undead003 wrote:To be brutally honest, a big part of Heretic is a reskin of Doom. Hexen actually has true gameplay innovations[...]
Okay, here's what I don't understand: Doom is such a favorite, why is being quite a bit like it such a bad thing? Why is that used like an insult? There are still drastic differences: Enemies are tougher and less pain-prone, with a larger variety of attacks, but there aren't any hitscanners. Every wepaon has its own ammo, keeping them from directly obsoleting each other. The Ghost effect diminishes the effectiveness of some of your hard-hitters, further spreading out your weapon choice. Even your starting weapons remain useful, especially in powered mode.
Most of Hexen's "innovations" didn't even work that well. The powerful weapons are almost entirely countered by damage-sponge enemies (and people complain that Heretic's weapons feel "weak"), the ammo system is boring, the armor is basically useless, "puzzles" are simply key hunts, instant death traps make no-save runs a crock, bosses (or regular monsters!) with invincibility states are still not fun, and the final boss is a joke. On the technical side, most of its finer features (I.E. not ACS or polyobject related) are more properly attributed to the game it's a sequel to and built from.
Contrast, nowadays, where a gameplay mod taking Heretic's "similar to Doom gameplay" approach is going to be found more palatable, while something with Hexen's degree of change will be more likely to net snarky remarks about its attempted originality (unless it manages to be over-the-top enough to stand on its own). And it's difficult to use ZDoom features in a Doom map without someone complaining about them being there. I can never figure out
what this community wants.