*Capstone Zorro music* *scream* [CIVVIE]
So yeah, I was just minding my own business, right,
playing this Capstone Zorro game thinking I'm gonna make a video on it,
and I can't beat the first level, and this thing lets you save scum, see, it's a Prince of Persia knockoff, right? And this thing is so bad, so foul,
so antithetical to the concept of entertainment that the demon just up and left. I don't know where he is now,
but that was too much for him, just a little too spicy. [CANCER MOUSE]
Demons, you say?
Did you ever hear- [CIVVIE]
Oh, man, this game, like I don't even think I'll ever
get a video done on it, it's so bad, it's the worst Capstone game,
can you believe that? [CANCER MOUSE]
What's Capstone? [CIVVIE]
It doesn't matter,
listen, I'm killing time here, you know, gotta get through the first minute
of the video without strong profanity, or else YouTube demonetizes it and my prison wallet is running a little low,
you know what I mean? [CANCER MOUSE]
No. [CIVVIE]
Well, anyway, now that we're into it… *Dragon Chapel theme* Don't get me wrong, HeXen is,
from a technical perspective, amazing. What it did with the Doom engine, right,
improving on what Raven did with Heretic, it's got an inventory system, it's got that nasty hack
that lets you look up and down, it's got jumping, and therefore,
annoying platforming, it's got the hub system, letting you travel seamlessly
between levels… through portals, they didn't try to do the thing Strife did
where it seemed like they were naturally connected visual effects,
sliding and rotating sectors, earthquakes, scripting, levels that are more detailed
and have more impressive architecture than anything seen before
in the Doom engine. HeXen might as well be a totally different
ball game in a lot of respects, so why do I hate it? It's all in the gameplay. Now, HeXen is an intricate creature, it has a lot of quirks that make it special, and all those people
who bitched at me for using GZDoom for the Doom-related videos in the past, it's your lucky day! Because for this video I wanted something a little
more accurate, closer to the original experience, and my first idea, of course,
was Chocolate HeXen, but nah, I wanted something
with mouse-look and proper wide-screen. Normally I wouldn't want mouse-look
but I feel like HeXen has a bit more verticality and also requires you to be able
to see as much as humanly possible So in my search for
the perfect port to satisfy my needs, I came across a fork of Chocolate Doom,
using some stuff from Crispy Doom and Doom Retro… it's called Russian Doom. That's right, we're doing a HeXen video
AND a slavjank video! HAPPY 300K, KIDS! I kid, I really like this port despite
some small but probably fixable issues I had which we'll get into but otherwise
it's a wonderful vanilla+ experience. Too bad that experience is HeXen. Developed in 1995
by our old friends at Raven Software, hallowed be their names, may they be delivered swiftly
from the Call of Duty mines, amen. HeXen was released on PC, Sega Saturn,
PlayStation, and the Nintendo 64, so while it wasn't ported
to as many systems as Doom it was one of the first games I've ever heard of
to get a full cross-platform release on all the major consoles,
excluding the Sega Saturn of course, I don't think that was a…
"major console". Raven Software,
after finishing Heretic, wanted to make something
a little different and more ambitious. They wanted to go… beyond Heretic! Aha! Ha… *descending* *force-field disabled* Yeah okay, I deserve that.
Be right back. *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land Theme* I beat Heretic on the hardest skill, so I thought I'd go through
HeXen the same way, on skill 5, though this port has a skill 6, and if I ever find any information
on why that is or what it means, I'll be sure to tell all of you. Maybe it respawns monsters,
which is a funny thing because HeXen already
spawns ettins randomly forever in every level so that's… so irritating!… Like I'll be fighting something else and suddenly I'll get sucker-punched
by one of these two-headed-dildos. They're barely even a threat
because they're only melee. It's just that HeXen
fills rooms with them. Skill 6 doesn't actually
respawn monsters. I think it makes projectiles faster
and more deadly but that's all I've been able
to find out about it. Skill 5 basically means
no cheats and fast monsters. Okay. Cool. I don't know any of HeXen's
cheats anyway and it's not like I have a console like in GZDoom. According to the manual,
humans have somehow learned to respect the awesome power of magic,
and somehow this led to a disciplined and orderly society
where every citizen knows their place, and where the vast majority
of common men are held in thrall to a few
ruthless, powerful leaders. Wielding magical powers
and arcane artifacts, these men overshadow
every other human force on Cronos, suppressing individual thought
and action in the name of the greater good. [HOT FUZZ'S N.W.A.]
