'Worst game' review.
Hexen
Developer: Raven/ID
Genre: Fantasy/FPS
Platform: Saturn
1997
 
'Hexen – Beyond any 3d game ever created'. A bold claim, especially for a game that's about as 3d as cardboard.
 
The sequel to modest title 'Heretic', Hexen endeavours to have a plot via a textwall of narrative summary in the instruction manual. If that doesn't alienate all but the most devout of Lord of the Rings fans, words like 'cleric' and 'mana' will. The long and short of it is, you can choose three characters: one is close-quarters combat, one is long-range combat and the last is a combination of the two. The novice player wouldn't have guessed it was that simple from the way the game presents these different abilities. The player must pick one to find the evil arch-nemesis and kill him.
 
Overly complex as it is, the story of the game does have potential. Had the story been punctuated with FMVs for coherence, showing rather than telling, or even contained insights to the characters' backgrounds, the potential could have been made the most of. Instead the playable characters are faceless vessels of destruction. The game focuses what little narrative energy it might have had on a dreary FPS meleefest.
 
Another part of the game that had potential is the creature designs, which are innovative and interesting – even they have their own stories. For example, the most frequent 'grunts' of enemies are legionnaires that 'retain just enough memory to hate what they have become and hate you even more'. It's a shame that these 'grunts' are so mass-produced that you'll see them as little more than cannon fodder.
 

 
^ You'll get sick of these before the end of the
first level. And those walls. And that red sky.
 
The game could have gone to town with some of the concepts – a more prominent monster is the Chaos Serpent, with its horrific design and bellowing roar. The instruction manual states that one of the arch nemeses used one of these creatures as a steed. So why weren't there boss battles utilising these creatures? Again these demon-faced monsters become expendable in the face of your big bad weapon, once you acquire it. True, the Chaos serpents are nasty, but only by spewing a tirade of fireballs at you. Another case of quantity over quality. Yawn.


^ Chaos Serpent - A shame these things only
look scary.
 
The 2d enemies don't look amazing, since they are very obviously 2d. Games like Magic Carpet were more creative; they used 2d segments to form worms that could be viewed from 360 degrees. Annoyingly, at some points in Hexen enemies are all the same, so frequently they all merge together into one body and the player can shoot and shoot, never knowing how many they have defeated. For this reason it's probably not a good idea to have too many of the same enemies in the same room, this also makes the player very conscious that they're in a game merely fighting mass produced enemies. Limited AI means that enemies will do nothing but spawn, follow you and whack you. Whereas, again, games like Magic Carpet had enemies travel all over the map as if they had business of their own to attend to. And that was 1995. What's Hexen's excuse?
 
Though granted, if you ever see enough enemies in the same room, and by some miracle they don't focus on you, the enemies will start to combat each other, which makes for a good laugh.

The weakest feature has to be level design. Hexen is let down by unclear routes, and repetitive mapping of the same old textures doesn't make for lasting replay value. It also doesn't help that the unclear graphics mean you can't tell what is to be interacted with and what is scenery. Where the game is strong, however, is booby traps, which are fully 3d and very menacing.
 Repetitive mapping detracts from the overall experience – the levels are always stones or slabs or cobbles. Like the combat, the interactivity has little variation – some levels consist of breaking window after window after window, since there are no other ways to get items. Sometimes rooms are just filled with darkness. As if the developers hadn't cut enough corners on graphics already. Hexen definitely sets its own atmosphere, but the same grim colours get very boring very quickly. The game becomes as depressing as going around in circles.  Even the combat has no variation – the melee system is punch, punch, back away, punch and dead. It's easy to figure out which weapon is suitable for which enemy.
 
The levels aren't without their occasional surprises though. Sometimes you break a window looking for a vial, only for a monster to come out. It's a nice surprise, especially when not too many enemies are about, but the rest of the game is so boring it's unforgivable.

The only way to tell when you've already cleared an area is by the corpses that don't disappear once you've laid waste to them. This is a double-edged sword however since it's difficult to tell the difference between an enemy you've already defeated lying on its back or if the enemy's actually moving: both revolve to face you as you move around. The graphics are that bad. Except for the traps, which are very menacingly 3d and inventive. Perhaps the only place where the sound comes into its element are with the echoing crashes of crushing doors.

You won't be impressed by the animation. The punch has 3 jerky frames. Some enemy animation is so jerky that sometimes you'll ignore them, mistaking them for part of the backdrop. The breaking windows look unconvincing, with just a few little splinters that disappear in an instant. This, in the age where games like Panzer Dragoon Saga can have thousands of projectile lasers filling the screen and potentially causing seizures, and during live gameplay.

 
^ Where have I seen this backdrop before? Well,
actually, in pretty much every level prior to this one.

 
In terms of gameplay, Hexen relies very much upon the player creating their own narrative, it's very unclear what each individual level expects of the player. Why, for instance, would you hit a bell to progress further in a level? At least the items system doesn't suffer from over-complication -  there aren't too many new weapons to acquire, unspectacular as they are on the whole. Though you'll have to wait a while before you can literally make lightning appear. Seek-and-destroy lightning at that. Not bad. Some spells are effective and even a little creative, eg shooting a flying enemy in mid-air with an ice spell will cause them to drop to the ground and smash. Incidentally, this animation uses much better dynamics than the smashing windows.

The controls aren't exactly abysmal - thank God up still means forward and down means backward. Though there are some terrible combinations for doing things as simple as checking the map. Why are there different buttons for 'use' and 'open'? What about the all-knowing 'action' button employed by so many other games?
  
What's also confusing is the stats display. It's so dark and pixelated that you can't see the separate labels. Unspectacular, dull colours mean that the player devotes unnecessary energy to trying to read power meters. A useless chain at the bottom slides as you lose/gain health - this will mean nothing as you'll be looking at the health number instead.
 
Repetitive sound effects add to the game's sense of purgatory, you'll get sick of that hooting owl before the first level is up. That is, if you complete the first level and don't give up from sheer tedium. You'll become very aware of your enemies having a grand total of two noises – the attack roar and the death roar. Some don't even have the benefit of the death rattle. Hitting things sounds like punching a wall and is just as repetitive. The soundtrack is forgettable and does nothing to heighten the mood or exhilarate you as you charge into battle. Relentless growling like a caged dog is meant to keep you on your toes since it sounds like many of the two-headed enemies you face, but in the end it just grates. The dull tone of the game is relentless and therefore depressing. Enemies' cries interrupt each other and the result is stuttering, like a stuck record.
  
Play Hexen if you want to be shown how not to design a level. As for replayability? You'll be lucky to get through it the first time. But if you're a FPS fanatic, maybe you'll feel at home with the Doom style, and you may want to give some fairly scary monsters a look.

 

Word count - 1485








Bibliography
 
Image 1: www.svatopluk.com life 100
 
Image 2: www.3.bp.blogspot.com Chaos serpent
 
Image 3: www.penguinpetes.com (life 92)