Heretic II
Playtime: ~0.5 Hours
This game is abandonware, and is available to download for free online from a few places:
MyAbandonware
H2 Vault
Various fixes, including a community patch to game version v1.07, are bundled with the downloads, or can be downloaded separately from the same place. Installation is a bit tricky; the bundled download requires you to mount the first .iso, which contains a second .iso with the original game files which must also be mounted. Autorun does not work on the second (original H2) .iso, because the default installer is a 16-bit executable, which is no longer supported in modern Windows releases. Instead, by navigating within the mounted H2 .iso, either run setup/SETUP.EXE as administrator, or run bin/demo32.EXE and select H2_Setup.dbd in the same directory to launch the installation wizard as a 32-bit executable.
In any case, I personally had trouble with both methods on Windows 10. The demo32.EXE method would launch the installer, but selecting the "Install" option wouldn't actually do anything beyond closing the program. As far as I remember, I think I ended up having to download a few separate releases from the above sites to find one that worked; it might have been partially pre-extracted?
The next challenge is for configuration; the bundled releases seem to do the vast majority of this, or at least keep it very simple (thankfully). Some of the patches include an nGlide wrapper for the graphics (seeing as this game is extremely old, and the Glide API is no longer supported natively on modern GFX cards). Another one is for a resolution fix, which seems to support only up to 1440p; I set it to 1920x1080 and it seemed to work fine. Note that the in-game window size configuration cannot be changed at this point! It'll show 640x480 and Software rendering, but this is overridden by mods.
This leads to the technical issue that basically killed my install. Basically, I accidentally reset my config in the in-game settings (user error, I know) which ended up fudging not only the keybindings that I was trying to change, but also all the display, sound, etc. options as well! I'm unable to launch the game with the patched launcher now, because regardless of launcher settings, Safe Mode, etc. I get a "Couldn't fall back to software refresh!" error message box and the game doesn't start. From what I see on the nGlide forums, it appears that this is basically a death sentence for the install and I'll have to completely clean & redo it all over again. Given that it was caused by a fairly minor fat-finger, I'm not really willing to bother doing that so I'm giving up on this. Maybe if there's ever a proper re-release? Heretic+HeXen recently got a facelift by Nightdive which gives a bit of hope, though Heretic II is an Activision property, who don't seem to pay attention to it all.
I still managed to get around half an hour of actual playtime into this game though, so I also have some real thoughts about the game beyond just my technical issues which I'll expand on below.
I barely got a chance to actually play this game; I didn't even make it through the first level/area before my install got bricked, so I only have some extremely superficial impressions about the overall feel of the game. In general, my thoughts are mixed between the impressive array of different moves, interesting evolution of the systems from the previous Heretic & HeXen games, and overall look and performance of the game, while having some serious issues with the way the game ends up working mechanically.
First off, I think the game looks quite good, especially for its time. Note that the mods have almost certainly enhanced the textures & effects to make them far more impressive than the vanilla game, but I can't deny that the strong aesthetics make for quite an immersive game, taking into account the fact that this is an early Quake II-engine game. Of note is the fact that the engine by default still has a very low FPS cap by modern standards, which can be raised through console commands (host_maxfps); I didn't play far enough into the game to determine what kind of changes this makes to the game, but wouldn't be surprised if some enemy animations & DoT calculations are affected, kind of like the flying jaguars and instakill hellfire of HeXen II. In any case, framerate and performance were not an issue; it'd be much stranger if they were, given that this game is almost 30 years old.
The actual gameplay mechanics are certainly very interesting, and present a significant evolution from all of the previous games in the series. Where Heretic & HeXen just had standard DOOM-engine movement (plus jumping), and HeXen II just has standard Quake-engine movement, Heretic II's fundamental movement mechanics incorporate a wide array of movement options into its third-person gameplay that greatly expand the ways you can have Corvus interact with geometry in the world. There are different directional rolls, and you can even use the melee staff to vault for extra height or distance. Climbing, shimmying, etc. are included, which really pushes the evolution of H2 towards being a full adventure game, not just a fast shooter with fantasy-inspired theming. There's even some additional detail to the melee staff; where it'll tink off walls if you're too close, and giving you several different ways to swipe & slash enemies depending on how you utilize your movement when executing attacks. A lot of this reminds me of the thought and care put into similar mechanics in some of the Jedi Knight games (involving lightsabers); I can't deny that this game executes a lot of that to a T.
But this is also where my main issue comes into play. In order to support the wide array of maneuvers that Corvus can do, it appears that the movement controls are buffered for a period of time to watch for shortcuts, double-taps, or other combos. This results in what feels like a ~500ms lag for all basic inputs, which is a huge hit to the fundamental playability of the game. For what it's worth, this is not a global input lag since mouselook controls are fine, and key combo controls for specific movements seem to be executed quickly; I think it's just an issue with the way the game handles buffering while waiting for a possible combo. Instead of immediately starting to run (and executing a move if a second key is pressed later), the game ended up feeling a bit like I'm trying do everything underwater -- sluggish, unresponsive, sticky.
Compounding this issue is the fact that weapons also have different animation delays. As a TPS, attacking with the staff or fireballs will first play a wind-up animation before sending out any projectile, so you actually shoot a few 100ms after you press Mouse1. It's kind of funny that this is also a different delay than the movement buffering lag, since it makes combat just generally feel like a mess if you want to keep things fast & dynamic. Trying to dodge attacks with sticky movement while timing counterattacks with sluggish wind-ups is really tough, so it almost feels like, despite all of the different options given in the game, the best course of action is just to stand in one place and eat hits to make your attacks as precise & predictable (to yourself) as possible.
I don't think I can say anything else about the game, regarding music, theming, story, etc. It all seems quite good, and the game as a whole was well received in its day. I can see why, but I really can't get over how slimy it feels to control. Perhaps I'd find a fix to my woes if I spent a little bit more time looking into various configurations, but given that my install is now borked, I really can't justify spending the time to struggle installing a game that didn't really leave a positive first impression. I'd be willing to give this another go if some company out there is able to get Activision to let them fix it up for a proper rerelease, but I'm not holding my breath.
