ITS HERE!! Yes that's right Heretic2 has finally arrived. Like others I have spent many  late night conversations reminiscing of the old days of gaming where a game would fit on 6 floppy disks and keep you mesmerized for months, and months. But let's get real  right? This is the turn of the century, and games are super huge. They immerse the gamer into new vibrant worlds and make generals out of the meekest of players. They bring us into the fold with revivals of old classic games like Heretic. Personally I was never as large a fan of Doom/Doom2 (don't spam me) as I was a fan of Heretic. The mystical and magical premise behind Heretic made me melt my modem down many a night DM'g it with my local Heretic junkies.  What else was there to do anyhow...play Commander Keen?

Today at approximately 1:15am MST my long awaited gaming dream was released to the masses in the form of a 40mb demo. First of all I would like to take this time to express my disappointment in all that hung out with us in #Heretic2 on 3DNets IRC(Internet relay Chat) server with the exception of a few. Come on guys it was a free demo, and they wanted to make sure that all the powers that be had their copies at the same time before dropping their pants to the world. Wouldn't you like to have your butt all polished and stuff too if it was gonna be hung out for the world to see? I know that mine would be!  The blatant disrespect for the people at Raven downright shocked me. I was surprised that they even released it and didn't just say -
"To hell with them the ungrateful......(get the point?)". I just had to say this before I exploded.

Eagerly I watched as my cable modem connection dredged through what seemed to be a 30kbs hell. Downloading a dream I have secretly, and publicly had for years since the release of the All time great Quake2 had me all worked up and poised for adventure. The thoughts of the visuals, and story lines as told and worked by the minds at Raven had me anticipating the many many hours of gaming frustrations and enjoyment to come. Could it really be true? YES! Heretic2 was REAL! and was ready for immediate download for our mental consumption. Would it be what was expected? Only the install shield installer knew.

WOW! Things have changed in the look. New menu layouts, cutting edge images and sounds as I went through and configured my character to suit my internal tastes. One thing that I noticed while configuring was the addition of a few keystrokes to the player movement system. keys of interest are the ACTION keys for Defend, next defense, and previous defense. As you can guess Heretic2 adds that extra level of interactivity offering the player maneuvers to help defend themselves as opposed to the tried and done method of shoot-n-run.  Another couple keys I would like to bring to your attention are the MOVEMENT
keys creep, and QuickTurn. Can I just say - "Its about bloody time!". The creep key you all familiar with Tomb Raider will recognize if not then well ever need to "creep" up to an edge and not fall off? The creep key is the key.  All other menu selections are fairly straight forward and similar including the video, and audio menus(why fix what isn't broken).

My next step was to run the tutorial to see what was new, and how the interface was designed. To my great surprise it was a 3rd person camera view like TombRaider.  Now personally I don't like the 3rd person perspective and have grown quiet fond of the 1st person genre. So much in fact I was stunned and turned off right at the get go but I didn't let that stop my adventure after all I have waited for years just even thinking that Heretic2 would be just to cool to play. One of the
things that I liked here was the simple way that it conveyed the basic movements, and tactics. Personally that pole-vault move is just simply neat! However that forward jumping flip was not as easy to master at first (14 tries-my bad or what?). Thanks to the minds at Raven the last bit of tutorial was an outright scream of a laugh. Just seeing that talking chicken, goading you into kicking its feathers, made me start laughing and I couldn't stop. I remember the days of fighting each other in Heretic as flying fighting chickens. Could game play get any better than flying fighting chickens? I think not! Now after the chicken kicking festivities. I was disappointed that there was only the few things displayed and explained. I assume without playing further that there are OTHER moves etc. If there aren't well then I am blowing steam, if there are I hope that they make it into the final release.

With all of this said, I have to comment on one last thing. That is how well thought out the levels provided in the demo are built. They are very realistic looking, and will most likely satisfy some of the more hard core 3dfx'rs out there.  I however only have a video card worthy of some anomaly called MiniGL, and I don't think that the demo shipped with support. I anticipate many late night hours with this demo long after I am finished with it. I have been unable to hook up with anyone as of late that is interested or that even has the beta yet, so a multi-player dm review might be a follow up to this review if the demand suits.

I will leave you to get your copy of one of the hottest releases of the decade so you too can experience the colorful, and totally subversive world we all used to call Heretic. Crack out the pestles, and let your mind delve back into the abyss, cause Heretic2 is here to cast a dark shadow over your castle.

I personally rate this game as follows(1-10) 10 being the greatest:

    Game play: 7        Graphics: 9         Sounds: 9

Review by: Matthew "EA" Randall
Date: October 23. 1998

OpenGL Screenshots on Canopus Spectra 2500

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