Review

Is Heretic 2 fun? As always, it depends on you. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't (and won't) lavish the kind of praise on it that it garnered when it was released. It ultimately provides a fairly anemic single player experience. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. If the issue was just the brevity, indeed it wouldn't be a bad thing. How many action games do you know of that you can jump into and complete in a day? Rather, how many do you know of that you could complete in a day and are worth playing? I don't know of many besides Heretic 2. There's a certain unique brand of fondness for a game that stems only from playing and completing it multiple times. I know that's one of the reasons why I not only still have but also still play some of the original 8bit Nintendo games. Few PC games have fostered that particular fondness in me. And let's face it, many shooters cross that line between being 'epic' and 'toilsome', where the fun either gets stretched too thin or is delivered in insufficient doses. But I'm rambling off topic, because I'm not going to laud Heretic 2 as a game whose single-player experience breeds the kind of affection that I described. The reason that it won't is because brevity in fact isn't the only issue. The single-player experience is both short and thin.

The world of Parthoris should be a lot more exciting than this. The stage is set with fabulous rhetoric about a plague upon the land, a land whose hero has just returned from a cursed banishment, and the legend of an ancient race of powerful magicians who gifted the inhabitants of Parthoris with artifacts and knowledge before disappearing. The potential of all of this great background material is left unfulfilled. The game plays out in a very dry, quiet manner, with just a handful of scripted scenes, despite the fact that there was obviously powerful scripting capability in the engine (the Quake 2 engine). To add to the disappointment, the different cultures and races described in the manual add up to little more than window dressing in the game, through which you just wade indiscriminately. That's not to imply that you actually do much wading, as the levels are actually sparsely populated. This would be just dandy if the AI was more challenging, and you actually had an incentive to rely on your melee staff skills to a greater degree. Before I jump to that topic, though, let me wrap up the first point I was making which is that the game doesn't manifest its story in a very engaging way. This leaves a more sour taste than you might expect for an action game because Raven seems to have some really great stuff with which to work. Compare this to most of the id games, for example. I never cared much that DooM I/II or Quake didn't manifest their story well, because frankly there wasn't any story, there was just an excuse to get you in there shooting stuff. And that was just fine because there was lots of shooting and it was good. Heretic 2 doesn't offer up the kind of over-the-top quantity carnage of the id games, and without it there's the expectation that the game will be more intellectually engaging. Raven Software has made a career of taking id's technology and making better games with it than id. With Heretic 2, unfortunately, they seem to have lost part of the recipe. Maybe they didn't lose it, but rather threw something out, and replaced it with an increased focus on technical aspects of the game.

Heretic 2 has some really standout technical features. The 3rd person camera control was probably one of the most sophisticated interface mechanisms to go into a game up to that time. The degree with which you can control Corvis is unparalleled almost even to this day. In addition to now standard shooter controls like crouch and jump, you can creep, roll in different directions, flip, do back handsprings, mantle, and utilize the staff for a collection of unique moves. Being able to mantle is by itself almost worth the price of admission. I played Thief and System Shock 2 prior to Heretic 2, and fell in love with mantling immediately. Any action game that doesn't let you mantle automatically gets 10 demerits, as far as I'm concerned.

In addition to the sterling interface, Heretic 2 sports some of the most entertaining weapon/spell effects that I've seen. For every offensive and defensive element, there is an additional powered-up version that manifests when using the Tome of Power. The cumulative effect is quite literally a fireworks show. My personal favorite is the powered-up storm bow because it addition to its devastating area effect, the accompanying audio has some delicious bass. Part of what makes multiplayer so much fun in Heretic 2 is the kaleidoscope of mayhem that erupts, combining noxious storm clouds, explosive phoenix arrows, fiery blade staves, glowing meteors, and more.

So to tie this back to what I was saying, there are some really awesome and unique technical pieces to Heretic 2. This is in marked contrast to Raven's typical efforts, which eschew technical differentiation in favor of immersion, purposeful gameplay, and just plain fun. These are all things in which the single player experience for Heretic 2 is lacking. You get this phenomenal interface and killer spells and weapons, and you never really get to flex their muscles. Multiplayer, however, is another story altogether.

