I will only be through with you after I break your face.
There aren't many truly ambitious scenarios left to be ported, but Breakthrough 2: Hideaway is certainly one of them and I'm porting it quite late. The sequel to Breakthrough features a whopping 56 new maps, in addition to some new (rather grey) textures and a few (mostly annoying) sprites. As you would imagine with so many levels, there's a wealth of mapping styles on display, ranging from short and sweet affairs early on, through grueling mazes, to full-fledged dungeon crawls against large numbers of enemies in every room. There's a lot of treasure to be had around these parts, most of it in hidden caches. Bosses (Hans clones) are used sparingly, which is probably a relief to some players who don't enjoy taking on multiple boss enemies at once.
As mentioned, the set contains some new graphics (the readme promises new sound too, but those are nowhere to be found). By far the most interesting feature, though, is the map progression. You see, Breakthrough 2 is one of the few Mac scenarios making use of the secret level feature. In fact, it takes it to a whole next level (pun intended). In almost every map, you're faced with a choice of which route you want to pursue. There are two elevator switches to be pressed and you obviously have to choose one. There's no way of telling where it will take you: maybe to the next map in order, maybe several maps ahead. As a result, you can never visit all 56 levels in a single playthrough; you're forced to take notes and make different choices in subsequent playthroughs if you want to see every map the scenario has to offer.
Back in the day, Breakthrough 2 was being sold via WolfAddict: the calling price was 8 dollars + $2 for shipping. Nowadays yyr is giving it away for free on his Wolfenstein 3D website. There is also a shareware version of Breakthrough avaiable, which is included here, although I'm not sure if there are actually any differences except for it being limited to the 12 earliest levels. Interestingly, while Breakthrough 2 makes use of WolfEdit 2 features like invisible wall quadrants or custom sound areas, it's limited to First Encounter resources and enemies. Some will probably say 56 maps is too much for such a limited scope, but you'll have to play and see for yourself.
===CREDITS===
yyr/Aaron Teplitsky.
