It took about six months after the initial shareware onslaught of Doom for the clones to start appearing. Some were adequate, some were abysmal, some were really not bad at all ... that is, until Doom II came around and reminded us what a symbol of quality the id Software logo is. This has quickly turned into a recurring pattern in the fast-moving action game industry: id puts out something utterly righteous, like Heretic or the Thy Flesh Consumed level on The Ultimate Doom, and the rest of the companies struggle to catch up and maybe even come close to topping it ... and then the next id game comes out and knocks everybody on their asses again.
Well, id has finally decided to put Doom-ly things behind them while they put the finishing touches on the much-anticipated Quake, but the venerable engine gets one more time in the sun with Hexen, the sequel to Heretic. Like Doom II was to Doom, Hexen is the commercial release that builds on the shareware success of Heretic. But that is where the similarity ends, my friends.
As most players will recall, while Doom II was a fantastic play, it was really just Doom with a few more monsters, an extra weapon, and lots more horrific levels. This is not a charge you can level against Hexen. The entire structure of Heretic has been reworked to add many more role-playing features, complex puzzles, and dynamic environments. Expect to have your Doom engine expectations shattered (like stained glass windows ... but I'm getting ahead of myself).
If you're actually anal enough to wonder how they can make a sequel to Heretic when you killed off the Serpent Rider bad guy, here's the story. Apparently D'Sparil was only one of three Serpent Riders, and the weakest one, at that. The other two have been off being evil in other dimensions, including Cronos, where Hexen takes place.
Heretic took place on an Elven world, but Cronos is a dimension dominated by humans. If you'll think back to your AD&D rules for a second, humans have more character-class possibilities than elves. In keeping with that, the player can choose to be a fighter, a cleric or a mage. The fighter will have to muscle his way through, with only a few magic weapons to help him along. The mage hasn't got a chance in a physical battle, but he always has his trusty wand and some really powerful spells to help him along. The cleric uses both spells and strength, and while he starts at a disadvantage, he really comes into his own later in the game.
These character classes affect more than just your combat strategy. Some items actually behave differently for different classes. The most prominent example is the flechette, a flask of green liquid, which acts like a grenade for a fighter, a time bomb for a mage, and a poisonous gas bomb for a cleric. When you choose your class, it also affects which items you will find, thus giving you triple the replay value! But it is also true that roughly equivalent items are still in the same place from class to class, so it will be a lot easier for you to finish if you should change classes.
Instead of following the linear level structure of other Doom engine games, Hexen groups together five or more distinct levels and requires you to hop back and forth between them. The "exits" of the earlier games have been replaced with two-way "ethereal travel" gates. Pulling chains and pushing buttons can open door on different levels, which you must then return to so you can pull another chain, and so on. While there are certainly lots of things to kill in Hexen, you will also have to do a lot of thinking to progress to the next five- or six-level grouping.
Instead of the eight weapon choices of other Doomers, there are only four weapons that each class can use, and one of them, in each case, is a multi-part heavy duty magic item. While this does mean a total of twelve weapons, it's still a little disappointing to not have all that variety at hand. The environments can also be considerably more dangerous for the player since you actually take damage by falling from heights! There are lots of locations where the player can't possibly survive falling off the path. This is the time to take the "look down" and "jump" controls seriously!
The environment is also far more dynamic than its predecessors. Dead leaves blow along the ground. Mist floats in the air. Stained glass windows shatter into pieces, revealing secret rooms. Doors don't just rise, they swing open or they revolve. When a button is pressed, it can affect many things in the same area, and they happen one after the other, with lots of noise letting you know that things haven't stopped moving yet!
Speaking of noise, one of the most frequently praised aspects of Heretic was the careful placement of sounds for maximum fright value. While in the Doom games, a monster's sound reaches out to a certain radius, letting you know where it is, in Heretic many of the sounds were actually placed away from their sources just to freak you out. The sounds have actually gotten scarier in Hexen, but we may have also reached the overkill level on their placement. There are so many different noises going on at any given place that it's almost impossible to get any strategic help from them at all. It's more common for a great deal of noise to fill an empty room than for the sounds to be a useful cue to what's coming up behind you.
While I'm glad that the id team released Hexen so quickly, one of the areas where it's definitely going to need some work is the multiplayer mode. It's true that Deathmatch develops some really interesting aspects when you can freeze your opponent and shatter him into pieces, or watch him burn to a crisp, but the network mode severely slows down gameplay. We played three-player on an IPX setup with P-60's, and were definitely hampered by hiccuping action. I'm sure id will patch this problem before too long.
But as a one-player game, Hexen wins the prize as the most frightening game I've ever played. The suspense and crafty level design really keep the player on the edge of his seat. This is a fitting and powerful last chapter in the story of the most popular computer game ever.