Multiplayer in Heretic 2 is more fun than I've had in a long time. It provides the perfect venue for the strong technical aspects of the game. The biggest problem with single player is that the AI just isn't very challenging, and so most of the cool capabilities of your avatar go unexercised. The tables are turned, however, when you're dropped into a map with other humans who are rolling and staff-leaping and doing flips and casting defensive spells. Multiplayer also provides the opportunity to do what just wasn't practical in single player: duel exclusively with the durhnwood staff. Bladematch has got to be one of the more unique forms of 3D combat found in a computer game (note: it ultimately suffers, though, from a lack of defensive options). Normal multiplayer, with all of the weapons and spells available, actually winds up feeling a little too much like a regular shooter because of all of the ranged weapons. I was in a number of games that degenerated into the equivalent of a rocket launcher duel using the phoenix bow.

I want to point out that a huge contributing factor to the amount of enjoyment I've gotten out of multiplayer games is the excellent attitude of the people on the servers. The gamers that I've encountered on the few open Heretic 2 servers that are still running have demonstrated better sportsmanship that any group of people that I've played with online. Just the thought of playing on an open server for Quake 3 or even UT, or God forbid Counter-Strike, makes me want to go read a book. I've had such uniformly poor experiences playing shooters online with random people that I've basically sworn off the activity as a matter of policy. Shooters are for LAN parties, where you can remind someone, physically if need be, that certain behavior just isn't appropriate. It was only in the interest of forming a complete and fair assessment of Heretic 2 that I took the plunge and played online. After having numerous rounds of decidedly positive and friendly play, I began groping for an explanation. I've decided that a big part of the reason why the Heretic 2 gamers are so much fun to play with is because Heretic 2 is essentially an abandoned game. It's over 3 years old, practically archaeological in internet time, and most action gamers have long since moved on to greener pastures. Thus, the people that you'll find on servers after 3 years are a loyal, tight-knit, breed; cut from a different stone than the average whining, cheating, gloating snothole that seems to infest every server for every game during its first year. If someone is still playing a game after several years, then it's an established hobby for them. They've invested their time in it, which is more important than their money. They've formed relationships playing it, which means they have an incentive to protect the environment of the servers. I was already committed to 'retro' gaming, and it was just frosting on the cake to learn that online play for a veteran game can rise above the inherently negative and abusive nature of anonymous multiplayer. It's an unfortunate Catch-22, though, since by the time a game ages to the point that the wheat separates from the chaff, only the wheat is left, and it is usually small in quantity. Only a kernel of the game's community persists beyond the first few years. It's a melancholy facet of computer gaming that it is so transitory.

Final Thoughts

Before I wax even more philosophic, I'll just finish this off. Heretic 2 is a lot of fun. The multiplayer experience is far and away the game's biggest value. Raven seemed to have fallen victim to the same mistake that many game developers make, a mistake that Raven appeared to have a special knack for avoiding: namely compromising the single player experience via the pursuit of technical features. Fortunately, multiplayer is a saving throw for games that make this mistake, since it can strip away the lackluster shell and let players extract genuine fun from the technical investment.

Tips

• Perhaps to make up for the poor AI behavior, you'll frequently find creatures trigger-spawned right behind you. I really hate this kind of play mechanic. This is more of a gripe than a tip, since there isn't anything you can really do about it.

• The interface can be extremely powerful, but you'll have to create a custom config file to get the most out of it. Use my config files as an example of how to program macros and use shift-states for input (links to the files are in the table to the left).

• The morph ovum spell isn't just the coolest spell in the game, it's also one of the most useful. There are only a few things that are immune to it. Be sure to have a key bound specifically to this spell and make sure it's a key that's very convenient to use (i.e. a 'reactionary' key). I also highly recommend that you have a convenient key bound specifically to the staff. I got quite a bit of mileage out of using a quick morph/staff combo, particularly in multiplayer.

• Don't waste much ammo on the harpies. Wait for them to swoop down and strike at you, or try to be alert and catch them with a storm arrow before they're airborne.

• Practice all of the special staff moves. Be sure to read the readme file for the Enhancement Pack to learn about all of them.

• Yet another interface tip: Heretic 2 doesn't let you bind the mousewheel directly from the game, but it functions perfectly well if you create a macro for it. Look at my config files for an example.

• Save the armor/spirit/mana shrines for after battles, unless you're in dire need of them. In other words, if your stats aren't too bad when you see a shrine, take note of where it is, but leave it until you've cleared out the surrounding area. Also - if you see one of the 'Lungs of the Ssithra' shrines, explore before using it so that you know where you'll need it. This isn't rocket science, just elementary FPS power-up management.

• To take screenshot, put bind n "screenshot" in the heretic2/base/user.cfg file, where 'n' is your key of choice.