Merger 3D Reviews

I pretty much knew what I was buying. An intentionally retro raster-based 2D shooter ala Wolf 3-D. Apparently, the vast majority of the kids in these reviews dislike this game because it is actually developed as an old game without the bells and whistles that they are used to having. Well, for those of us who did play these games on our 386 machines back in 1991, this game rocks. I've done Level 1 so far and it is perfect. It contains all the usual issues you would expect from a renderer like this but the gameplay is fair. Ammo is plentiful, enemies are not bullet sponges and health restores a decent amount. A great homage to the past!

Merger 3D is a throwback to old school shooters like Wolfenstein 3D, but draws a little too hard from its inspiration. As it stands it suffers from outdated design, such as clunky collision detection, a single axis of mouse look and little visual feedback. I hate to be so negative toward a game that only costs $2USD, but unless you're itching to relive the earliest days of the FPS genre without ANY form of modernization, I can't reccomend it.

Sadly, this a bad game. - Field of view damage, enemy visibly = health goes down. So Strafing is useless. - No indication about being hit by bullets. - Autoaim but bad hit detection. You see an enemy stuck on a corner... can't hit him because his center must be vissible. - And stuck on corners they get, because there's no pathfinding. Enemies charge straight towards you or strafe by random event.

Here's the soundtrack for those who have been searching for it: https://youtu.be/SIcumrAJyKQ Also here's how to run the game: - Go to Steam/steamapps/common/Merger3D/ - Right Click on Merger3D.exe and select properties - Go to compatibility - Go to 'Change Settings For All Users' - Select 'Disable Full Screen Optimization - Go to 'Change High DPI Settings' - Under 'High DPI scaling override', select 'Overide High DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by:' and choose 'Application' - Select Okay, click Apply, click Okay Run the game. Now the mouse issue is gone. Edit: This game was intended to be a non-commercial release and was stolen by a dev. What you're playing now is a beta build. The original dev is remaking the game and has released a demo as of this review: https://dedreek.itch.io/merger-aftermath

There's just something about oldschool shooters that we love. Maybe it's the nostalgia, maybe it's the fact that we crave a new experience from something that we hold so dear. It's not very often that games such as Merger 3D come along anymore, boasting an oldschool Wolfenstein 3D meets Quake styled gameplay while using a legitimately old engine that allows the game to run even on Windows 98. From the surface, you'd really think Merger 3D has it all. A badass front-man with long hair and a hard body, a rocking soundtrack, excellent weapon models, decent enemy sprites. and unique wall textures. Unfortunately, with this game beauty is only skin deep. A lot of folks have complained about the control system that you can't rebind, but in all legitimacy the WSAD to move, 123 for weapons, and left click to shoot is standard old controls, so no complaints there. In fact, the control system is pretty much the only thing unworthy of criticism. After failing to beat the second level, I took to YouTube for some playthrough videos and I couldn't find a single video where anyone made it even as far as I did into the second map. Most died a lot on the first level, and quit either before the end, or midway through the second. I'm not sure if that has anything to say about skill level, or just my stupid perseverance to try to at least get further into the game before I gave it a downvote. The bottom line is, the difficulty of the game is too high. This is mostly caused by the horribly narrow field of vision, and that enemies seem to be able to shoot through anything. The one and a half levels that I experienced were a labyrinthine maze of jagged walls and small alcoves that hid terrible little carnivorous frog monsters and gun wielding jarheads. Finding your way around is very disorienting, even headache inducing, due in part to the visuals but also the high mouse acceleration. You have to stop every few feet and look around you on all sides for approaching enemies, but even then it's usually too late; you'll be overwhelmed by the tiny frog monsters, unable to move before you know it. Then you'll find yourself getting hurt from what seems to be nothing at all, when in fact it's a soldier from all the way across the map that you can barely see, or one that's hiding behind something. Far be it from me to call for a resurgence of the oldschool shooter, games of this nature must tread carefully due to the reverence gamers hold for titles such as Doom, Blood, and Wolfenstein. Though it would be nice if every once in a while one of these legitimate odes would come to surface, one that's very well made and can compete with the beloved titles of yore. However, that game is not going to be Merger 3D; not now, and not in the future. All of the previously mentioned problems hold it back too much, despite its potential. It's also a tad irritating that the music restarts every time you go to the menu to save your game. If you're really craving an oldschool shooter, bring out the big guns and let Merger 3D sink into the abyss. [h1]Rating: [b]1.0/5.0[/b] - It's Bad.[/h1] The Horror Network [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/28221963/]Curator[/url] | [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork]Group[/url] Click for Gore

