Heretic II

The Good
Lots of action comes packed in this simple yet satisfying offering from Raven. Heretic 2 picks up after the end of the original Heretic: you kill the serpent rider but get whisked away to some weird dimension, never to be seen again. By sheer luck, you find a way to return to your plane yet once you get there the elven town you called home lies infested by a strange plague of magical origins. Being the only one uninfected it is up to you to save the world, kill the bad guy, restore democracy and get the girl. Well, I made some of that up, but you get the idea right? A serviceable standard action game plot that is moved along by engine-rendered cutscenes as you go figuring out what the heck is going on around you.

In between you get to fight against tons of excellently designed fantasy creatures with an arsenal of magical weapons and spells that make full use of the engine's lightning features and spill forth a pletora of colorful lights and effects. Truly the guys at Raven knew how to exploit the engine to the max, and included all sorts of details like the aforementioned spell effects, great animations and dead on control thanks to the use of the standard fps control scheme.

Furthermore, the guys at Raven provided their usual range of excellent level designs which understood that this was a 3rd person game and offered big areas without maze-like constructs, a simple concept that some people still don't get (check out American McGee's Alice to see what I'm talking about), plus: they didn't have any jumping puzzles!!

The Bad
Follows the time-honored Raven tradition of being a simple, short game. And that may rub some people the wrong way...

I am also not fond of "puzzle-bosses"...

The Bottom Line
A great action title from the masters at Raven, plenty of good fantasy action for your pc. Not completely braindead to be a gore-fest, yet simple enough to keep the action up and the excitement going with interesting gameplay, locations and action sequences. Those few that managed to get a taste of this title will remember it fondly, not as the end-all-be-all game of the century, but as another remarkably fun and entertaining Raven game.

Plus it can be pretty funny to try on deathmatch!! All that magic whiz-bang going around makes for quite a trippy experience!