Heretic

The Good
By December of 1994 we already had a legendary FPS game called "Doom", and a great sequel to it. It seemed as if like "what more did a gamer need back then?". But then a bit later after the release of Doom 2, Heretic was released, as a new game with a modified version of the Doom engine, bunch of new ideas and, most importantly, lots of monsters to shoot at.

Even after the first Doom, Heretic's visual look isn't too impressive, in fact, Doom's animation looked a lot more serious and gory than Heretic's cartoonish animation. However, Heretic had some really good improvements in its engine. Besides little things like when you jump in the water a wet splat is made, Heretic was the first game ever to include in it self a feature of looking up and down. Again however, the Doom engine didn't handle that exactly like it should have because of its 2D levels, the first games which included a "real up and down looking" weren't released until 1995. As for some other notes about the graphics, for the most part the monsters, levels and weapons look quite beautiful and descent, so the visual look is quite positive.

As for the sound, this is where Heretic kills Doom by being serious. Though using fictional and fantasy based weapons, they make more realistic sounds than those from Doom, monsters in Heretic also sound creepier than in Doom, the soundtrack is also pretty descent, however by the most part, not so memorable like Doom's soundtrack. Heretic also included some sound effects of water drops falling from the ceiling, creating an atmosphere which is a lot more creepier than the one in Doom.

Now for the gameplay. The game has some new really original ideas in its table. First being the introduction of the inventory, where you can carry portable items with you and use them whenever you want. It included in itself some really cool power-ups, like the Morph Ovum, which allowed you to turn enemies in to chickens, or the Tome of Power, which gave your weapons a more powerful secondary fire. Heretic is also the first FPS game which allowed you to fly, though it didn't have the ability to jump. Now i should talk about the goodness of the gameplay itself, but from here on, only the flaws of the game begin.

The Bad
Though it did introduce some new original ideas to the table of the gaming world, Heretic is a serious copycat of Doom in a lot of aspects. First off - look at the weapons list. Didn't get me? Okay, now compare the weapons from Heretic to the ones from Doom. Get me now? Every weapons is basically an analogue to a gun from Doom. The weapons aren't the only thing, most of the items are just ripped off from Doom, even some enemies. The best example is the Maulotaur, he looks almost like Doom's Cyberdemon, he is just as big, and like the Cybbie, is the boss of the second episode. And while the storyline is quite different from Doom, like in the last one, you also take a visit to Hell while you progress through the game. So in conclusion, Heretic's main flaw is that it is a really big clone of Doom.

The Bottom Line
Those who happened to not play Doom may find Heretic the "best game ever". As for most gamers who did play Doom, i can describe this game with the following sentence: "If you're looking for a Doom clone or mod with a medieval scenery, you'll find Heretic a masterpiece, if you wan't a really original game created with the Doom engine, you'll find Heretic average at best".

The Good
Its Doom in a fantasy universe!! This is the first of the so-called "Doom Clones" I've played that I thought came very close to mimmicking Doom's feel when it comes to running around slaughtering hordes of monsters. I guess that given the engine this shouldn't be surprising. I thought the inventory and the ability to look up and down and to fly added a LOT to the genre. Some of the powerups like the Morph Ovum (a.k.a. the Chikennator) were very inventive. The Tome of Power, being much more than a simple damage amplifier, effectively DOUBLES the number of weapons!

The level design was also a step up from most FPS's of the time. Where other games would send you into military base after military base after prison after millitary base, Heretic had castles, cathedrals, towns, and caves. The music is pretty good, by MIDI standards, and provides the perfect mood for the game.

I personally really liked the graphics. I think the complaints some people have in this area stem from the fact that the Doom engine wasn't made specifically for large open spaces, and Heretic has a lot more of these the Doom.

The Bad
This was before mouse-look, so in order too look up and down you had to use the keyboard. The un-powered weapons bear an uncanny resemblence, in use if not in look, to Doom's arsenal. Eventually the game becomes repetitive, especially by the fourth and fifth episode where no new monsters, weapons, or items are introduced.

The Bottom Line
If you like Doom, you'll like Heretic. If you like Doom and are a fantasy buff, you owe it to yourself to get this game.

The Good
Heretic was no doubt the product of something thinking "hey, Doom has lots of fans, high fantasy has lots of fans, so why don't we..." The end product is something you can either buy because you're casually interested or dismiss it out of hand: fantasy-themed Doom. It has good production values and solid gameplay, but it's just too derivative in a market saturated with similar games to compel your attention either way.

Heretic's basic premise isn't exactly a recipe for disaster; quite the contrary. This was 1994, and fantasy themed games were pretty much the territory of RPGs, adventure games, and hack'n'slash Gauntlet clones. Being able to travel around medieval villages and castles in full 3D must have seemed like a pretty sweet deal at the time. After selecting an episode and difficulty level (you have choices like "Bringeth them oneth" and "Thou art a smite-meister") you're ready to play.

The interface, menu system, etc is exactly like Doom's, so Heretic's ambitions are obvious from the beginning. In much the same way, gameplay doesn't differ much from its predecessor. Still, there are a few small updates that make stale gameplay a bit more interesting.

