Most computer gamers are pretty familiar with the standard deep, dark dungeon setting: rough stone walls, creepy sounds, and lots of ugly critters to kill or be killed by. While there are a few adventure games that take place in a scenario like this, you'll usually encounter it either in a role-playing game or a first-person perspective action shooter. Capstone's Witchaven manages an effective blend of these two genres and also has creepy atmosphere in spades.
On the surface, Witchaven looks like a very sharp Heretic clone. The player makes his way through the dark recesses of a demon-possessed castle, hacking and slashing through hordes of monsters as he goes along. The monsters are all digitized from clay models, and they look fantastic (especially in SVGA). The player is represented by a pair of digitized gauntlets brandishing the appropriate weapon.
One of the first unusual things you'll notice is that the vast majority of the combat is hand-to-hand, at least on the earlier levels. The current crop of action games is very dependent on missile weapons, and they've come up with all sorts of neat ways for things to explode against a wall. But Witchaven gives you an arsenal straight out of AD&D: broadswords, morning stars, halberds and pike axes! Effective blade-fighting requires a completely different strategy than blasting away with a machine gun, not to mention lots of careful timing. If you just hold down the CTRL key, you're going to get trounced!
But the various blades and polearms are not the only things that call fantasy roleplaying games to mind (the non-computer-based kind, that is). Everything you kill gives you a certain amount of experience points, and when you get enough of them you go up an experience level. This means you can store more health points (which you get from health potions) and you cause more damage when you attack. When you reach a high enough level, you will be able to fight with one weapon in each hand, in sort of a medieval John Woo style.
Magic plays an important part in this world, and not just in the form of enchanted weapons. There are eight spells that the player will ultimately be able to cast. Scrolls for these spells can be found throughout the castle, but just because you find a fireball scroll doesn't mean you can immediately cast it! Once again, this is dependent on how much experience you have accumulated, and the more experienced you are, the more powerful the spell.
Magic is also present in the form of five different kinds of potions hidden around. These can be consumed at any time to make the player invisible, impervious to fire, increase health or strength, or cure poison from the spiders that wander around. There are lots of artifacts around to pick up as well, like magic rings, amulets or staffs.
The dangers throughout are many and varied, and even if you manage to keep your health up, there's always the very distinct possibility of falling into a pit filled with spikes and watching your disembodied heart beat its last. Some creatures are fire-breathers, some spew poisonous goop, and some just want to beat up on you. To heighten the atmosphere, there are even occasional spectral faces that just pop up out of nowhere to freak you out. No, they can't hurt you, but trust me, they do their job well.
Witchaven follows the Doom Standard Interface pattern on the keyboard with a few additions like jumping and crouching. The TAB key brings up the map, which is see-through like the one in Dark Forces, but constantly rotates to keep your position always facing the top of the screen. The map can also be enlarged or shrunk on the fly.
As is all the rage these days, Witchaven can be played over a modem or network allowing as many as sixteen people to get in on the act. But while the free-for-all hack-and-slash chaos fest is an available option, I highly recommend one of the capture the flag games, especially if three or more are playing. Suddenly, there's actually a point and a way to win!
Witchaven is a lot of gruesome, scary fun, and while it will appeal somewhat to the role-players, its real audience is the action fans who are looking for a new first-person fix. The only real complaint I have is that this product need more of ...everything, really. More spells, more potions, more monsters, more weapons, more, more, more. Well, that's what sequels are for.
