Hexen 2

I found Hexen 2 in the HMV sale for £2.99 (around $4.78), so of course I bought it :)

All I can say is, I hope Doom is better translated to a true 3D, polygonal engine than Hexen was.

In Hexen 2, many of the enemies look like crap, some of the level design is terrible, the game is way too short, there are way too many cryptic puzzles (and apparent dead ends to go with them), there are too few weapons (four per character, for christsakes), and the music is for the most part just remixed Hexen music.

The story is messed up too. Some of the stuff in-game agrees with the manual that this is on some other world, but other times it talks about things on earth (like Egypt in the egyptian themed levels).

Having said that, they have made pretty good use of the engine (which is based off the Quake 1 engine), and it has plenty of nice looking textures for each of the themes (medieval, aztec, egyptian, and greek/roman).

My experience with Hexen2 was very different from yours. I enjoyed the game thoroughly, and felt it was waaaay better than Quake (on whose engine H2 was built, as you pointed out). I'm with you on the graphics, which were spectacular. (In fact I enjoyed them so much that I created a 3-level set for DooM2 based on Hexen2 textures. Used your textures in Hex2tex.wad, as a matter of fact. Thanks.) But I don't agree that the enemy models were crap, nor that the game was too short. As for the weapons, 4 weapons are what each of the characters in the original Hexen have, so there is some consistency.

I agree that it's heavy on the puzzles, but that is consistent with the original Hexen. (As a result I had to rely heavily on a walkthrough that I downloaded. Ain't cheatin' fun?!!!)

But overall, it is probably the best second generation FPS that I've played (Quake, SiN, Requiem, etc. are others I consider 2nd generation).

Yeah, I agree, us gamers need lots of cool toys to play with or we get bored. Doom2 has 9 weapons and I got bored with them pretty quick.
4 weapons per character is not enough, it would take around 20 weaps that any character can use to make me happy (maybe they are proficient with some of them and shoot facter/more damage or something).

The magic guy really dissappointed me! he only has a few spells to work with and I was expecting a whole damned spellbook! (equivalent to 15 weapons/spells).

It only took the shareware demo to piss me off! This is why I didn't like hexen either

I loved Hexen 2 and (almost) all the maps in it. This is, of course, right when it came out and not 2-3 years, so my standards have upped since then. But I think I mentioned before, I love playing the first episode, because you can practically destroy everything in them. I play for the destruction of things, not the actual amount of enemies. The later levels look pretty good I think. I agree it wasn't as good as Heretic or Hexen but it did some good stuff. I still didn't get what lasers were doing in it, but oh well...

ReX said:

My experience with Hexen2 was very different from yours. I enjoyed the game thoroughly, and felt it was waaaay better than Quake (on whose engine H2 was built, as you pointed out). I'm with you on the graphics, which were spectacular. (In fact I enjoyed them so much that I created a 3-level set for DooM2 based on Hexen2 textures. Used your textures in Hex2tex.wad, as a matter of fact. Thanks.) But I don't agree that the enemy models were crap, nor that the game was too short. As for the weapons, 4 weapons are what each of the characters in the original Hexen have, so there is some consistency.

I agree that it's heavy on the puzzles, but that is consistent with the original Hexen. (As a result I had to rely heavily on a walkthrough that I downloaded. Ain't cheatin' fun?!!!)

But overall, it is probably the best second generation FPS that I've played (Quake, SiN, Requiem, etc. are others I consider 2nd generation).

I will buy it in the next week !

What is your quote of it ?
to 0% to 100% ?

I'd say 80%.

(I know you weren't asking me but there you go anyways.)

When i first played it on a 133 the loading times between levels were painfull, the enemies are really dumb and few and far between. It was a pretty bland affair IMHO

Hexen 2 isn't so bad after all... and those hand-drawed monsters in html manual are so fucking cool !

NiGHTMARE said:

All I can say is, I hope Doom is better translated to a true 3D, polygonal engine than Hexen was.

Forgive me if I get the dates wrong, but you'll get my drift...

Hexen II (1997) - Hexen I (1995) = 2 years
Doom 3 (2002) - Doom 1 (1993) = 9 years

Doom 1 (1993) - 9yrs = 1984
= Pacman in 16 colours on a 200 pixel wide screen

In other words... I don't think the technology is likely to be the problem when we finally get to put Doom and Doom3 side-by-side for that kind of direct comparison.