Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20161116194210/@comment-3547390-20161219152444

Congrats! You have solved one-third of the puzzle of the thirty two chambers! Now you just need to find the super secret level.

Hexen is definitely a weird game. It has a lot going for it, but also a lot that can be frustrating. I definitely prefer the look of Hexen, it definitely was going for the dark and gritty sequel, so it definitely has a lot of booming sound effects and the traps are indeed pretty fun even if they keep killing me. I like the fact that the world is a lot more 3d and I can actually jump, the inability to jump in Doom is one thing that drives me nuts. Removal of stat screens is brilliant, I like that I don't have to care about completion here like in Heretic. I like that so far all my wall spamming has been due to overthinking and that the game just involves interacting with the environment. Punching things is definitely a lot of fun and I am enjoying the chaotic combative nature. Between all of this and hubs, this game feels a lot better than Heretic on the merit that this isn't Doom with fantasy stuff once again. I am not pot-shotting things with a wand and a lot of other guns with vague similarities to Doom, I am playing something that feels rather different. Puzzles, something I tend to hate especially in games like Duke Nukem and Doom, are executed quite perfectly here and I feel it has the right amount of vagueness and direction to direct me without telling me exactly what to do. Against the whole "haven't played many hubs thing" I actually am really liking the hub-based design as it feels a lot more like an interactive world where my choices result in the world changing, versus something like Doom where every level is segmented and you pretty much are always just going forwards.

I guess my main gripe with this game has to be respawning enemies, as I keep rambling about, which only really becomes annoying when trying to look around the environment. Pretty much, respawning enemies makes the game faster paced and about constantly fighting things. I like combat, but I also like sitting back and appreciating the worlds I am in, so it feels like I am on a fast course filled with chaos half the time due to the constant appearance of enemies. They make puzzles more frustrating as I can't think about the situation while having to constantly punch Ettins. They aren't hard and it is pretty uncommon for me to take damage, but it has just enough tedium to be annoying when I actually need to slow down to solve a situation. I guess my biggest concern is solving puzzles in the future and how many respawns I will have to deal with. I guess when trying to solve puzzles I would rather the environment calm down for a few seconds, I can't have calm if I hear enemies spawning in some nearby room even if I don't need to fight them. It goes against my desire to at least complete what I can find and the whole thing feels a bit more like a chaotic mess.

It also doesn't help that the design of the world, while coming a long way, still has a sprawling maze-like design that seems heavily inspired by Doom and Heretic, probably due to the whole reliance on the map thing. I feel things are a bit better, but everything still feels like a confusing maze instead of a place I am actually exploring, and I still have that feeling of being fully disconnected from the environment half the time besides dealing with the action. At the end of the day it still is a game much like Duke Nukem or Doom, it feels like a product limited by its age. While many of my annoyances have been fixed, the engine it is on doesn't help and the design still crawls back to be a bit inconvenient.

I will say that, so far, this is probably the best sprite based game I have touched. Every sprite shooter but this has had stats. Dark Forces was just really horrible with design, all I can think of are grey cliffs and the sewer level, to the point that the 3d aiming made the game feel more annoying than Doom. I hated trying to figure out what cliff to drop to next in that game. Duke 3d was a product of really horrible dynamic design, it was Hexen done wrong, with subtle cracks in the walls resulting in me going around in circles for hours to find the right one. Plus I loathed the ventilation shafts. Doom and Heretic were alright, but they were really hindered by spamming walls to not only find secrets that would show up in stats, but just to progress. Arena... insufficient base memory. Daggerfall was the most unstable bug fest ever with a horrible UI. System Shock had horrible response times, a terrible UI, and really horrible puzzles. Hexen wins for doing really little offensive, though it still has its frustrations.