The Greater Good. [NICHOLAS ANGEL]
Shut it! [CIVVIE]
Why am I saving this place again? Long, long, long story short,
three factions rule, and each class in the game
is representative of one of them: The Legion,
The Arcanum, and the Church. Korax, the second Serpent Rider, brother of Heretic's D'Sparil, cut some deals with them so they could
become immortal and only three humans, Baratus, Daedolon, and Parias survived and now
they're out for blood. The Fighter is the stronger class
with melee and better armor. The Mage is better at long range
but physically weaker, and the Cleric is the in-between. There are a few differences between classes,
like how useful armor is, each of the three armor pickups
will help a specific class more. If you think I'm doing
three playthroughs of this game, one for each class…
No. No. No! I've played through HeXen
all the way a few times, and I don't recall ever beating it
with the Mage, just the Fighter and the Cleric. See I like the Fighter's melee weapons,
especially that axe, feels nice, and the Cleric's serpent staff
that leeches health? But I have a practical reason
to picking the Mage, which is that it has a starting weapon
that has a ranged attack instead of… not that… *slowly killing ettins with the mace* and the afrits, these re-skinned
red gargoyles from Heretic, appear in the first level,
and I hate meleeing them every time. It's a pain. The Mage has this wand and…
it doesn't do very much damage. The first enemy you meet, the ettins,
take between 7 and 9 shots to bring down. There's a bit more to the weapon
that we'll get to in a little while. If you are going to play HeXen,
I recommend going into the options and setting up some
quick keys in your inventory, especially the quartz flask,
the flechettes, the krater of might,
which replenishes all your mana, and the discs of repulsion. The flechettes especially,
they are incredibly useful. Each class uses them differently. The Mage just drops them
and they explode, the Cleric uses them as
a poison area-of-effect bomb, and the Fighter
tosses them like a grenade. You'll find them all over the place
and they're too weak to do much individually so I usually drop
three or four at a time. Now that we have
all that surprisingly intricate-class-based-stuff-for-
a-Doom-engine-game out of the way, it's time to get into
the meat and potatoes of HeXen. The first level will introduce you
to the game's new tricks: breakable glass,
incredibly effective atmospheric effects, walls that spin around
and shoot fireballs at you, death traps, everywhere, and if you're not careful,
falling damage, and crushers, but very different from
what you're used to in the Doom engine. You'll meet a million ettins in this level
and a few gargoyles, and learn that sometimes, the game
needs you to think a little outside the box. Break glass to find secret rooms because there's no secret count,
secrets aren't marked, about half the game
is a secret the first time you play it. I've gone through HeXen a few times
and usually my playthroughs start and end… right here. [KORAX]
Greetings, Mortal.
Are you ready to die? [CIVVIE]
Meet Korax, Serpent Rider,
brother of our old friend D'Sparil. I don't see the resemblance.
