Hexen: Beyond Heretic

Description

Hexen is the sequel to Heretic. While the Heretic was destroying D'Sparil, the other two Serpent Riders have come to your dimension and slaughtered everyone. Or so they thought. Three humans have managed to escape with their lives and now seek vengeance against the Serpent Rider Korax who remains in their world.

Like Heretic, Hexen is a fantasy game based on an enhanced DOOM engine. All of Heretic's innovations like vertical looking, flying, and the inventory system have been carried over. The new major changes this time around are three characters for the player to choose from and the level hub system. The characters are the Fighter, the Cleric, and the Mage. Each one has four unique weapons and different levels of speed and armor.

The hub system steps away from the traditional "single levels stringed along into episodes" system which had been carried over into the FPS genre from sidescrollers and made popular by Wolfenstein 3D. In Hexen's hub system each episode is still made up of interconnected levels, but most of the levels are connected to a single "hub" level through portals. There are also portals between some of the "spoke" levels. Many of the puzzles in Hexen require travel back and forth between different levels.

Other innovations in Hexen included weather effects, jumping, earth-quakes, and destructible objects such as trees and vases.

Alternate Titles

• "Hexen 95" -- Windows re-release title
• "Hexen" -- Console title
• "Heretic 2" -- Working title

Part of the Following Groups

• 3D Engine: id Tech 1
• Games featuring auto-mapping
• Heretic and Hexen series

Merchant Title Platform Price   Hexen Nintendo 64 $0.80   Hexen PlayStation     HEXEN BEYOND HERETIC Windows $0.95   Hexen: Beyond Heretic     Please select your country: United States Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Malaysia Malta Mexico The Netherlands New Zealand Norway Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom Uruguay Other Worldwide Not an American user?

User Reviews

(Review from 1995) Hexen is more than just a "Doom Clone" and is worth trying.	DOS	Kadath Bird (98)
Hexen is an excellent shooter that's just not for everyone.	DOS	WJAndrews (32)
Enormous switch hunt in scary castles.	DOS	Gofermajster (421)
True to its name in many ways... frustrating, somewhat fun.	DOS	ShadowShrike (313)
Pushing the limits of id Tech 1, one sector at a time.	DOS	Christopher Charabaruk (102)

The Press Says

High Score	DOS	Apr, 1996	5 out of 5	100
Joystick	DOS	Nov, 1995	90 out of 100	90
PC Gamer	DOS	Feb, 1996	85 out of 100	85
PC Player (Denmark)	DOS	1996	85 out of 100	85
Mac Gamer	Macintosh	Sep 20, 2002	80 out of 100	80
Gamezilla	PlayStation	1997	74 out of 100	74
GameSpot	DOS	May 01, 1996	6.5 out of 10	65
Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM)	SEGA Saturn	Mar, 1997	5.1 out of 10	51
GameSpot	SEGA Saturn	Apr 29, 1997	4.9 out of 10	49
GameSpot	PlayStation	Jul 24, 1997	3.3 out of 10	33

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Trivia

The Steam download version of the game is listed as Windows 2000/XP/Vista platform because the executables are modified to use a DOSBox variant (v 0.70); additionally the traditional setup.exe is missing.

It is confirmed that neither Valve or id Software contacted the DOSBox project staff and initially the game didn't includes the TXT files that must be present under the GPL license (so they failed to fulfill 2 points of the GPL license).

Two days after the launch, there was an update that includes COPYING, AUTHORS and THANKS.txt of the DOSBox 0.71.