**Updated review Jan 30, 2017 So this game has been fixed... kind of. There is now a version of the game that does not use the Mouse, thank god! You can now play it like Wolfenstein 3D... BUT it's not in the base game! You have to OPT into the "BETA" to get the no mouse option. The game also recived some minor improvements, like the screen flashing red when you get hurt, and all enemies playing sounds... But the game is still the same, and still isn't very fun. It still has the same problems as stated before. I figured I'd continue off of my last save file, which was at level 4... but my save file does NOT transfer over to the "No Mouse" version, and I could not pull myself to try and sit through the first 4 levels again. I got half way through the first level and remembered why I hated it so much. _____________________________ Well my first impressions of this game was not a good one. Having spent only CDN$ 1.64 on this... And not being able to play it right off the bat made me sad. In my original review I was not able to play the game without it crashing. Having to go though loops to try to get it to work, [strike] it resulted to me having to REMOVE a file which had the "story" for me to be able to play. Dev helped with the quick fix. [/strike] *No longer an issue. Having spotted this on the Steam New Releases it quickly caught my eye, as I'm a poor sucker for retro/old school shooter games (as I was literally raised with games like Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM II,) and having $2 in my Steam wallet, I grabbed it to give it a shot... Well this game has some problems. The first minor problem, the weapon graphics are WAY more detailed than everything else. While the game has the same graphical levels as Wolfenstein 3D and Operation Bodycount, the weapons look like they came from a Duke Nukem 3D mod. They just simply don't fit with the game. The second minor problem, [strike] is the lack of feedback when you are being hit, [/strike] and how AI can hit you from pretty much around corners. You will just see your health start dropping, and look around to try and find who's hurting you, only to see an enemy on the other end of the room, just barely poking out from around the corner shooting you. I've only made it to the 4th level, and this is the common situation it seems. The third minor problem, the levels are big and are easily confusing to navigate. The FIRST level is all brown and green, with tons of trees and vines. There is no map feature in this game, so you will end up getting turned around and end up wandering trying to figure out where the hell you are supposed to go. But... *This is fixed with the "No Mouse" version, but as that is not included in the main game, and you have to OPT into it, therefore it's still present.* The BIGGEST problem with this game that makes this a Not Recommend, needs to be explained. You are FORCED to use mouse to look around and shoot. Why is this bad? Well when you try to look around with the mouse, you get a very nauseating screen tear that really hurts the eyes and very hard to focus on what your looking at. Now here is where it gets better... YOU CAN ONLY SHOOT WITH THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON!! There is no keyboard button for shoot, and you can't change controls either, cause there is no options menu. You can use the WASD to move, and arrow keys to look around (which does NOT have the screen tearing effect), but then you can't shoot. So you are forced to use the mouse, which has a slow and painful turn speed, when it works. Combine that with the tearing effect make this game 100% unplayable. I was only able to make it to level 4 before I had to stop. PROS: - Retro Win 98 game. - Good graphics. - Good sounds. - Good soundtrack. - Dev has updated the game fixing some problems. - Now has a "No Mouse" version. - Steam Trading Cards. CONS: - It's an old Win 98 game... Seriously. - Mouse look is game breaking terrible. - Mouse look causes screen tearing, makes your eyes bleed. - Levels are big and confusing. Can easily get lost. - No Map feature. - Only options is audio options. - No key re-binding. - [strike] Lack of hit feedback. Makes you feel like you are dying for no reason. [/strike] - [strike] Was not able to read the story, due to a game breaking crash/error. [/strike] - No Achievements. - Merger 3D has suddenly stopped working and has to close. Would you like to submit a report to Windows to help fix this problem? It PAINS me to be giving this the thumbs down, but it's not good. I had high hopes for this, but was left disappointed and wanting to just go back and play something better like Wolfenstein 3D instead.

it physically hurts giving this game a negative review but by jesus its so fucking bad. And I love boomer shooters, my account is littered with them, but this game learned fuck all from its predecessors and marks a 10 step relapse in what made those games fun in the first place. First of all I had to go into the games folder itself to fix a bug where my mouse was so fucking sensitive that I spun anytime I flicked slightly to either side, literally making the game impossible. It wasnt a huge deal but I still think its a devs job to make sure their game ACTUALLY FUNCTIONS before putting it out to market, not to mention it was released in 2016 and its been 6 years. Furthermore the further you get into this game the more you realise that it has nothing new to add, no fresh ideas, no unique things going for it. Im not saying every game needs to be revolutionary but to add literally nothing to the table is really setting yourself up for failure. Enemies are copy and pasted, every weapon is just EVERY OTHER WEAPON in every other game (Pistol, Assault Rifle, Double barreled shotgun which fucking sucks, laser pistol, etc) The only unique weapon I liked was our Melee, which is a cool lightning hand, unfortunately it becomes useless by level 2 but by golly one level of fun was sure great compared to the entire rest of this game. All that being said I wish the devs well and am saddened this game turned out so bad.

Unplayable mess, full of Wallhack enemies also no minimap in the game I´d rather play Daikatana than this

Visally this game captures what made old PC games like Catacombs 3d charming. However use of the mouse is jittery and terrible. Also the enemies have no pathfinding ability so there is no way to agro a large mob, drop behind a corner and get them one by one like you could in Wolfenstein 3d. I love what they were trying to do. I tried to like this game. They just did not do a good job.

I hate to complain about a game that costs 2$, but this really isn't good. The game gives me a headache because it's trying too hard to be old-school to the point that it barely even has options (you can't change controls or resolution). They just made an "old" game instead of an "old-school" game because it looks like it's made in 1993. And I don't mean that as a compliment. When the games that your game is based on are much better overall you have to ask yourself why you're even making the game. The game is intentionally made this way (it can run on Windows 98), but I still don't think that old-school gamers would want a game with the same limitations of games from 20 years ago. If you want to see what a real old-school FPS should feel like try GUN GODZ. It's a free game made by Vlambeer, it feels (and plays) 10 times better than this. 4/10