Maybe he looks like his mother. The Seven Portals is the worst introduction
to HeXen's worst mechanics. I'm gonna give you a rundown
of what you have to do in this hub, comprised of four maps, The Seven Portals, Guardian of Ice,
Guardian of Steel, and Guardian of Fire. I know how to get through this hub
like second nature because after enough times,
it starts to make sense, and at that point, I suggest
seeing a mental health professional. Before anything, you'll have to fight
a horde of ettins with your wand. If you're playing on a lower skill, the game will give you
the second of four weapons that your class will get, but you gotta wait
if you're playing on Hard. Here's the thing about the Mage's wand though,
and something the manual won't tell you, it's like a tiny little magic railgun. The shots are weak, but they go through any enemy
and hit the one behind them, so you'll line them up, and it's still old-ass-Doom-engine AI
so they'll go single file at you, and you can blast three,
four of them at a time. This weapon never stopped being useful
because it's practically a hit-scan. The first-time HeXen player will,
invariably, be screaming: "Where the fuck
am I supposed to go?!" Well, kids, you're lucky
I'm here to lay this all down. First, door opens here,
and you go to the Guardian of Ice, fight some ettins, hit a switch,
and step on the platform that has a little sword outline
pointing at it or else you get crushed, then, that takes you back to the Seven Portals
where another one of these doors opened and you have to hit a switch to open a door
to a portal to the Guardian of Steel, and also a monster closet
with a chaos serpent. Chaos serpents are
one of the worst enemies to deal with when fast monsters is on
because of how fast they shoot projectiles, and kids, when I said I didn't want
to do the expansion, Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, here's why: *gets fucked over by chaos serpents* Yeah, fuck that noise. "But Civvie, you have to do
every expansion for every game ever" "because you did the Duke Nukem-" Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up! [H4MM3R]
Oh, you did it now, boy! [CIVVIE]
Hey kids!
It's ya boy Civvie here and the DSC has mandated that
to maximize their dumb nerd profits I have to appeal more to the zoomers,
I mean what do they like? Is it old FPS games? [PRESTON]
These are real bugs! Freeze! [MRBEAST]
This is a real prison
and me and the boys are gonna try to survive
the next 50 hours locked up here. [CIVVIE]
Yeah, it looks like they're getting stuck
in a room and being tortured and I feel like I'm already
on that wavelength but whatever,
I got 100 mystery buttons here and one of them will set me free, or possibly solve the puzzle
on the Seven Portals, but most of them won't, and I know that at least
one of them will bury me alive in these creepy reject blank
collectable vinyls they're piping directly into my cell,
I'm excited, let's do this thing! *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land Theme* *dead silence* And also, another door opens
with an identical room that will have a portal to the
Guardian of Fire, which is the one I take first. Slay the afrits,
grab the ice shards spell, which I hate,
I hate the ice shards. I hate them
from the bottom of my soul. This weapon is nothing but a hassle
and I hate the fact that I have to use it for all of this hub
and some of the next one. It is… Imagine a magical shotgun,
except it freezes enemies, so you know,
in this crowded field of monsters, you have to make sure to hasta-la-vista it
before you can hit anything else. And the damage it does ranges from
"Eh, I guess you can freeze an ettin in two hits" to "nah fam, four, five hits,
waste that mana, fuck you." Except if you're RIGHT
in the enemies' face, and then I don't even
think it spawns the attack, you just hear a whoosh and
it does the maximum amount of damage. Which is cool and all
but I picked the non-melee class, HeXen. The one that shouldn't require me to be as close
as possible to the enemy because my armor sucks. The wand may take longer,
it may be more tedious and the constant *constant thunk* puts me into a trance-like state where
I'm having a kind of out-of-body experience. I'm stuck with this shit spell and it doesn't even do
something cool like leech health. Now that you've got your weapons
for this section of the game, it's time for the endless, ball-breaking item
and switch hunt portion of the video, skip to this time-code to avoid
