Hi here mates!
Today I managed to walk through the 3 Hub levels of Hexen's expansion map pack: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel.
In my opinion this expansion wasn't as good as the Heretic or the original Hexen game.
I wasn't expected new enemies and weapons, but the levels were about "finding switches, buttons and keys".
If the developers of the Hexen expansion had put in a lot more monster fights into it, I would have been happier.
I just glad I reached the same ending as I saw the OG Hexen's ending.
That’s why there are video games with a unique atmosphere created by indie developers/video game fans who make fun game softwares like Hedon, AMID EVIL, Dusk and others.
It's an overall disappointment. Nothing really new, same puzzle items (I.E. keys), just more of the same annoying monsters, final boss is just the leader bosses in a row... The maps are nicely designed and atmospheric, it's too bad you can't really focus on them because of 50 slaughtaurs swarming the spawn point and killing you repeatedly. It's not even any fun in co-op.
The two words that come to mind with Deathkings are "cramped" and "overcrowded".
That there's no new monsters and all the same items is no big surprise - you see the same with nearly all expansion packs to these old games because they had no flexible extension mechanism - I won't hold that against these packs - but the gameplay of this add-on was extremely poor. Combining these cramped levels with a much higher monster density than the original games and an absolutely insane respawn cycle that gives the player no moments of rest whatsoever make it a very, very tedious experience - even on the lowest skill level.
The existence felt like a GT contractual obligation than anything else IMO. Whatever stopgap FPS they had between Doom II and Quake, they wanted extra. Imagine if GTWizardWorks wanted something more out of Quake instead of the Duke3D Sunstorm / Quake activision+ritual/rogue deal....
cs89 wrote:That’s why there are video games with a unique atmosphere created by indie developers/video game fans who make fun game softwares like Hedon, AMID EVIL, Dusk and others.
More often than not, there's the saturation of getting hung on surface aesthetic to drive their only substance as an ultimate pitfall, phoning in the game design parts, barely resembling iotas of the game titles involved in referential hypermarketing.
leileilol wrote:
More often than not, there's the saturation of getting hung on surface aesthetic to drive their only substance as an ultimate pitfall, phoning in the game design parts, barely resembling iotas of the game titles involved in referential hypermarketing.
This. This is why as much as I like Dusk, Project Warlord and Amid Evil (and I do like them very very much) I feel that instead of aping "90s shooters" look for that "retro fps game" appeal they should have gone with their own aesthetic. Dusk looks downright ugly IMO and while I appreciate the design Amid Evil was going for I think the game would have greatly benefitted by more "modern graphics". PW was just downright claustrophobic to play.
But getting back to the main topic, yes, DDC leaves a lot to be desired.
Eh, I myself think the expansion was alright, all things considered.
Quite a bit more crowded than the base game, but more straightforward than the base game if memory serves. What I wasn't too fond about it was the excessive Slaughtar use in places, making it even worse for some classes, notably the Cleric, but otherwise okay.
The Portal of Praevus expansion for Hexen II had a similar fate. In some ways it was better than the base game, such as being A LOT less obtuse and full of sadistic puzzles - seriously, the castle maps were a confusing mess, and full of backtracking, one of my most unenjoyable recent experiences -, but considerably shorter and much smaller in scale and scope. It brought a new enemy, and that's all. That is, if you can call it "new", what a surprise, after the archer spam in the base game... we get another archer, of all things, wow. Seems Raven was in bed with those enemies.
I'm one of the few folks who prefer Hexen over Heretic though, in spite of all its flaws and shortcomings, the first game is one of the most boring titles I've ever played - I sincerely do not understand how so many people prefer it over Hexen, sorry. And regarding the recent retro shooter revival, Amid Evil is my favorite by far, especially in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics, this game is just beautiful. And it's probably the closest we're ever getting to a spiritual successor to Hexetic anyway.
