While I’ve never been much of a FPS fan, and even the mighty Doom and Quake I’ve respected but had little patience to play myself, Heretic and Hexen are the exceptions to the rule. It’s amazing what a simple change in setting can do. Despite being only minimally different to what ID Software was pumping out with its demonic shooters (and using the same basic engine), Raven Software tapped into an aesthetic and theme that deeply inspired me back in the day. And now I have them on my Switch.
That aesthetic and theme was dark (really dark) fantasy, with magic and decrepit castles replacing guns and space bases. Hexen was particularly special. When my brothers and I pooled all our money to buy a Nintendo 64, we only had enough for one game. Figuring we should go with something multiplayer, we opted for Hexen, and it turned out to be an inspired choice. Hexen had three different character classes, so we each selected one, and then proceeded to co-op our way through the entire thing, through its tiny splitscreen mode. Today we’d likely find that all unplayable. Back then, though, it was almost as good as a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Meanwhile, I never owned the full Heretic game, but I did have the original shareware release, and I played and replayed that to the point where I had just about every one of its secrets memorised. Also you could be turned into a chicken. This wasn’t a good thing. But it was funny.
The Switch Heretic + Hexen has been a true nostalgia rush, in other words. I’ve forgotten a lot about both games, and I seem to be getting worse at games in that they’re more challenging than I remember, but they’re both a total blast. It would have been worthwhile if it was just a direct port of the base game. But it’s not even close to being a simple port of the two classics. There’s online cross-platform multiplayer for both deathmatch and co-op, for up to 16 players in some modes, across an incredible 120 total deathmatch maps. There’s an enhanced soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult. There are new accessibility options and in-game mod support.
Most importantly, however, is that there are expansions, too. An already-existing expansion to Hexen (Deathkings of the Dark Citadel) and two all-new scenarios, developed by the team at Nightdive (who handled the port): Heretic: Fatih Renewed, and Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur. These new expansions have some exceptional map design, are challenging, and just generally add a whole lot of value to an already massive package.
The developers even went back and slightly tweaked things like balance to address some of the complaints that people have had for the games over the years. Heretic’s enemies are still dangerous, but take a little bit less ammunition to kill now, preventing the game from becoming an exhausting grind in some of its bigger set-pieces. Hexen, meanwhile, now lets you change class, which opens up some really creative opportunities when playing solo. Another major feature is an improved map and map markers, which, for Hexen, is a massive deal, as that game had some labyrinthine and interconnected environments, and it was very easy to get very lost, especially if you put the game away for a while.
There’s even some historical documentation featuring a whole load of cut content, sketches, and more. It’s not exactly “museum” material of the standard that Digital Eclipse does with the likes of Atari 50 – and boy would I have enjoyed that treatment with Heretic and Hexen – but it’s a nice bonus.
Nightdive proves over and over again that for a certain type of vintage video game – the more mature and high-profile “blockbusters” of yesteryear – it is a formidable choice for not only making the game playable on modern hardware, but straddling the balance between giving the nostalgic the game they remembered while making it as playable and enjoyable as new games today. Heretic and Hexen are both brilliant dark fantasy adventures, and they’ve been polished to a special kind of sheen that celebrates the impact they had on many thousands of fans back in the day.
Now, if we can just get Nightdive to give us a remaster of the original Aliens Vs. Predator from 1999, I really will be set. Yes, I know that there is the Aliens Vs. Predator Classic 2000, but I want Nightdive, specifically, to be on all these kinds of projects.