Some enemies are invulnerable to certain types of weapons, meaning you have to swap weapons around a fair bit and can't just cruise through the entire game using one weapon almost exclusively. Since the game allows you to look up and down you can now accurately aim at enemies standing above or below you, rather than shooting blindly in horizontal alignment and hoping your shots hit. Heretic features ambient sounds (clanking chains and mad laughter in dungeons, bird chirps and flowing water in the countryside), which improves the atmosphere and helps it feel more like a cohesive world.

You also get "tomes of power" which when equipped dramatically improve your firepower. This isn't merely a "4x damage" boost, but drastically changes the way your weapons work. Your hellstaff will now fire target-seeking missiles, your gauntlets suck life out of an enemy and add it to your hitpoints, etc. This is a really cool idea for a powerup and one of the things I wish we saw more often in FPS games.

There's a slightly upgraded version of the Doom engine on display here. We get to see things like sliding sectors (useful for things like a flowing river), the ability to look up and down, transparency (when you use an invisibility potion your hand on the screen becomes see-through, nice touch), and most impressively the ability to fly. This is a really fun enhancement and means that if you're surrounded by hordes of enemies you can often wing your way to safety. The places where you can fly are tightly-controlled, so you can't abuse it at your leisure like you could the jetpack in Duke Nukem 3D. The game doesn't let you jump, but I guess you can't have everything.

But by far the biggest gameplay improvement in Heretic is the inclusion of an inventory. In Doom, when you picked up a powerup it would instantly get used and last for a short amount of time before expiring. This is an anachronism in PC gaming that should have been left at the arcades. In Heretic you have an actual inventory system where you can pick up items and activate them at your leisure. While the controls for this aren't as user-friendly as they could be (you must use [ and ] to cycle through the inventory, enter to equip it to the current slot, and keypad enter to actually use it) the inventory system completely changes gameplay and turns the game into a much smarter and more complex experience (do I use my invulnerability ring now, or save it for later?) Don't expect there to be inventory grids or combos or anything like that, Heretic just isn't that type of game.

The Bad
That's it!

Seriously, other than the few enhancements I mentioned above the game is nothing more than Doom in medieval dress. In a market filled with Doom clones and assorted knockoffs (at least some of which didn't suck completely) you could argue that the entire game was redundant from the get-go. It's the sort of thing you'd expect a team of semi-professional modders to create and upload on a BBS for a modest $15 registration fee, let alone put in a box and sell for $60. It has sufficient production values to consider itself a big commercial release, but underneath the glitz it's just another mediocre Doom clone: pointless then and even more so now.

Gameplay is not merely similar to Doom's but is almost completely identical. Go find keys! And flip switches! And navigate endless mazes when the designers run out ideas! Level design is decent, but never approaches the genius of the original Doom or even of Rise of the Triad. Doom and Rise of the Triad have actual levels with recognisable themes and motifs. What does Heretic have? A bunch of random keyhunts in mazes, that's what.

I take major beef with the weapons in Heretic. To state things plainly, they're complete ripoffs. You have a quarterstaff (exactly like Doom's fists), lighting-zapping gauntlets (exactly like Doom's chainsaw, including how it "locks on" to a target and jerks the screen around), an ethereal crossbow (a fantasy-themed shotgun), "The Dragon Claw" (a retarded excuse for a chaingun), etc. Other than the Firemace, there's not a single weapon here that isn't lifted straight out of Doom. When you create a clone of an existing game the whole point is to give the player some new stuff to mess around with, in the hopes that he doesn't realise he's playing a clone. The "powered up" versions of each weapons are neat, but tomes of power are hard to come by and you'll seldom get the chance to see them. Also, why is it that all the weapons are magical? Would it have killed them to include some REAL medieval weapons, like swords and longbows and stuff?

Heretic's monsters are a generic assortment of zombies, undead knights, gargoyles, etc. Also they have WAY too much HP in comparison with your weapon damage, with the result that you have to battle proverbial meat shields that can kill you in 2-3 hits but can take dozens of shots themselves before they go down. Killing groups of enemies is a real pain, not so much because it's difficult but because you simply waste too much ammo.

On a minor quibbling note: the inventory system is cool but also unbalances gameplay. All the bosses suddenly become complete pushovers since you can hoard up your invulnerability powerups during the previous levels (the game lets you carry them on) and cruise through all the boss fights without taking a scratch.

The Bottom Line
Heretic has solid gameplay and good production values...but what's the use? It's like they took Doom, slapped new graphics on everything, tweaked a few things, and re-sold it as an entirely new game. Now don't get me wrong, there are people out there who would enjoy the hell out of a game like Heretic. However, the fact remains that there's nothing here you haven't seen in Doom. If all games were as ambitious as Heretic we might still be playing Pong.

My advice? Get one of the later iterations of the Heretic series like Heretic 2 or Hexen, games that actually do something with the FPS formula. Regard Heretic itself as merely another clone of one of the most cloned-to-death games in existence.