Honestly, I loved both the expansions of HeXen 1 (mostly for atmosphere) and HeXen 2 (Again, atmosphere, the Portal of Praevus felt alot closer to HeXen 1 in tone). While the complaints people have about monster density are certainly, certainly valid, it never bothered me too much as I had alot of fun with the better puzzle design. Sure, the elements were still repetitive, I was just glad it wasn't all chain switches that solved 1/6th of the puzzle. It was Items instead, and that felt like a more fulfilling search, at least to me.
Still, HeXen 1 could have probably done with at least one more weapon slot, even in vanilla. Just to add variety. By DeathKings having a third weapon in the starting area is almost mandatory due to the pace.
I've played through Hexen 1 many times, but I think I have only completed the expansion once. That was long ago, so I'm not exactly sure why I never came back to it again, but I guess I didn't like it a lot either. I do remember that there were a lot of monsters though, and also that extra monsters spawned in at a much faster rate than in original Hexen. But I can't say if that was the reason why I didn't like it, or if it was something else. Maybe also because there was no proper finale (recycling the Necropolis bosses was a bad idea IMO, they should have gone with something unique instead).
And I've never played Hexen 2. I know there is at least one source port for it (Hammer of Thyrion), but I don't know if there are any others, and if there are, which one I should use for my first playthrough. Considering that it's quite an old game, I'll probably need a port. But not anytime soon, however, since there is a lot of other stuff I wanted to play through first...
Player701 wrote:
And I've never played Hexen 2. I know there is at least one source port for it (Hammer of Thyrion), but I don't know if there are any others,
Hammer of Thyrion is as good as you can expect from a Hexen 2 port I have no idea if there's other ports but with this one available there's not much need. I cannot say I like the game much, though.
Graf Zahl wrote:Hammer of Thyrion is as good as you can expect from a Hexen 2 port I have no idea if there's other ports but with this one available there's not much need. I cannot say I like the game much, though.
Great, thanks for the info. Hope I don't forget to try it out when I can...
Player701 wrote:
And I've never played Hexen 2. I know there is at least one source port for it (Hammer of Thyrion), but I don't know if there are any others,
Hammer of Thyrion is as good as you can expect from a Hexen 2 port I have no idea if there's other ports but with this one available there's not much need. I cannot say I like the game much, though.
There's also FTEQW, jdHexen 2 (this, I think, is dead), and UQE Hexen II.
I used to use Hammer as well, but the forced VSync with the bad input lag coming along with it eventually pissed me off and I dropped it. UQE runs and feels a lot better to me.
I wish FTE was less buggy though... I know for a fact the expansion is unsupported - or I couldn't get it to run correctly anyway, I always get softlocked on the first map.
Been a while since I tried Hammer of Thyrion. I remember having force-disabled VSync via the NVidia control panel but still got wonky mouse movement, just like with Half-Life 1 without raw input, where acceleration randomly kicks in for a few frames. Tried MarkC's Mouse Fix, but it didn't seem to improve anything. Shame really. At least it didn't have respawning monsters, good that GZDoom has ACS_Terminate :P
I am a firm believer of boycotting engines that so grossly violate the license. Where's the source code? I can't find it anywhere, making the whole thing illegal, considering all supported games are GPL.
I am a firm believer of boycotting engines that so grossly violate the license. Where's the source code? I can't find it anywhere, making the whole thing illegal, considering all supported games are GPL.
That's a very good question.
I didn't bother to look it up at first, but I did now, and apparently there isn't one. For any of his UQE projects.
This would be the developer's website. Looking at the copyright at the bottom, or the fact that he still updates the site, he's probably still around. Someone could shoot him a message by filling the contact form and ask about it - https://www.jacqueskrige.site/
StroggVorbis wrote:ust like with Half-Life 1 without raw input, where acceleration randomly kicks in for a few frames. Tried MarkC's Mouse Fix, but it didn't seem to improve anything.
-noforcemparms -noforcemaccel parameters do nothing?
