Hexen: Beyond Heretic

The Good
Note: This is a review I wrote in 1995 for my High School newsletter, so don't go "wtf?" when I say things like "Best graphics" and whatnot

Released earlier this month, "Hexen" comes from Raven software and is a sequel to their previous effort, "Heretic." Heretic, while by no means a bad game, has the dubious honor of being called a "Doom clone" for mirroring the gameplay of Doom and merely swapping out the levels, weapons, and monsters. So it may come as a shock that Hexen, is NOT a Doom Clone. While you will still plow through monsters and mazes running on a spruced up Doom engine, various gameplay changes make Hexen unique.

The first thing you will notice enter Hexen are the stunning visuals. Like in Heretic, Raven has reduced the level of pixelation in the graphics, meaning the enemies and objects retain clarity no matter how close up you are, and seeing as there is a greater focus on melee weapons in this game, especially for the fighter class and his mighty hammer, you are going to get up close and personal quite a bit with the nasties in this one. The audio is good, though I don't think the music will wow anyone. Rather than midi rock tunes, the music is more ambient and slow toned but it does lend a creepy feeling to the games bizarre landscape, as do many sounds such as leaves in the wind, creaking doors, dirt crumbling from rocky crags, etc. it all does a great job establishing a mood. The baddies sound as nasty as they look, and nothing beats smashing them about with a hammer as there are many appropriate thuds and of course bones cracking and wet splashes indicating you've successfully removed your foes brain.

The levels progress in a weird way, the game uses a "hub," an area you will often return to and contains the entrance to each level. You will often return to levels, running about from place to place finding switches and puzzles that unlock more areas inside each level, as well as unlocking other levels completely. Eventually you will unlock a boss, and the game will automatically send you to a new hub, essentially an automated way of picking the next episode. Hexen advances the Doom engine so that you can now fly with the appropriate power up, and just like in Heretic you can look all around and jump, meaning there are many more platform puzzles and high places. If you have vertigo, you might find Hexen a little frightening at time.

The Bad
Despite all the praise I've given the game for its technical prowess and unique gameplay elements, Hexen isn't without flaws. Some may not appreciate the switch hunting and often confusing design, it can also be said that many may not like the random death traps that rarely give any indication or forewarning of their existence. Sometimes monotony can set in from returning to levels and being faced with the fact that you've already killed most of the baddies, and the game isn't always so kind as to give you new ones, making levels seem empty at times. The puzzles can be fun, but they seem out of place in a game like this.

The Bottom Line
Hexen isn't perfect, it certainly won't replace Doom, but it's not trying to. Hexen feels like an experiment, and on many levels, it works. If you're a fan of Doom or it's "clones," but are looking for something different while you wait for IDs next project, "Quake," Hexen might appeal to you. A 3-level shareware demo can be acquired from a BBS if you have a modem, or you can always track me down and ask for a copy. The full game can be bought in a retail store or ordered. Just remember to keep it off the school computers.

The Good
Graphics are very well done for a Doom engine game. Semi open-world hub design is a nice change from most Doom clones; you progress through worlds in a linear sequence, but each world is a set of maps that you move between non-linearly. Puzzles and inventory system is a good progression from Doom.

The Bad
Some of the maps are cramped and don't lend themselves as well to combat action compared to Heretic or Doom. Puzzles can get a bit samey after a while, following a "find the switch, flick the switch, get a hint about what happened on what map, go there and see what has changed."

The Bottom Line
This game seems to be polarising, judging from a lot of comments I've seen. Those who dislike Hexen often mention the game being too cryptic or puzzling. I disagree, but I guess people who dislike this aspect also tend to dislike adventure games, or titles like Myst. In my opinion it's nowhere near as puzzling as a typical adventure game.

The Good
Hexen is a very underrated game, in a way it finally enabled the Doom engine to have features it was originally planned to have (like hub level structure). Pretty much every Hexen feature was a major advance for a shooter at the time: real usable inventory with artefacts, health items that could be carried (quartz flasks and mystic urns), three different player classes (mainstay for RPGs, unheard-of in shooters: fighter, mage, cleric), a serious variety of weapons (4 weapons for each class+flechettes), a cartoonish taunting master villain, and just the "spooky-yet-cartoonish saving-the-world ambience". The music is great, though the original had only MIDI scores and a rather low-quality Sound Canvas audio CD. Obviously how great the MIDI files will play depends on the instrument bank for the GM synth the soundcard can drive. The big plus is, with the right instruments the soundtrack is haunting and fits the game beautifully.

The Bad
Nothing really. It could have a bit more detail, like NPCs (there are none). Hexen II introduced NPC-leftover "bait" (like corpses and notes and dead NPCs' diaries, etc.). The Tome of Power was missing (again, Hexen II remedies this).

The Bottom Line
Hexen is one of those games that can baffle people if they have no RPG experience, even repel them. The game is a masterpiece, and plays like a light, fun hack'n'slash adventure. If you're used to D&D and similar roleplaying games, that is. To folks who have never played an AD&D RPG (or anything similar), the puzzles might be frustrating, and of course the game requires the player to actually think, unlike point-and-shoot games where the most difficulty would be gathering ammo or unlocking a door/switch/lift/elevator with a key that has to be wrestled from an enemy (or mob).

Hexen is really more complex, but not by much. There're many items (such as the Chaos Device - emergency teleport; Discs of Repulsion - pushing wave generators; Quartz Flasks - 25 health point restorers) which transform the game from a simple shooter into a strategic delight, both for co-op and deathmatch. Deathmatch simply isn't anywhere as simple or stupid in Hexen, where you can turn an opponent into a pig or teleport out of trouble when nearly mortally wounded. Oh, and of course any player character can fly once the Wings of Wrath are found. Different classes have different weapons and different Flechette styles, too. Flechette is the local grenade. The cleric's Flechette is a gas poison trap, the mage's is a simple timebomb, and the fighter's is a glass grenade. Some of the greatest weapons ever in a shooter are also to be found in Hexen: the Arc of Death, the Serpent Staff, and the Wraithverge.

Puzzles might seem daunting, but really they're all straightforward and there's no set way to completing them - a player is free to travel among several levels at once in a hub. Puzzles though are mostly simple "flick a switch, something happens" or "pick a key, amass a collection of keys" type, except for a few deathtraps (hint: if you fall into a chasm or well, either fly out or use the Chaos Device).

The inventory and playerclasses' unique abilities make Hexen stand out among shooters. Really it's a masterpiece, the game never gets boring, even almost 20 years after its release.