Operation: Eisenmann

Operation: Eisenmann, an eight-level wad featuring a story reminiscent of Wolf3D's episode 2, blown completely off the rails as you might expect gameplay-wise.

so is there anything that could save it? hmm, it tries to at least be interesting in theme, giving us several mutants, as well as giant mutants and super soldiers to take down, plus a few new powerups that are simply reskinned Doom powerups. yeah, Eisenmann is pretty Doom-y for WolfenDoom as well. too bad there's still loads of drawbacks. level layouts end up being symmetric, loads of samey rooms, keys hidden behind some of them that you're likely to gloss over due to how samey the rooms are, and of course level layouts promote backtracking. MAP02 is way too long for its own sake, going one way to the first two keys, then the long haul for the next, then all the way back to the red door which was much closer to the first two keys. it's long and boring. MAP06 gives you a symmetric, boxy, sewer layout, unfortunately not a whole lot of radsuits will help. may I also say that in both of these two mentioned maps, secrets are actually required to keep going? other maps are actually quite forgettable, except for...

MAP07 is the boss map, but what the fuck, it takes me this long to even get to both bosses here. that one room with the six super soldiers is made into a completely boring and redundant switch puzzle, and the room right after it also sucks ass (you can actually get stuck in the columns that the super soldiers were on if you decide to stay on them when they rise). Schabbs comes in as a surprise from a random office, and there's barely anywhere to hide from the Eisenmann prototype (spiderdemon replacement). as if it's not insulting enough, those walls around the room are 30-second doors. abysmal to just play through that one. it tells a lot that the epilogue map, MAP08, is very welcoming, as it is easy and not filled with bullshit.

so gameplay-wise, apparently Eisenmann was quite problematic with the deh patch, so again I recommend playing using NightFright's ZDoom compatibility pk3. regardless, yeah, the SS have more health and they are everywhere. officers have just as much health and are portrayed as the chaingunners, while the mutants actually function like Wolf3D mutants in that pk3. there's a second variation of the regular mutant, which functions like the demon and spectre, and the giant mutants are like the hell knight and baron. turrets (arachnotrons) and super soldiers (mancubus) fire invisible projectiles (representing hitscan in some way I guess) that are as strong as the vanilla ones, and the big officers (revenants) actually fire rockets. the only really interesting weapon you can use is the Schmeisser (SSG replacement) found on MAP06 and it rapidly shoots, making it the go-to weapon for much of the game then-on. weapon-wise, you get the basic MP40 pretty much right off the bat if you can find an SS who drops it, and the rest of the weapons aside from the Schmeisser actually come in on the next level, so weapon progression isn't that bad but wouldn't ultimately save the wad's score.

still though, despite the semi-Doom like feel, many of the large hallways and rooms are painful to go through due to the sheer amount of SS, and the levels are quite large. Eisenmann unfortunately stands as one of the worser WolfenDoom wads because of these things. promises can easily be broken if the gameplay in specific maps (MAP07) is abysmal.