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Wolfowitz 3D Review
June 13, 2004-
Ladies and gentlemen, it seems as though we may finally have a game in the prisoner-abuse genre worth playing. Over the past few years, a wealth of titles have attempted to capture the thrill of violating the Constitution and/or Geneva Convention, but always seem to end up a salad-tossing shy of greatness (most notably the promiscuous Neo-Nazi BMX racer American History X XXX and Capcom's Onimushawshank Redemption). At last, fans itching to shed some human decency can do so with Wolfowitz 3D.
You are Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The U.S. has overthrown Saddam's regime, and your mission is to send the Iraqis the message that they're even more fucked than they were before. You will do this by throwing a bunch of Iraqis in prison (some of whom are innocent), forcing them into humiliating positions, and fucking taking a bunch of pictures so that there is irrefutable documentation of your actions.
Graphics
Wolfowitz 3D makes a huge leap over its past iterations. Below is a sample screenshot:
To say the least, this game has really made some breakthroughs. Wolfowitz 2D was met with criticism as players disliked battling Saddam Hussein's cousin Wart as the final boss, as well as having to sully America's reputation by pulling roots out of the ground and throwing them at the prisoners. 3D's improvement is even more evident when compared to Wolfowitz 1D, shown here:
Graphically, Wolfowitz 3D impressed everyone here at the office. While reviewing this game, a steady crowd of slackers gathered around my cubicle as I studied close-ups of the Abu Gharib prisoner-sprites. Upon closer observation, they are actually composed of multiple pixels! We even found a very shapely female prisoner, and spent several hours conducting...err...research! And admiring her...um...how shall I put this...pixels! See, what I just said is humorous because I am making thinly veiled references to her ass and titties.
We were very pleased by system requirements. The box recommended a 486 with 5 MB of free hard disk space, but I was able to run it comfortably using a solar-powered calculator that was tied to a floppy disk drive with a piece of speaker wire. A team of speed-sketchers, an ample supply of paper, and an abacus also suffices, though performance drops to approximately 1 frame per minute.
Sound
Admittedly, there's not much to report here. Other than the occasional clang of a shutting door or quivering plea for mercy, it's a largely silent experience. If you listen very closely, you can hear the distant thud of the world's opinion of America hitting rock bottom, and the sinking hearts of those in our country and abroad who have come to the realization that the most powerful nation in the world just invaded a country so it could take a picture of a pile of naked people. I recommend flipping on the ol' boombox and blasting out your favorite tunes instead!
Gameplay
The game starts out chillingly. You find yourself in a prison cell with nothing but a knife. A dead prisoner is at your feet. Against incredible odds, you must find a way through a prison full of guards who follow your orders, and fuck up a bunch of people who have no means of resistance.
One addition that was quite heralded at this year's E3 was Prisoner Mode, in which you actually able to play as an Abu Gharib detainee. So how does it match up to expectations? In a word, poorly. While technically impressive, the idea of cowering from vicious guard dogs is not as entertaining as one would think.
Fans were clamoring for a difficulty setting this time around, and Wolfowitz 3D delivers. Having trouble building a naked-guy pyramid without it collapsing? Set the difficulty down a notch or two, and you'll be stacking like a sadistic homosexual Pharaoh in no time!
This reviewer also applauds the no-holds-barred approach to the multiplayer experience. It was at first believed that only a handful of Americans were responsible for the prisoner abuse, and Wolfowitz 3D was originally packaged with a 4-player split-screen deathmatch mode. However, as more facts became known, it was brought to light that it was not only the fault of a few "bad apples", but of a very sizeable portion of the U.S. prison guards of Abu Gharib. Moreover, many superiors knew of and condoned the abuse (including our friend Mr. Wolfowitz himself). Wolfowitz 3D really captures this effect, and allows for split-screen multiplayer for up to 1024 players. We at the office found that this mode is played best on a computer monitor that is at least twenty feet tall.
Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the game is the abundance of secret rooms to be discovered. Remember why you're in Iraq in the first place, right? To find the weapons of mass destruction, silly! Located somewhere in the game is a room containing WMDs, Osama bin Laden, a chicken dinner, Jimmy Hoffa, and a chaingun.
Closing Comments
No other game brings you the thrill of disgracing America like Wolfowitz 3D. It lets you humiliate and beat the shit out of prisoners, without stumbling over the age-old cliché of humane treatment. It's certainly a game for the ages, and may go down as the best first-person abuser ever. Here's hoping we'll soon see Wolfowitz 4D, which would presumably let us travel through time so we could go back to 2003 and invade some easy country like Yemen instead.
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