[CIVVIE]
It's so weird, this game keeps crashing
because it's running out of video memory, I got an RTX 2060, you know, I wonder
what the recommended card on the Steam page is. [H4MM3R]
Play the orc girl game, Civvie. [CIVVIE]
Oh, you mean
Big Booba Hell Sniper? Or you mean Hedon? [GOOGLE]
/hi:dən/ [CIVVIE]
Yeah, I pronounce that /hi:dən/, yeah, that's right,
I pronounce a thing correctly because… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [CIVVIE] - Katie please…
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [CIVVIE] - I don't want to do that gag!
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [CIVVIE]
Are you done?
Is it out of your system yet? *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land Theme* [H4MM3R]
Use the Head-On Commercial, Katie.
Or else… *The Demons From Adrian's Pen* [CIVVIE]
So GZDoom is sure getting used
a lot for games nowadays. If you want that 2.5D magic,
Hedon uses it, Vomitoreum uses it, a bunch of games
at Realms Deep were on GZDoom, Selaco, believe it or not, is on GZDoom,
somehow, magically, despite the fact that GZDoom, with all due respect,
is optimized only slightly better than that FUCKING DEATHLOOP
PC PORT ARKANE AND BETHESDA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TODD, WHEN
YOU'RE NOT COUNTING MY FUCKING MONEY?! GZDoom is surprisingly versatile, what with the fact that games like
Vomitoreum and Hedon don't feel like Doom, they feel kinda like the Doom engine, but weapons don't have
3 frames of animation anymore, you're not limited to 256 colors,
there's colored lighting, dynamic lighting,
3D Floors, what-have-you… But, for anyone out there
making a game in GZDoom, A POX ON YOU IF YOU'RE MAKING A FUCKING
DEMON SHOOTING GAME IN HELL AGAIN. IF YOU'RE TAKING GZDOOM
AND MAKING DOOM AGAIN, STOP! You will not do well and you will
bring dishonor upon your family. And I'm not here to talk
about the specifics of GZDoom, I'm here to talk about this here game
because I played the first one a few months back and I didn't make a video on it
despite people asking me to make a video about it because if I made a video about things people
asked me to make videos on, I'd be surrendering. I'd have made a TNT video
and I'd feel like a coward. I gotta remember that
with 320-ish thousand subscribers, really only a very vocal 1%
of the audience wants a TNT video, and a silent majority want the game starring
the ripped half-demon, half-orc brick shit-house, which isn't my thing, but people watching this
can now masturbate while listening to my voice, which is my thing… *Hannibal-slurping* Hedon 1,
also called "The Crystal Heart", feels, in retrospect, more like a prequel chapter
to Hedon Blood Rite, which came out last month, and is like twice the size. If you bought Hedon 1
and didn't care for it, too bad because Blood Rite was a free update
to everyone who owned the first one! Like I just did a second playthrough of Crystal Heart,
which took 6 hours since I kinda knew what I was doing, and my first playthrough
of Blood Rite took like 14 hours and I'm pretty sure only a couple
of those hours were spent wandering around wondering
what the fuck I was supposed to do. That's not to say it's a frustrating
HeXen-like switch hunt because it's not. If you play Hedon 1 and 2 back-to-back instead of
months apart, it might actually be easier for you. I vaguely remembered
what happened in Crystal Heart, most of what I remembered about Hedon
was about the combat, not about the story. Yeah, there's a story, a lot of it! So, to breeze through it:
Zan the Bonebreaker, a half-orc, half-demon warrior
who lives among the orcs, because the demons are bad, well she's part of the Iron Division,
who go to hell to lay siege to the demons, but while doing that, most of those orcs die
because the Forge Elementals betray them, hate when that happens, but Zan survives and is transported back to her home,
or at least into a dark cave close to her home, with the help of the mysterious Abhaoth
who, honestly, may be horny for Zan. She dumps a lot of exposition on you
in the middle of Crystal Heart. She's there to reveal your purpose. Katie, get that clip from The Jerk,
where he's talking about his special purpose. [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead! [CIVVIE] - God damn it, GOD DAMN IT!
