Heretic is a really bad game

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spoone
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Heretic is a really bad game

Post by spoone »

I don't know if there has already been a post like this,so I'm sorry if this isn't the first post like this. I don't know why everyone seems to like Heretic as much as Doom. I find it to be extremely bad. The levels make little to no sense. There seems to be no logic to them. Like why would you cross water that can hurt you just to get a key that's somewhere on the other side if there is nothing to protect you.The weapons aren't much fun to use. I don't feel very powerful using them like I do with Doom. The enemies don't really stand out.They look kinda lame honestly.

I find Heretic 2 to be the much better game,but that seems to be the one getting all the hate. Yes it's a 3rd person shooter which is quite a departure from the first game,but that does not automatically make it bad. The levels make way more sense in Heretic 2 also and the enemies seem to be much better looking in the sequel. I can say with the sequel also at least it's trying to be it's own thing and not trying to be a medevil Doom like the first one was.

In the end,Heretic just feels like a not well made Doom tc and I know it feels like that because it's using the same exact engine as Doom. Literally I could tell what everything was supposed to be from Doom. At least Strife tried to not feel like a Doom tc and did the fantasy thing better in my opinion.
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Nash
 
 
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Nash »

IMO the 2 biggest things that make me feel Heretic is less beefier than Doom are the weak sounds and the hand-sprited-ey graphics (especially the explosions, monsters and level textures). Doom felt grittier due to mostly photo-sourced graphics and the sounds were massive.

Heretic really is a fantasy reskin of Doom. inb4 you have been paying for mods all this time!!!11
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Cherno
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Cherno »

I certainly agree about the weapons. They are far cry from Doom's arsenal andthey feel wimpy compared to the awesome shotgun, even though the crossbow is still decent. Heretic has excellent music though and I like the dark fantasy style.
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Trance
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Trance »

Heretic is a really good game. Aesthetics are great; they made excellent use of the smaller texture set; the weapons, while weaker compared to the bestiary they're used against, are more imaginative and cooler-sounding (and no earsplitting Plasma Rifle, bonus!); the enemies are much the same way, with a greater variety to their attack patterns; the bosses and the levels they featured in were a lot less basic and boring than Doom's (the Iron Lich continues to scare me to this day); and the Tome of Power is there for the moments that the weapons aren't satisfying enough on their own.

The levels are no more spotty in quality than most of Doom. The quality average is noticeably higher than what Sandy Petersen managed. I'll take episode 3 of Heretic over episode 3 of Doom any day. And Heretic still had Doom's style of progression, before all the advancements in Hexen turned it into a dreary switch-hunting backtrackathon.

I'm going to go load it up now and enjoy the hell out of it again.
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Captain Ventris
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Captain Ventris »

Man I dig Heretic. Love the vibrant, shameless High Fantasy, the quirky enemy behaviors, wild powered-weapon modes, the items, jammin' music. Levels are involved and strange, yet grant a sense of fantastical place. Heretic is fantastic, bruh.
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by NeuralStunner »

Frankly this sounds like another case of deciding to hate something beforehand, and going in looking for things to complain about.

The 2 main weaknesses of Heretic's weapons have nothing to do with the weapons: Monsters have higher HP and lower pain chances than DOOM's. On the converse, your basic enemies are melee-only and everything else uses only projectiles (no hitscanners). As a plus, every weapon has its own ammunition, so nothing becomes completely obsolete.

I'm not sure how the monsters fail to stand out vs "dude with a gun, another dude with a gun, thing that throws fireballs, slightly larger thing that throws fireballs, very large thing that throws fireballs..." You can't match everything 1:1 to Doom, at the least because you're going to run out of demons before you even get to Inferno.* Heretic gives you two flying monsters (plus a stronger variation of one of them) before you're even halfway through the first episode.

If you're really going to insist that Iron Lich == Baron of Hell, you've missed the point of basically everything and there's nothing more anyone can tell you. :|

The iconic Tome of Power can also be encountered in the shareware episode, contrary to the more iconic but considerably less beneficial Cacodemon. :P

* No, including Doom 2's monsters is not going to work, unless you include Heretic's sequel in the comparison as well. Hexen may not be great, but alongside the game it follows up, it still beats the Doomverate for variety, mythos, and consistency of quality.
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Gez »

How can you even say that the levels in Heretic make little sense? Obviously limitations of the game engine force them to be rather abstract; but they are a lot less so than Doom, let alone Doom II. The cities, castles, temples, and caverns of Heretic always look like what they're supposed to be. You start in the docks, and you see wooden piers on the water; yep, those are docks. In Doom you start in the Hangar and you can search in vain for which room of that level is supposed to be a hangar exactly.

I don't understand what you're going on about that key and water stuff. First I don't remember any water that damages you in Heretic (lava and sludge, yes; but not water) and secondly there are plenty of such situations in Doom, so meh.

Weapons are okay, especially when you get the tome of power. Enemies are cool. And trying to make a 1:1 comparison between Heretic stuff and Doom stuff is an exercise in futility. Sure there's some superficial similarity for the weapons (except the firemace; which most people dislike pretty much because it's not a BFG9000) but the monsters are completely different; the only similarity I could grant you is sabreclaws with demons.


