Heretic II |
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Sunday, December 06 1998 |
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Heretic II |
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Sunday, December 06 1998 |
||
An adventure not to be missed! |
| After
much confusion, the real and true sequel to the original
Heretic is finally here. Heretic II picks up the story
where Heretic left off. You are Sidhe elf Corvus, victor
of the evil serpent rider, D'Sparil, who was terrorizing
your home, Parthoris. Unfortunately, his last dying words
cursed you to wander the Outer Worlds, so you don't get
to go home quite yet. After wandering the Outer Worlds
for years and years you finally find your way back home,
only to find a plagued land full of those who have been
affected by the plague mindlessly roaming the city with
the sole intent to destroy. So now, you must find a cure
and save Parthoris yet again. Heretic II takes a step away from the First Person Shooter genre and turns toward Third Person Adventure. When Raven first announced this, I was quite skeptical. When trying to envision Hexen II with a Tomb Raider interface, I just couldn't see it happen and still retain its fast paced action elements that makes such a game so much fun. After playing it for the first time, I quickly changed my beliefs. Raven has done an excellent job making Heretic II a fast paced third person action/adventure game. It plays much like a standard First Person Shooter, only using a third person perspective. Raven has done a particularly good job with Corvus's animations, since you play from a third person perspective, you're always seeing what he does. His range of movement and abilities are the best I've seen yet in any Adventure/Action game. Corvus can jump, flip, backflip, back hand-spring, climb a rope, pole vault, climb, crouch, swim and much more. Think of having Tomb Raider like control, with the ease of playing Quake 2. This makes for some of the coolest action ever seen on a PC.
One of Corvus's new abilities, climbing a rope |
 Praying to a Mana Shrine Speaking of action, you'll get plenty of cool weapons an magic spells to use to obliterate your enemies. You start off with a Bladed Staff and a Fireball spell. Later in the game you'll pick up more and more weapons, and spells (both defensive and offensive spells) such as the HellStaff (kinda like an energy machine gun), Phoenix Bow (shoots a flaming arrow to set enemies on fire) and other weapons as well. Weapon switch animations are well done too, watching Corvus pull a bow of his back or grab a staff from his waist and magically extend. Weapon effects may be good, but the level design is even better! Levels look realistic with jagged rock faces, murky swamps, dark caverns, and medieval towns. While the level design isn't quite as good as Half Life's, Heretic II has some awesome level effects such as fog and colored lighting. Some of the coolest levels are the real foggy ones, where you can hardly see in front of you. Having hordes of bad guys pouring through the fog is a scary experience. To help you detect unseen enemies, Heretic II has come with full support for A3D sound cards. A3D is a priceless advantage to action games, offering 3D positional sound to help detect and locate those unseen enemies. For those of us with out A3D sound, the overall sounds are quite good and the voice acting in the 3D cutscenes are entertaining as well. Heretic II is in a class of its own, kinda even starting its own genre, Third Person Shooter. Its an adventure not to be missed. Right on time for the holiday season, get out those Christmas lists! |
Company: Category: Third Person Adventure/Action NOTES: Interest: 90% TOTAL : 91% Requirements: Operating System: Memory: Sound Card: Joshua Westhoven TSM's |
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