the item and switch hunting bullshit. You go through the Guardian of fire,
press a switch that tells you "one third of the puzzle
has been solved on the Seven Portals", press this door
with a stone face on it, wait for the bridge to collapse,
kills some afrits, jump over here to avoid
the collapsed bridge, grab the flame mask,
go to the Guardian of Steel, suffer the centaurs who can shield themselves
and deflects attacks back at you but only your ice shards, and sit… and wait…
and wait… and maybe use your flechettes
to deal with them with any kind of speed. Shoot through this door
that is only open for about a second but there's a bunch of monsters behind it
so that's a slog too, run up the stairs,
go down the elevator, and hit a switch to solve one third
of the puzzle on the Seven Portals, then, go back up the elevator,
run down the stairs, hit the bull switch,
run back up the stairs, go back down the elevator, past the wall that moved
that you had no indication could or would move
if you hit that one switch, hit the switch, solve one-third of the puzzle
on the Seven Portals. Run back to the Seven Portals, go through another door that opened
that leads to the Guardian of Ice, die to the wendigos
because on this skill they fire their projectiles so often
and so fast that you will die, get killed by these lit sectors
that crush you because there's ice physics now
and they're tough to avoid, go to the Guardian of Ice,
get crowded by ettins and go through all the healing items because the game hasn't given you
discs of repulsion yet, run down the hall, open the doors the light swords
are pointing to, place the fire mask,
grab the fire key, run across the hall, survive the wendigos
and the falling ice, hit a switch in the corner,
go for the steel key but miss because of the ice physics,
grab the steel key, go back to the Guardian of Fire,
open the fire key door, run down the hall
and stab the cook ! Fight through, take the teleporter
to get about 10 feet away, hit the switch to raise the stairs
on the Seven Portals, hit a switch that instantly
teleports you back to the Seven Portals, run up the stairs,
hit the switch, go back to the Guardian of Steel, use the steel key to get through
the other side of the map, which is identical to the first, go back down the elevator,
hit the switch, and it says: "You have to find another switch…" This happens every
goddamn time I play this game! You might realize that
you've already hit a switch that allows you to leave this section
of the game and proceed to the Shadow Wood. But the game
is not going to tell you this. It's buried in scripting that I don't personally
know how to decompile and read, but anyone playing this for this first,
second, third, maybe even fourth time, is going to be stuck
in this wild switch hunt until they luck out
and find their way to the end. It is needlessly cryptic,
and so back on the Guardian of Steel, you hit a switch to move a wall
behind the steel key elevator to hit the next switch, which says that more stairs
have risen on the Seven Portals, which leads to a switch that says
a door has opened on the Guardian of Ice, which then leads to the most
bullshit part of this entire game! *wendigos' surprise* *gets wrecked by wendigos* Now, if you can get through that,
and the steel crusher room, and get to the center
of the Guardian of Steel, you can pick up… a torch. But no, really,
"stones grind on the Seven Portals." So we go back to the Seven Portals, where these walls that have teased me
since I started this game, which I can only barely
sometimes shoot through, open up, and there's a couple
of items in the water. "And that's the end of the trail",
you think, "time to leave". No. Because you missed the exit
to the secret level. Do you see it? Do you see it? The portal, it's right there, but you wouldn't see it
because it's invisible, so, imagine, right, that you didn't know when
you hit this one switch, all the way back here, from when you were still thinking
you needed that steel key for something, this all led
to what appears to be nothing, but which actually is a secret portal
to Bright Crucible, which is a nightmare of a map
full of the powered-up chaos serpents that shoot toxic goo at you, a million enemies,
a million projectiles. I'm using the wings of wrath,
which you get at the very end of the hub because once activated, they let you fly
until the end of this section of the game, and… In Bright Crucible,
you solve a puzzle by getting a gem
called "D'Sparil's heart". Yeah, you remember him?
