Heretic Is The FPS That Gandalf Would Play. Nuff Said.
Heretic. In the gaming world, this name makes me think of one of the greatest FPS games ever along side Doom. I hear tale that some who do or did know of it have often knocked it off as either a Doom clone or rip-off. I won't be having that. It is no such thing! It is in fact a first person shooting medieval game based off of the Doom engine but now with some interesting little features and true fast and frantic action.
Times are not good for the Sidhe, a race of elves who have been condemned by the three serpent riders as heretics. And so, the serpent riders opened up the earth and spewed forth the mighty beasts and undead upon them, killing nearly every last one. You, Corvus, are one of the last remaining sidhe. But rather than cowering in the shadows, you thirst for revenge. You want nothing more than to see D'sparil, the serpent rider who remained in your world, bleed to death. Well, that was a nice refreshing change to the usual save the world. Sure, revenge is a normal plot these days for games, but it was a lot different to what Doom's story was. And the way the official outlining of the story was written was fantastic! First Prize!
Graphics : Overall the graphics are good. The texturing is superb and the enemies and weapons look cool. If you like variety though, you'll probably tire of seeing so many golems, gargoyles and many an undead warrior. Well, I'm not to overly picky so it didn't worry me all that much. The level designs are great too. Especially episode one, where every level actually feels like a real place. If it's a dungeon, it'll look and feel like you're in one, and so forth. Most every other level is good too, with an Ultimate Doom feel to them. So you know what kind of place they're meant to be. After that though, they basically feel like, yeah, Doom like levels.
Sound : Superb, I say. As you traverse through the levels, you'll often randomly hear an ambient sound from time to time, like the sound of dripping water or an evil laugh. Nice touch. The enemies sound pretty cool. Gargoyles with their high pitched shrieking laughter, undead warriors with their ghostly calls and so forth. The weapons are nice too. While they get the job done, they seem to lack that “oomph” that the doom weapons have. But overall the sound is of awesome quality. The music is nice too. It's the usual touch of medieval sounds at a high and loud pace to keep up with the action going on. Very nice.
Gameplay : At the very core, it's a lot like Doom. You scour through levels, picking up weapons, ammo and keys and blowing the hell out of anything that moves. But beyond that, it starts to differ. First, the weapons are unlike any other game during its day –save for the sequel Hexen. Instead of a pistol, you start off with an elven wand, a weak pistol like firing weapon. But of course, the spoils of war for you to seek out include many other weapons. Ethereal crossbows, Hellstaffs and Dragon Claws are amongst the other unique weapons found in this medieval world. Like Doom, Heretic also had items you could pick up and use. Some similar like shadowspheres, some unlike being that of quartz flasks (like a med kit) or the wings of wrath! Ahhh, flying is fun. Now you might be thinking new items? So what? How does the idea of being able to store them sound? Don't need to use those wings yet? You can use them later! Thought you'd like that.
The enemy set fits in well of course. There's not much variety though. It starts off in Episode one with maybe 4 actual enemy types to see, and often having blurred variations of them too. Like gargoyles also being fire gargoyles at times (they just throw fireballs at you), or golems being either a melee fighter or throwing homing nitro skulls at you. And for each episode? Maybe one or two new enemies. Not much variation is there? I can picture some of you being unimpressed by all of this.
Despite all that it's still fairly challenging, especially when places and ambushes are encountered the first time. Oh yes, except lots of resentment whenever you pick up a key. The monsters hate that. And for each episode, it really amps up the challenge. Still, it's nice to know that the highest made difficulty isn't quite like say nightmare for Doom. Isn't it nice to know they don't respawn here?
I wouldn't say there's much to do after beating all the episodes sadly. You can go and find new levels but there isn't much, if anything, for mods or new episodes other than the expansion pack. What a shame, such a nice game too.