Developer: Interceptor Entertainment
Publisher: Apogee Software
Platform: PC (Steam)
Rise of the Triad – Review
What would you do when you and four comrades are stuck on a devilish isle with cultist and evil soldiers? Same as me I guess: kill, kill and kill to get to a phone. Let Rise of the Triad make you relive the old days with this new design!
Story
The objective in Rise of the Triad is quite simple: kill or be killed. As this is a remake of the original Rise of the Triad (from 1994), the storyline is quite similar. The H.U.N.T. or High-risk United Nations Task-force is special force unit that consists the most skilled and insane members. They were deployed to a remote island to investigate the cult activity that’s taking place in the local monastery. When they arrive by boat, a storm breaks loose. Lady Fortuna wanted a good laugh though and the guards on the isle spotted due to circumstances the lifeboat. A trigger happy soldier blows up the boat and the team is hereby shipwrecked. They need to infiltrate the base to make a phone call to HQ for back-up. While they’re killing enemies like it’s present time, they discover that the cult tries to destroy Los Angeles. This makes the team more determined to swipe away the cultists and save the day!
Although the story is the same, the levels in this Rise of the Triad are totally different from the original one, so expect some new yumyum levels!
Graphics
The developers wanted to preserve the original feeling of the game but they did a good job on upgrading the graphics. I have to mention that the level of details is a lot different between each graphical setting. If you have a brand new pc, you can definitely enjoy the game in its full glory and experience the beauty this revived game has to offer you. If, on other hand, you have an older pc, the graphics are a real turndown, although the most important part of the game is to kill instead of gazing at the environment, right?
The characters in the character selection are very detailed and it’s nice to see that each character has its own visual characteristics in-game as well, even though it’s a fps. The mini-map that’s presented when you want to continue your campaign is a nice addition and gives the game a nice twist.
Sound
The music, voice and sound effects in Rise of the Triad are really nicely done and give the game an extra must-have boost. The music fits the game perfectly and makes you more eager to slice or shoot some people. It might even takes you over the top and transform you into Rambo. If you want to relive the good old days and play the game with the original soundtracks, have no fear! The developers implemented the possibility to change the in-game sound to classic mode. This mode contains all the original tracks but they’ve updated the quality of course.
Each weapon has its own sound effect and makes the game more realistic. There are some other small sound effects integrated that makes the game a bit more ‘light’. Each character has its own specific voice. The voices aren’t used a lot in-game though, which is a downer. If the volume of all this musical delight is too high, you can separately change them in the audio menu.
Gameplay
Rise of the Triad has both single player and multiplayer modes. The single player consists of clearing the campaign and kill enemies of course. It’s also possible to replay each level so you can attain 100% by, for example, obtaining the available secrets.
If you start a campaign level, you can choose your ‘Chosen One’ out of 5 different characters. Each hero has its personal abilities or assets. It’s important to know each character and if you’re stuck in a level, it might be a good idea to change to another one that fits the level more. Besides the character-picking, you also get the possibility to set the difficulty level. The differences between the 4 levels (easy – normal – hard – ludicrous) isn’t that big. The only real significant alteration is that the enemies shoot more accurately in harder levels and that your health decreases faster. This might be a let-down for the diehard fps-players.
When you start your level, you get a few starter weapons and you can find upgrades or more powerful weapons when you advance. An important remark is the speed in this game. You almost run like Usain Bolt and the combination of running and shooting isn’t always that effective. When you first play this game, you’ll have to get used to this mishmash.
The gameplay in single player is mostly similar to multiplayer modus. You select a suitable room or you create one of your own. When you spawn, you only have one weapon and there are different guns spread around the map. The ‘survival of the fittest’ rules here though and it’s important to brace yourself for some kick-ass shooting.
The last remark I want to make about gameplay are the control settings. The game works with a qwerty-setup and it’s hard to set some controls if you have an azerty-keyboard. For example, the right Shift-button wasn’t recognized and it was set automatically to the left one. This is quite inconvenient when you can’t use the keys you want.
Conclusion
The remake of Rise of the Triad is nicely done. The developers kept the original story but upgraded the levels, graphics and soundtracks. When you play this game, you still feel the thrill from the old days but with the glory of modern technology. The multiplayer modus is quite good and gives you an adrenaline rush. Apogee Software and Interceptor Entertainment should be proud of this title!
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