Nice guy. Anyway you get his heart,
you put it on a pedestal, and it raises some stairs
to get back to the original area I don't need stairs to get to
because I can fly, and it opens an area with
a horde of enemies and a bunch of items that are really cool and helpful, and replace all the resources
I used to get to this room full of items. This is what all of
the secret levels in HeXen do, do not go to them,
they are bullshit! The Seven Portals hub is somewhat infamous because
of how it's a whole bunch of switch hunting nonsense that guides the player about as well
as a one-legged cat in heat in a field of other, hornier cats, it sucks, I hate it, and the rest of the hubs range from being
somewhat better to being only marginally better. [KORAX]
My servants can smell
your blood, human. [CIVVIE]
Oh… oh god… Normally I can blaze through a game
in a couple days, in one or two sittings, but this one, I had to take breaks. I spent about four days going through HeXen
just because it's so fucking demoralizing. I'm not gonna go through
all the hubs like Seven Portals since none of them are as obtuse,
for the most part. There's so many monsters and it becomes
a chore to deal with all of them because a lot of the time,
they can't even touch you. However, the stalkers!… Oh, these little bastards! You wouldn't think in an engine
that doesn't have any kind of "underwater" that an enemy couldn't disappear underwater
but here we are! These things pop out
like dianogas in Dark Forces, and they can be stun-locked
with the wand which is tedious but kind of satisfying
because fuck them. You can freeze them quick too if you're
on your toes but don't waste the mana. This whole section is
about traveling to a swamp, some maze-like caves,
and some maze-like wastelands to gather keys and hit six switches and there is actually some kind of idea of what
you're trying to open with those six switches, though putting these boxes here and giving them
the same textures as the key doors in this hub is a little fuck you. You might think it's more complicated
because it says "one sixth" instead of "one third" but it's not, even if some of those switches
are placed behind statues, yeah, fuck off you… oh you… On the Shadow Wood,
you'll get the Mage's most useful weapon, the Arc of Death,
a lightning spell that… well, it's just good. Except for how sometimes
projectiles in HeXen are so fucking big that they can't fit through spaces
I could parallel park a zeppelin. But aside from that,
it can one-hit most things, including the centaurs,
whose shields won't do a damn thing about it. From now on, I only use the ice shards
if I'm out of green mana and I can't wand it away. So I'm going around,
hitting switches, killing monsters, it's not as convoluted
as the previous hub but you know, you still have to run back and forth
between areas to do things, get keys, find those doors,
kill everything, which is a lot better
with the arc of death, but the Caves of Circe
can fuck right off. Dark, confusing, messy,
filled with death pits, fumble around in the dark a little while
and you find what you need to get into another part
of the Wastelands map, and then… *spike stuck* *Modern Time by An Jone* I nearly canceled the episode
when this happened. So I'm in the wastelands and… What the fuck?… So there are these spikes
that come out of the ground that anyone and their frail old
grandmother in a walker could avoid and I think this is one of the few bugs
I found in this otherwise excellent port. But it's one that
stopped me dead in my tracks. I tried reloading,
I couldn't try no-clipping, not that I'm sure it would have helped,
because cheats are disabled on this skill and I don't have a console to work with, so I'm stuck, LITERALLY STUCK,
because some weird bug makes it so that these spikes
globally affect the player and get me stuck forever,
and sometimes it even crashes. So I'm wondering: "Do I go through the absolute
banality of fighting through" "hundreds of monsters again by loading my save
that I have at the beginning of the Shadow Wood" "so that I might avoid this when
I take my second trip into the Wastelands?" It could just as easily happen again and from my experience,
it would happen again, in fact it happens
in every map that has these spikes. This has slavjank written all over it. Except, unlike mid-2000's shooters
from former Soviet block countries, I have editing tools at my disposal to slice
HeXen open and giddily play with its insides. So, I open the map, and I delete
every single spike trap from it, and then I have to delete the separate save file for
that map that tells the game where all the things are because the engine generates a save file
specifically for that map in the hub, and then, I load my save
from a separate map in the hub, travel in,
kill all the enemies again, and progress like
nothing ever happened… Future Civvie here. This issue has already been
patched out, but it is entertaining. Whatever, it's done, and now
I can finish HeXen and this video! *breaks down into
uncontrollable sobbing* Once you're done with
the "puzzles" in this section, it lets you go to the secret level,
the Sacred Grove, which is just a big open room
with some items to help you, but this time,
it's a lot easier than Bright Crucible. There is a switch that tells you
that it opens a door on the Forsaken Outpost which is totally helpful because you know
what that is because you've been th- No wait, you haven't been there yet,
it's two hubs away! Onto the boss map,
