good transition between Carmack's and Prince's contributions so its left seeming like Carmack added Prince's sounds into the game, which I do not believe was the intent. Also, the arrangement of the clauses gives the impression that Prince added sounds to Keen to make the guns sound more exciting rather than to Wolfenstein.
- Done
- "As development continued, id Software hired their former Softdisk liaison Kevin Cloud as an artist away from the company, only to decide to move the company out of snowy Madison to Mesquite, Texas, near where Apogee was located, the same day he arrived." - As Cloud is not listed as having made any significant contributions to Wolfenstein specifically, discussing his hiring seems tangential to the article topic.
- Done*Reduced some of the detail; as he is credited at doing something (even if minor) for the game, and there were only 4 other id employees working on the game, I feel I should still mention him.
- DoneAs a general note on development, it is kind of awkward stylistically to have just one subsection ("Release") in a section. The development section is long enough that further subdivisions should be possible without messing with the flow of the article.
- Not sure how I want to split up the section (I see where, just not the names), I've instead promoted Release to a top-level section.
That's it for round 2. I will try to wrap this whole review up as soon as I can. Indrian (talk) 16:32, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Release edit
- Done"The original trilogy of episodes were released by Apogee on May 5 as Wolfenstein 3D" - The release date of a game is generally defined as the day the game is actually available to own as opposed to the day it is available for purchase. Maybe use a different word here to convey that they started accepting orders on this date?
- Reworded
- Done"while the second trilogy that Miller had convinced id to create was released on the same schedule" - Not sure what "schedule" means here. Were they released at the same time? Or does this convey that they were offered for purchase a few weeks before they actually shipped?
- Reworded; I'm not sure what I was going for there
- Done"FormGen later created two mission packs" - Did they create the packs or just release them? Even if they were the creators this should be reworded slightly, as a release date is given in the sentence, but as it is currently structured this is identified as a creation date instead.
- Changed to published; I can't find if they developed the packs themselves or not, but they did publish them.
And that's it. I did a few small rewrites in the later sections, leaving only these final three minor issues above. I'll go ahead and place this 
On hold while the final changes are made. Sorry again that it took so long to get us here. Indrian (talk) 15:28, 22 September 2016 (UTC)