WolfenDoom: Blade of Agony

[Abarbarian]

Blade of Agony

Blade of Agony is a story-driven FPS. The project is inspired by WWII shooters from the 90's and early 2000's, like Wolfenstein 3D, Medal of Honor, and Call of Duty, but with faster-paced gameplay in the spirit of Doom! The game can be played standalone using the GZDoom engine as a base.

STORY
It's 1942, and the war approaches its peak. The U.S. has joined the Allied forces, and the Soviets are pushing back the front in the east. The tides of war are turning, and Hitler's victory seems more and more beyond his grasp. But the Nazis, refusing to capitulate, have grown obsessed with human experiments and occult artifacts, in which they see a potential escape from their final Doom. The Allied leaders reject this possibility as nonsense; nonetheless, some still fear what the Führer might be up to. The situation is nebulous, however, and little is certain.

You are Cpt. William "B.J." Blazkowicz, an Allied spy, a fearless risk-taker, and the greatest soldier to ever take up arms in World War II. Your role has changed, though; you've retired from active duty, and now you spearhead operations as a systems analyst. You thought it would be the right choice--leading and motivating instead of doing the dirty work--but lately you've grown restless. At least until a few days ago, when you received an encrypted message from your old friend and comrade Cpt. Douglas Blake, calling you back to duty...

This is probably the best free game I have ever come across. You can get the game from the site above but the easiest way is to get the first and second chapters together from below.

Chapter 2 "Shadows of the Reich"

For Linux users there is a Flatpak version which is a single file to download and install which contains everything needed to run the game. Mint users do not have to do any extra set up stuff as Flatpak is ready to use in their distro.

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.realm667.WolfenDoom_Blade_of_Agony

Although this is a very old style game the graphics are pretty neat and game play is fluid and smooth. Using the shovel is a hoot.

 

[Abarbarian]

Well I thought I would give the linux Flatpak program a go to see how it would pan out. As I mentioned earlier Mint users do not need to install Flatpak as it comes with their distro. In my Arch set up I had to install Flatpak, this is a trivial task and completed with just one small command line entry.

On the Flathub site Blade of Agony can be found in the Games section of the applications,

https://flathub.org/apps

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.realm667.WolfenDoom_Blade_of_Agony

Follow the simple instructions to install and run the game.

Install

$ flatpak install flathub com.realm667.WolfenDoom_Blade_of_Agony

Run

$ flatpak run com.realm667.WolfenDoom_Blade_of_Agony

All the above commands are done in a terminal, Having to type the run command every time would soon become tedious so I would make a "alias". Something like,

alias  ba="flatpak run com.realm667.WolfenDoom_Blade_of_Agony"

Typing two letters "ba" is much easier than that long command.

The install on Arch took a few minutes and the download size for the runtime and the game files was around 500 MB. There were no problems with the install.
I ran the game and everything worked as it should, pretty smooth and responsive. The graphics however were pretty blocky and reading text was difficult. I had altered the video settings to the highest screen size which I think were 1280x1024. On my Windows install of the game I could choose to use 1920x1200 but for some reason this was not available in this linux setup. The graphics on the Windows install were very nice and text was very readable. So I am guessing that some small tweak may be needed for the game to run as well on my Arch system.
Mint users may find that the graphics and game run flawlessly straight away. Using the Flatpak system is easy and seems to work well. For folk who are a little nervous about installing programs it may be a useful way to install programs. There is a wide selection of the most common programs available at the Flathub site. Including STEAM and a selection of games.

Enjoy.

 

[Ian]

Hah, what a name - "WolfenDoom".... it really does look like someone spliced Wolf3D and Doom.

How many hours worth of gameplay is there in that bundle?

 

[Abarbarian]

Hah, what a name - "WolfenDoom".... it really does look like someone spliced Wolf3D and Doom.

How many hours worth of gameplay is there in that bundle?

Yeah a good name

If you use the Chapter 2 "Shadows of the Reich" link it is a 450 MB download with part one and two and a simple .exe to install.

I think there are 27 levels in the first game and 11 in the second. At half an hour a level you would have 18 hours of game play. An I believe there are extras as well.
The first mission you have to sneak around so I am trying not to use a gun and found the knife ok but the shovel is really neat. I do keep on getting shot as there are guards everywhere.

 

[Ian]

I'm not sure if this is my cup of tea, but I might try installing it this weekend for a retro experience .

 

[Abarbarian]

I'm not sure if this is my cup of tea, but I might try installing it this weekend for a retro experience .

If you do and you take the "Training Session" everything works fine up till you get to throw grenades. Then you have to make a adjustment in player controls. I did find the answer in the forums or possibly elsewhere, I just can not remember what I did, it was fairly trivial, or where I put the link to the info.

It is a first person shooter whats not to like

 

[Abarbarian]

Grenade answer here in the first few comments

https://www.moddb.com/mods/wolfendoom-blade-of-agony/downloads/blade-of-agony-chapter-1

There is mention of a virus warning at the bottom of those comments above. An explanation is found here,

https://boa.realm667.com/index.php/about

My Antivirus program is detecting malware!
WolfenDoom: Blade of Agony does not include any malware. We are investigating this issue. boa_c2.exe is a batch script wrapped in an executable file. This batch script starts GZDoom, loading the WolfenDoom: Blade of Agony package as a PWAD.

If this bothers you so much, just drag and drop the boa_c2.pk3 package on top of GZDoom to start playing WolfenDoom: Blade of Agony.

Enjoy

 

[Abarbarian]

Flatpak game play update I had another look at the flatpak install and made a few changes in the OPTIONS section of the game. I can now report that the flatpak version runs very sweetly at 1920x1200 on my Arch install.

Snap game play update I installed the snap version and can report that it runs fine as above but with no sound. The install can not find a default alsa folder or file. This is probably due to Arch having a slightly different file set up to Buntus and it would be a easy thing to sort out.

Now that I have tried both versions I must say that I am both impressed with the two methods of packaging and installing the game, oh and the game itself of course.
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