a boss? Yes. Finally! After a few rooms full of traps
and hordes of enemies, my god! My god, it's the same
problem as Heretic, which I suppose disappears in HeXen 2
because the limits of the early 3D Quake engine wouldn't let you throw 50 enemies at a player
without setting your primitive graphics card on fire, anyway, here's the boss:
the Death Wyvern, [PRONUNCIATION]
/wai-vrn/ [CIVVIE]
and while it hits like a truck
full of anvils, I have lightning. Onto the next. [KORAX]
Worship me,
and I may yet be merciful. Then again,
maybe not. [CIVVIE]
The game is taking
the kid gloves off now, and this first section
outside the Seminary is brutal!… The Disciples of D'Sparil
have gotten a colorful re-skin and throw a chain of low-damage projectiles
at you that kinda-sorta home in but mostly just
bob around ineffectively. There's an interesting inventory item
that I realized I never really used, which is the Dark Servant, which will spawn
a friendly Maulataur from Heretic to help you. He doesn't last long. There's the dispel thing
that teleports monsters, and yes, before someone leaves a comment,
I know you can turn monsters into pigs. That's not exactly helpful when you can turn
three of the fifty monsters facing you into pigs. And the boots of speed which
I think you can guess what they do. The quest in this area
is fairly self-explanatory. Go through this swamp
and this warehouse- OH GOD DAMN IT! Did I just get telefragged? Once you collect all the planet gems,
you place them on this wall, and then the back of the chapel opens
to reveal portals to three other chapels to OH GOD DAMN IT! Some rotten level designer
scripted this wall to lower and spawn enemies
when you approach it, every time, sometimes with
even stronger enemies. Dogshit, fuck you! From now on,
the name of the game is walk into a room,
a dozen or more monsters pop out, you kill them, you find
a switch or an item, and you leave. Some places are worse than others. So the three other chapels, the Griffin Chapel,
the Wolf Chapel, and the Dragon Chapel, all require you
to find three switches in each, and in the hub, you can see your progress
on hitting these switches. The Griffin chapel requires you to go back
to the Wolf Chapel and the Dragon Chapel to hit switches that
will open doors in the Griffin Chapel and nothing will tell you
that this is happening, but it does! It's a shitty excuse
to get you to go back there. What Monastery? Huh? You mean the Seminary? The level you call the seminary? I'm sure that
won't cause any confusion. The Wolf Chapel has a giant room
that populates itself with these dark bishops, and maybe this wouldn't be
so boring if I didn't use the Mage's staff to slowly kill everything,
but if it ain't broke! *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land Theme* The Dragon Chapel is the worst. The main hall is stuffed
with every monster you've fought, there's even a pit in the middle
with stalkers in it, isn't that fun?! At some point in this section,
they throw the "slaughtaurs" at you, which are centaurs with more health
who can fire a projectile, I feel bad for anyone
who doesn't have lightning. On your final trip
to the Griffin Chapel, you'll go through
this long room of moving walls, which is super impressive
for the Doom engine. Must have been a nightmare to make. At some point, and I say that
because this whole thing is a blur, a tiny brown spot
in a sea of ettins and centaurs, I get the Bloodscourge. The fourth and final weapon of each class is scattered
throughout the maps, you pick it up in three pieces, and the weapon is fine, I guess, it shoots red magic
that wrecks crowds of enemies. The path the projectiles take
is unpredictable and kinda unreliable. Once you're done hitting switches, you can go back to the Seminary
and fight the Heres… Oh god damn it… Her-ess-eee-ark. I have no idea
how this boss works exactly, I throw lightning at him
and eventually he dies in a grand spectacle
with an earthquake, that's… *earthquake* You know what,
that's pretty cool. *earthquake* The secret level opens up now and it's another
small map with a bunch of items you're going to use
when trying to get those items so it's… really like not a net gain
or anything… I… why… [KORAX]
You have played
this game too long, Mortal. I think I shall remove you
from the board. [CIVVIE]
He wishes. No matter how much of a pain in the ass
getting through this castle is, and this is the FIRST part of the hub. It's called Castle of Grief,
I don't know what I expected. There's a portal on the edge of the map
that takes you to the Forsaken Outpost but if you're looking
for that door you opened, tough shit, you won't be able
to get to it until before you find a key! So go back to the Castle of Grief and… This map, inexplicably,
also has those spikes in it, so I got to open it up in the editor
and delete those, and also I'm deleting all the enemies
I've already killed because I really, really, REALLY
don't feel like killing all of them again. It wasn't fun the first time! Now, what you have to do in this level is grab four different gears to place
in the clock room so that you can activate the switch in the central tower,
and to do this, guess what, you have to hit switches. There are a bunch semi-hidden
in the corners of the guard towers on the outside of the castle which will activate the elevators
that take you to the upper level of the castle walls where there are four switches
you have to hit to lower a staircase to get a gear, the other gears are out in the open