In conclusion, Heretic is a good game and if you think differently your opinion is wrong. :p
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Hellser »

Heretic is a really good game. The points that Trance makes I agree with fully.
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Shadelight
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Shadelight »

I think the weapons in heretic are actually pretty great. They force you to think more instead of just "oh, I'm going to switch to the rocket launcher, super shotgun or BFG to blow everything away!" and the tome of power adds more to their usage. (However I don't agree with being forced to micromanage things like time bombs or quartz flasks in slaughtermaps.)
I really like the level design in Heretic and I agree with Trance that they use the limited texture set to the best of their ability. The beastiary is also really good and just as balanced as Doom's in my opinion.
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Graf Zahl »

Heretic has two major flaws:

1. As has been mentioned the weapons are weaker than Doom's but to compensate the monsters were made more resistant (huh???), which only amplifies the weapon problems.
2. I absolutely cannot stand Heretic's extremely limited set of textures which makes nearly any attempt to work with only original resources look bad. I have only seen a very small number of good looking Heretic maps which didn't employ custom textures.
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Chris
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Chris »

NeuralStunner wrote:As a plus, every weapon has its own ammunition, so nothing becomes completely obsolete.
I actually find that the wand becomes obsolete after the first or second level, in turn making all the wand crystal and crystal geode pickups useless (I'm full up on them and can never pick up any more for the rest of the episode before the second level is over). You have to be pretty wasteful to be forced down to the wand again afterwards. While it's nice for the stronger weapons to not share ammo, unlike the Plasma Gun and BFG do, it does make the wand ammo obsolete once you pick up the crossbow (especially since you can pick up a fair number of arrows and the backpack/bag of holding in the first level, and the second level isn't shy with its ammo either).
Gez wrote:(except the firemace; which most people dislike pretty much because it's not a BFG9000)
Ironically, the Firemace is closer to what the BFG was originally going to be like (spraying out a bunch of projectiles, rather than one strong projectile with tracers on impact). It does feel quite weak for being the "ultimate" weapon though, even when powered up. The Hellstaff and Phoenix Rod feel stronger.
Shadelight wrote:I really like the level design in Heretic and I agree with Trance that they use the limited texture set to the best of their ability.
I also feel it did very well with its color palette.
The beastiary is also really good and just as balanced as Doom's in my opinion.
I will say that the creature sounds in Heretic wasn't as good, though. At least the ones that showed up after the first episode (gargoyles, golems, undead warriors, and wizards all sound great, but the weredragons, sabreclaws, and maulotaurs didn't have the same aural punch; and the iron lich just sounds weird). But this was partly offset by there actually being more environmental and ambient sounds like periodic water drips and wind gusts in appropriate maps, and various splashes when landing in liquid. Looking back, I'm honestly surprised Doom 2 didn't try to incorporate some of those engine-level enhancements, rather than essentially just being Doom 1.5 (a new overpowered weapon, a few new monsters, and new maps that don't really hold up to the original; people would be livid if they tried passing that off as a full sequel these days).
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Gez »

The goldwand is significantly more powerful than the pistol, thanks to its higher rate of fire. It's a good sniping weapon for when you run out of claw orbs, and it's a good all-purpose weapons when tomed. Probably better than the tomed dragonclaw, whose rippers have always been kinda disappointing in how they tend to never actually hit enemies.
Chris wrote:Ironically, the Firemace is closer to what the BFG was originally going to be like (spraying out a bunch of projectiles, rather than one strong projectile with tracers on impact). It does feel quite weak for being the "ultimate" weapon though, even when powered up. The Hellstaff and Phoenix Rod feel stronger.
It's not supposed to be the ultimate weapon, which is basically the crux of it. It's a bonus extra weapon. The manual doesn't even talk about it, and neither does the in-game help screen, and none of the levels have been balanced with it taken into account since when you place one there's always a risk it doesn't actually appear.
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Graf Zahl »

Gez wrote:The goldwand is significantly more powerful than the pistol, thanks to its higher rate of fire. It's a good sniping weapon for when you run out of claw orbs, and it's a good all-purpose weapons when tomed. Probably better than the tomed dragonclaw, whose rippers have always been kinda disappointing in how they tend to never actually hit enemies.

Actually, I consider the tomed gold wand the best weapon in all of Heretic. It comes with no strings attached like the tomed versions of the more powerful ones which tend to have adverse side effects against boss monsters and it really packs a punch. My favorite against Iron Liches when I got no ammo for the Phoenix Rod.
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Shadelight
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Shadelight »

The tomed dragon claw was more meant for really close together groups of enemies. It's not supposed to be used on groups that are really far apart, the base game doesn't really seem to care about this.
Chris wrote:but the weredragons, sabreclaws, and maulotaurs didn't have the same aural punch; and the iron lich just sounds weird).
I disagree with all of these but the weredragons. The weredragon doesn't really sound like a dragon at all. I think the Iron Lich sounds fine if you think of it as the floating iron skull of an actual Lich(instead of it being this weird automated construct), the strange metallic laughter then sounds reasonable and pretty good. The maulotaurs and sabreclaws both have oomph to them that tell you these are dangerous enemies.
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Chris
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Re: Heretic is a really bad game

Post by Chris »

Gez wrote:It's not supposed to be the ultimate weapon, which is basically the crux of it. It's a bonus extra weapon. The manual doesn't even talk about it, and neither does the in-game help screen, and none of the levels have been balanced with it taken into account since when you place one there's always a risk it doesn't actually appear.
To me, those are all reasons for why it should be the ultimate weapon. Or at least something really unique. The game doesn't make you aware of it so you don't go trying to find it (your only hint being the ammo pickup for a weapon you don't have), and there's only a chance you'll run across it in the levels it was placed, so when you do find it it should be worth the hassle. But as it is, it may as well just be a crossbow pickup for as useful as it is. It could be improved by giving the projectiles a chance to apply the morph ovum effect; it won't effect bosses, and still makes it a risky proposition to get in close with the stronger non-boss monsters in case the effect doesn't trigger right away, but it'll rip through weaker monsters better than almost anything else in a pretty neat way.
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