Heretic/Hexen/other wads with Doom gameplay?

I'm asking if there are any wads/mods made for Heretic, Hexen or other IWADs (Strife, Chex Quest or I don't know what else) and that specially have gameplay resembling the gameplay of Doom(2) and our beloved classic-style Doom maps. I'd be interested in such. Assuming it's even possible to achieve such a thing, at least resembling Doom-like action-based gameplay somehow.

Are there / would you recommend any that at least try?

These could fit your bill. :)

In fact, some of them even include Doom monsters!

EDIT: Oh, and something for Strife too.

While not an exact match, theres also Herian 1 and 2, which is Doomguy in a laregley Heretic/Hexen themed world.

Ragnor said:

While not an exact match, theres also Herian 1 and 2, which is Doomguy in a laregley Heretic/Hexen themed world.

Also, Mordeth. :p


I didn't really like Herian2 (at least, I think it was Herian2 I tried long ago). Got memories of fighting a bunch of gargoyles with not enough ammo, and then after punching the last one out, wandering around in circles, vainly searching for a new area to access, a switch to flip, an exit, anything. I don't know whether it was something that was broken by ZDoom changes at the time or just me that sucked at playing that map, but it didn't really motivated me to find out.

Did you actually give Heretic a chance? It already feels like a Doom TC with remixed monster behavior and a hitscan shotgun. (And a stupid inventory system.) It's probably closer to the general opinion of Doom (huge hoards of monsters) than Doom itself, actually.

I guess it would be better to particularize what I'm after. Thank you for the tips, I've tried all of the mentioned. While I found some of them interesting to play (by "some of them" I mean all of them except Herian), none of them fitted my expectations. By "a Doom gameplay in other IWAD game" I mean:

1. It should preferably be for the target IWAD in its vanilla or close-to-vanilla form. Of course it's possible to include Doom resources into Heretic if your target port is ZDoom. But I'd rather like to see wads that utilize Heretic/Hexen/Strife native resources in a way that resembles Doom-like play.

2. By "Doom-like-play" I do not mean slaughtering hordes of monsters. For me, it's more about how the balance, progression and pace flows. You blast your way through monsters without needless prolongations, and explore a map for secrets if you feel like it.


Take Heretic for example. Heretic gameplay seems like "Take down these harmless monsters with your weak weapons." Really, Heretic weapons are rather underpowered in a way that it takes quite a long time to kill just a single enemy. But various powerups offer different advantages. I'd be interested how one would create Doom-action based experience using them.

But if you just fill a map with hundreds of slow-moving and low-threatening monsters, it'll be just tedious to take them down all, while the challenge will probably remain low. Unless you do it the right way, which is what I'm after.


EDIT: While also not exactly what I wanted, the starts of E1M7 and E1M9 of HYMN were quite interesting. In E1M7 you're given the Tome of Power early and the "Tomed" basic weapon feels like a surprisingly well balanced one. In E1M9, you're forced to use bombs in order to survive the initial attack. I liked these.

How much of Heretic have you played? Its extremely Doom-like to me, and it has the same episodic progression, with more powerful monsters appearing later. The only weapon I felt was weak was, naturally, the starting weapons. I find it especially annoying that the wand ammo is only used for the wand, I'm nearly always maxed out for it..

Gez: Might have been Herian 1 you were playing; its the much weaker entry. Kmexii reviewed both, reading those might help you identify which one it was.

Ragnor said:

How much of Heretic have you played? Its extremely Doom-like to me, and it has the same episodic progression, with more powerful monsters appearing later. The only weapon I felt was weak was, naturally, the starting weapons. I find it especially annoying that the wand ammo is only used for the wand, I'm nearly always maxed out for it..

I played a few levels in, tried beginnings of all episodes, cheated around in ZDoom to get familiar with all monsters and weapons, and tried out a few mods like HYMN and those linked by FTuma. I think I have to persist on what I've said - I imagine Doom's pace another way.

Also see my EDIT in the previous post.

The Curse of D'Sparil and Hordes of Chaos games are by no means 'easy' or full of 'harmless monsters' IMO, but maybe try Icebound or Dark Deity's Bastion? I'm not sure these will do the trick given nothing so far has, but they're worth mentioning. It's a bit hard to get true to form 'Doom gameplay' in Heretic with some of the game's altered dynamics, perhaps.

I am certainly thankful for all the wads you mention, I'm glad I could try them out. Wads that anyhow try to resemble Doom interest me. I realize perfection is impossible here.

And actually the Icebound was pretty good as far as I got, very resembling Lutz's other Doom works. The initial open area (EDIT:) in Bastion felt quite Doomy too, as some known Doom maps use similar setup. These ways to encourage challenge and fast pace are the right in my opinion. Thanks for this tip!

The problem I got with Curse of D'Sparil and the others is that it was unnecessarily tedious to take down ALL the monsters. I also don't like SSG-ing 30+ hellknights in a row in Doom.

EDIT: I've found Icebound even though your link was incorrect, and in the second sentence I was talking about the Bastion already.

Found accidental URL mistake in Icebound link, fixed. Glad I could find one you liked. :)

Hordes of Chaos and D'Sparil are both gentler on a lower difficulty, maybe try that (especially HoC is much less slaughtery). Bastion I mentioned because it's something different, an adventure/puzzle as much as being a map.

By the way Chris Lutz has two older works for Heretic as well.

Keep in mind you can only carry one of each artifact (and no Wings of Wrath) between levels, so use things like time bombs and Tomes of Power as soon as you see a good situation. Tomed, Heretic's weapons do a lot more damage than Doom's.

You could always try the Doom Weapons in Heretic weapons mod. It basically adds the Doom weapons and items to the Heretic game. That way at least you get to use more powerful weapons but in a different world. :)

I kinda feel where the OP is coming from. Hexen actually used to be my favorite of the Doom Engine games, followed by Heretic, and then Doom. The past couple years, though, I've been playing so many Doom megawads that going back to Heretic/Hexen has been difficult, just because of the change of pace. The run-and-gun franticness of Doom that I love so much just isn't there.

I'd honestly love a Hexen WAD that pretty much played like Hexen without the totally unintuitive switch hunts. I never beat Hexen's first hub because I eventually just couldn't figure out what to do next. Something a little more straightforward or that at least offered better clues would be great.