and one of them even isn't connected to a trap that shoots projectiles at you. Fun fact: you have the discs
of repulsion now and those work on projectiles. So, now you travel to Gibbet, where you have to find two books
to put on a bookshelf in the library to open a… wait
I only have one book, I gotta… A door opened in the Forsaken Outpost that gives me that key I needed and no, I don't know when
that happened, just go with it, and actually, no,
I'm not sure if I needed to open that door
with the key but here it is, and it opens a door that leads to a room
with a horde of monsters in it, and also that door that opened
from that switch in the last secret level reveals the next secret level,
which is… *gets exasperated* I get the book and I go back
to the library in the Gibbet and… *ear-splitting lava noises* WHAT THE FUCK?! *ear-splitting lava noises* I guess this is happening. This doesn't hurt me,
at least not in the context of the game, but it is really, really annoying. As hard as I tried,
I couldn't replicate this issue again. So don't worry about it. Now the book opens up a thing
that gives me Yorick's skull which can be placed on a headless statue
in the chapel inside of the castle, not the other fifty seven chapels
I've already visited, and I place the skull on the statue,
the environment crumbles around me in an impressive 1995 set-piece that would only be topped a year later
when good Build engine games started coming out, and I have no idea
what else this did besides that, until I go back into the central room and some water lowered to show
a switch that takes me to… Oh, there it is. You're in the sewer
to get fucked over by stalkers. Splattered with green goo by chaos serpents,
and to find the dungeon key. Yes. The Dungeon Key
is in the sewers. It's like poetry. And behind a secret door. The Dungeon is accessible
through a closet in the Gibbet in a bedroom that
is actually full of traps, like a bed that crushes you. The Dungeon itself is a cramped series
of maze-like hallways stuffed with monsters that fucks with your ability to use projectiles
because of the narrowness of the hallways and at one point, ettins start spawning in
forever at a much higher rate than normal. This is, of course, after you hit
a switch about ten times that opens a door
and spawns a slaughtaur ten times. "Why do you hate HeXen, Civvie?" You leave the Dungeon,
return to the sewers, go back to the Gibbet and it says:
"You hear a door open upstairs" but don't be fooled, that means: "You hear the narrow corner of a wall
that isn't easily visible," "so you better look for it, you asshole,
fuck you. - Love, Raven Software." And you get the Axe key which opens
a door to the boss of this section, which is the Heresiarch again. Excuse me while I deal with this. Okay, this is weird, this intermission text
isn't in the second person, it's not like all the other
Romero-esque story bits in the rest, it's just a quote. That's ominous. [KORAX]
Are you strong enough
to face your own masters? [CIVVIE]
Whelp, this is hell! These are the wraiths.
They are the worst. This level is the final
main hub of the game and it is populated with what
I assume is infinite wraiths. Because I sure
as hell didn't kill them all. They're floating around the entire map
and since that wasn't bad enough, they rise up from
their graves to kill you too. The paths you have to take between maps
in this hub are filled to the brim with wraiths. Yes, of course, I can cheese them
through doorways with the wand, and I can dodge those projectiles, but I can't dodge
all the projectiles in the world! There's a secret level exit in here too,
which I didn't take, because I'm… so very fucking done with HeXen… Oh, yeah and you can only access it
before you've gone into any of the other sections, or else it closes off forever. You have a million high-damage
projectiles coming at you, in the dark, and there's stuff all over the ground and the environment to keep you
from being able to maneuver around. I would say that this was a mistake
on the part of Raven's designers but no, they knew
what they were doing. It's Raven, they're pros,
they knew what they were doing, which makes it even more infuriating
because they wanted you to suffer this. Three tombs. Each tomb has one of the undead
faction leaders in it, and they're all themed accordingly. And they're grueling, monotonous battles
with a hundred enemies followed by a fight with a Fighter,
a Mage, and a Cleric, all of whom have
the super-weapon for each class. They still don't have
a lot of health though and spamming them with the bloodscourge
while circle-strafing will usually do the trick, although the Cleric is tricky
because of his awesome ghost staff. I wish I'd played as the Cleric. The Mage's tomb is
the puzzle-y one, where you have to match symbols according to the matching ones
on the wall or the shape of the room itself. The Cleric's tomb is probably
the least of a hassle because it's got relatively
weaker enemies to deal with. And the Fighter's tomb
can die in a fucking fire! Anyone down in the comments typing:
"Just lead them into the crusher in the middle", that isn't a crusher
half the time so shut up! Oh, you son of a bitch! Now that you have all three keys you need to get out of this
wraith-infested graveyard, it's time for… The manual says that D'Sparil
was the weakest of the Serpent Riders, which is…
we'll get to that in a little while. No he won't,
this is the end of the video. Korax does not ride a serpent.
