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Graviscera @gravislizard
, 13 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
so I played Hexen for an hour or two yesterday and i finally have answers to some nearly lifelong questions

The answers are mostly "Hexen sucks"
like, I'd always wondered "why didn't I play that game more?" i've certainly had several copies before and the game intrigued me, and it's one of the more impressive Doom engine games, so what's up?
then i tried to play it on a stream. the first three "levels" are a bizarre, baffling maze. the designers clearly got high huffing the fumes of their own invention, the idea that distinct maps can have persistent state and affect each other
the whole first "episode" is you just running back and forth between six portals that take you to three tiny maps, each packed with frustrating bullet-sponge enemies that *respawn.* if that wasn't the case, you could *maybe* complete it in an hour
but since you're CONSTANTLY fighting monsters with inadequate weapons (i played.. cleric? the dude with a mace. maybe other classes are better in this regard) you, or at least I, can't actually keep the thread of what the fuck you're trying to do
it's also not clear. this game suffers at 200% intensity from 1995 Game Syndrome, in which you can very, very easily discover that you've spent two HOURS wandering around hitting Space and taking elevators up and down in the WRONG AREA
the maps use that claustrophobic Doom design mentality that works *okay* in Doom, where ultimately your goal *is* to shoot things and the only items you're looking for are keys that are in places you're *supposed* to find
it doesn't work in a puzzle game. maybe hexen gets simpler after the Seven Gates or whatever it's called, but if so, it was still a disastrously shitty decision to make that the intro to the game
Doom era games excepting Doom had this obsession with puzzle mechanics that really don't work in a game as awkward to move around in as Doom. like, Doom levels are gigantic, mazelike, and full of doors that close themselves. it's not very fun to walk every square inch.
Personally, every time I take an elevator up or down in Hexen I forget where I am. Especially in the weird, warrenlike tunnels that fill several of the stages. It's just really, really frustrating. I literally could not progress *at all* without a walkthrough
I read two walkthroughs and both were equally baffling, because even describing what you're supposed to do in plain language is difficult in a game that seems to be designed to make the player lose their sense of direction and purpose.
I'm not like... ragging on the devs? Insofar as they made an objectively bad game IMO but in an era when it was *hard to know how not to.* Making an FPS RPG hybrid in that era was fairly untrodden ground
I don't think there were many games out at the time that contained the mechanic "hit this switch. ok, something moved somewhere in the 24,000 square feet of ground you've covered. no hints :)" and i think they literally didn't know that's Bad
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