HacX

The Good
Some good fun to be had here with classic FPS gameplay

Some interesting ideas and some good graphics

The Bad
Sadly, this game was released as an unfinished product, and it shows in various parts of the game

Nonsensical ending, as the game was originally going to feature more levels than the current release

The Bottom Line
This could very well be the least known video game using the doom engine that doesn't feature actual doom characters. And I can understand why: It came out in 1997, 4 years later the release of Doom and with competitors such as Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, this game simply had no possibility to achieve success. But even so, there's a lot of things to like here. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of things to dislike.

The first thing that I'd like to mention is that even though other games such as Heretic, Hexen and Strife used a modified version of the doom engine source code, this one doesn't. Instead, this game uses a different method to change the gameplay, which is called DeHackED. For those unfamiliar with it, it is an old tool that was used to reverse-engineer the game and allowed to alter the gameplay among other things. Thanks to DeHackED, this game has a number of new features, and some of the enemy behaviours are significantly different than the original Doom enemies, making this one feel fresh enough. They also introduced new things such as destructible glasses and objects (amazing what you can do by just reverse-engineering the game!) but unfortunately there's no jumping, unlike in Strife. This can be pretty painful at times since there's sections where they almost put it in your face you can't jump. Kinda like some sections in Doom 2 itself, to be honest. (Map07 anyone?)

The whole premise and setting are vastly different from Doom. This is set in a cyberpunk world in which mutants are attempting to take over after some secret government experiments. You're a hacker that found out about all of this and your mission is to, well, blast everything in your path and put an end to the mutants' threat.

An interesting, but unfortunately not well executed feature in this game is the presence of Cyberspace, something that is absent in every other doom-engine game. To make it short, in some levels you actually have to enter a computer. The computer levels look fairly different than the regular ones and they also have different enemies and hazards, offering an interesting twist to the gameplay. The bad part about this is that I never really liked these levels because, while the abstract theme can be likable at times, most of them just do not play well at all, and some also look pretty bad. The concept was good but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Even some of the regular levels are a hit or miss... There's some really good ones, like the level set in Japan with the river and the underwater section with sharks. That one played really well and was a lot of fun on multiplayer. However other levels just aren't as good, especially the later ones that just do not make any sense. It, again, shows that this game was released as an unfinished product. I understand they were in a rush since it was 1997, but they should have began work on this game sooner.

On the graphical side, there's, yet again, good things and bad things. I can safely say that some of the enemies here are pretty much as good as the baddies seen in Doom. The various robots and some of the mutants are pretty good, especially the Monstruct that is like the Mancubus' older brother, armed with two photon cannons and a machine gun on its head. However not all of the enemies look good: one of the cyborgs in particular is so unfinished it lacks most of its frames and uses sounds from the original Doom 2, as well as the same attack (Pain elemental). In some levels there were even absolutely invisible enemies, that are basically enemies from doom 2 without graphics: they were going to include them at one point or another, but as I said, the game was released as an unfinished product, sooo...

The weapons are you standard fare, and most of them behave similarly to their doom counterparts, except they're stronger. They could have been way more "unique" (especially the Nuker which is basically a faster BFG) but there's nothing to truly dislike here. I guess it's because it was released as an unfin---- Okay okay okay, I know you're tired of hearing that now, I'll stop. :(

The music was decent MIDI stuff, not as good as the doom soundtrack but still not bad.

The entire game is just a mixed bag, due to the fact it was released as an unfinished product. Some of the graphics, levels and gameplay sections are truly great and are a great homage to Doom and its successors... While other parts of the games are really bad, and look unpolished.

Still, if you love doom then you may want to try this game after all. I found it to be very fun in online coop. So, yeah. If you absolutely love doom clones, you will like this one a bit. If you don't like them, then stay away.

Another thing I thought I'd mention is that some doom fans have contacted the authors of this game and have gained permission to develop a new version of HacX which is supposed to be like what the project would have been had it been completed before the release. I'm unsure on the status of the project, but it's worth keeping an eye on. I can assure you the ones working on it are talented mappers and artists, and will most likely not disappoint us.