Look at him. The serpent would get
impaled on all of his… Did I make this joke
in the Heretic video? And spoilers for the other two games in this series,
the other ones, they don't ride serpents. Korax would probably impale it
on his weird Giger body and Eidolon is…
he'd need a big serpent. Moving on. I will say that the introduction
to this level is stunning. Just awesome. I don't know how or why this bridge
is moving like this, but this image right here,
the darkness, the red sky, the impaled bodies,
is striking, beautiful, and shows that when Raven Software
isn't busting my balls, they're some of the best
in the business. This is one of the things
that frustrates me so much about HeXen. It is so goddamn impressive
from a technical standpoint that I nerd out over like: "Wow, look at the sky
with the parallax scrolling!" and then I'm like:
"Oh yeah, now I have to play the game…" Come with me, kids. We have bosses to pants. Sure, he throws a couple hordes
of monsters at you, but I've been saving my kraters of might
to re-fill my mana. Sure, he probably
has devastating attacks, but I've saved my Icon of the Defender,
the invincibility power-up, just for him. Hey Korax? *reverberation*
Are you ready to die? No amount of switches are putting your gnarly
ass back together again, you skeletal bitch! [AX3 reading] [GRANDFATHER]
Such power is an illusion, my grandson
It comes with a terrible price. [CIVVIE]
Yes. I… I think that's true. Thank you, past episode grandfather,
I… I don't know what I'd do without- [AX3 reading] Oh, I do! I do!
It's HeXen 2! That hand belongs to Eidolon, the biggest and baddest
of the Serpent Riders, who does not ride
a fucking serpent! But he is big! And, if I'm being honest,
I actually enjoy most of HeXen 2, whereas HeXen is a monotonous slog
through switch hunts and way too many monsters
that don't need to be there. I respect what Raven did
with HeXen's tech, and their ambitions but come on with this right here! God, this level is so fucking confusing,
the only way it would be worse is- *ettin grunting*
God, this level is so fucking confusing,
the only way it would be worse is- *teleportation* Oh, for fuck's sake…
*teleportation* *ettin grunting* *How'd I Do*
I played Hexen quite a long bit of time ago. I played Cleric. I actually played as a Mage on Deathkings. I prefer Cleric… it was easier on lower difficulties, but man, fuck respawning enemies.
Congrats Civvie, the only DOOM Engine game left, is Strife. I actually tried to play Hexen 2, but got stuck, lost, and possibly locked myself in… first hub. Gave up, moved onto Quake 2.
Somehow I agree with everything he says in the video and yet I still like Hexen
How about how great that ad fakeout segment was
Yesssssss. What a good end to this shit week
I respect the ambition they had for a shooter made in 95,but I just couldn't get into it. Switch hunting just isn't my cup of tea!
I remember playing Hexen 2 when I was like 13 and having no idea where to go or what to do. I remember grinding grain at a mill. That's all.
I've been a slut for HeXeN for so long. It's the second FPS game I ever played (first being Heretic). But I agree, fuck it.
Fuck Hexen
Poopo