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead! [CIVVIE]
And people in the Iron Division think Zan might have
betrayed them since she, you know, survived. But, the demons, they're not really behind it,
it's actually Nithriel, a creature from the void, which is weird, I didn't know
Adam and Eve delivered there. So that's it, you're all caught up
on the main gist of Hedon 1, Nithriel is evil, she's orchestrated
a massive slaughter of your Orc sisters, she wants the Crystal Heart,
and you gotta stop her from getting it, Hedon 1 is really
a nice introduction to Hedon 2. That is the stupidest goddamn line
I've ever written, I'm cutting that. You will get a couple new weapons in Hedon 2,
but you're mostly operating with the same arsenal here: punches and kicks as a last resort, an axe you can throw,
that is… really wonderful, I enjoy it. The Spike Rifle, which is the boring one that's practical,
and has ammo lying around for it everywhere. The Fragfire Gun is also wonderful. Superhot particles of death as the primary
and the secondary is a flamethrower. Essential and great. That's right, another game with a good
flamethrower, it's like we've learned! The Potion Launcher, with two flavors: poison, an area of effect attack
that will slow enemies down and hurt them; and the acid potions which are also,
really good and effective. The Crushbow is your rocket launcher,
and does everything a rocket launcher should. Now that I'm recording this, I realize
that I never used the secondary for it. Too bad. Towards the end of Crystal Heart,
you get the Crylance, which is kind of
like a high-powered rifle. It's also really good. Its secondary
is a decent explosive attack. All around, a fantastic arsenal. There's even a difficulty with its own unique
set of weapons which is called Bearzerk, melee only, I haven't played it
but it looks… unforgiving. Crystal Heart isn't really that difficult
on the medium skill, Hedonistic, once you get the hang of the enemies and the weapons
and the power-ups, the different damage types, all that. There are 10 levels in Crystal Heart and most
of them are giant, and occasionally confusing. But, the puzzles and the item collection
are done in such a way, and this is mostly true
for Blood Rite as well, where if you have a thing,
and you know where that thing goes, follow that lead before going
to the next thing in line because you'll probably
have to go there and use the map,
yeah, that's essential, and in case any of you didn't know this, in Doom engine games, you can open your map,
go to a place on it, and mark it with a number. This is going to save you so much trouble. Key doors are marked
on the map already, thank fuck, but if there's one thing the dev probably should have done
is hide some of these lines, like these are a mess, and you can hide them
from the player on the map, they're where all the slopes are, which is everywhere
because the terrain in Hedon is GZDoom shit, not regular Doom,
there are slopes everywhere. The levels in Crystal Heart take you mostly
to the Orcs' main settlements around Valc, forges, fortresses, this Ice Castle level which I think is probably
my favorite, just for the atmosphere. All the ambient sound stuff that was introduced
in the Raven Doom Engine games was carried over
all the way to GZDoom and it's used wonderfully here. The music, too, is damn good, and I remember thinking, "Hey, this track
sounds like something out of Unreal", because there's a gentleman
named Alexander Brandon whose music was licensed for Hedon,
who also composed for Unreal, and Deus Ex, you know,
those games with kickass soundtracks. And then there's other tracks by
the main composer for Hedon, Akhzul, who made more atmospheric tracks
for certain levels that are great, honestly, the soundtrack for this game
could get its own video. Unlike in Blood Rite, the story
of Crystal Heart is very reactive, you're trying to find out
what happened in the aftermath of a massive invasion by a sinister cult
and other demonic forces, cultists themselves aren't
much of a problem but like, these hell-hounds,
I don't like the way they move. And those Forge Elementals
I mentioned before, imagine a Pain Elemental,
but worse. It's about as tanky, but it spawns
Iron Urchins instead of Lost Souls, who can be quickly killed, except they zip
all over the place and explode and I hate them. I HATE THEM EVEN MORE
THAN LOST SOULS. They're all over the place
in this level, Technical Space, along with lava that isn't
as kind to you as Doom lava. Yeah, she's dead. I could go into detail explaining how massive some
of these levels are, but there's a Hedon wiki for that, which lists the individual
areas for this one map: [AX3 reading]
The Pumping Station,
the Forge Portal, The Great Forge,
The Workshop, The Mould Forge,
The Dwarven Forge, The Repair Bay,
the Shops. And also the eight sections in the caverns, one of which is a secret side quest. Yeah, there's only 10 levels
but they're massive. This would be a problem if the areas weren't usually unique and
recognizable with obvious landmarks. As the game goes on
and the enemies get stronger, you face flying warlocks,
who have homing projectiles, hooray! Let's do… spoilers! That's right, this game has enough story
and characters to warrant a spoiler warning. In fact, it has enough
of all of that stuff for a detailed wiki that
I had to use liberally to check things. Katie, throw up the spoiler warning. [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - Katie, what did I do?
I'm sorry, please…
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - Please stop it, Katie,
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - I don't know what I did,
whatever it was, I'm sorry, please just stop!
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - Please stop, I can't take it-
[HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL]
Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE]
So Nithriel is a powerful,
nigh-invincible creature who hijacks your exposition dream
halfway through and you have to fight her. You don't kill her. There's even some kind of a stealth section that works,
you know, because it relies on dream logic and scripting, and not sophisticated AI. Let me tell you, those power-ups
are great for breaking the game because you can just no-sell
magic attacks with the ring, or physical attacks
with the stone-skin potion, or regen health with the dog collar?… I promised I wouldn't talk any more
about how horny this game is sometimes… 😵 What the fuck?… 😵 So, while touring the post-invasion world you come
across a laboratory run by an Orc named Lith, who was mad because they wouldn't let her
do weird shit, and Nithriel would, and so… These are golems,
who are lightning fast eldritch ninjas. Yeah, I think that's
the best way to describe them and I'm really glad the game
gives you the crylance here, please leave a comment about how
I missed an earlier secret with the crylance. *with distortion and echoing*
I love those and read every single one. That's good, we know who betrayed
the Iron Division, glad it wasn't me, but they still think Zan is a deserter. shortly after this, you're off to battle with
what's left of your sisters to protect the Crystal Heart. The Final Boss is a bigger version of an enemy
introduced in the last map, the Pit Lord, and he's… big and bounces you
around, shoot at him until he dies. Nithriel takes the Crystal anyway. And Zan follows her
into the portal, end of Part I. That's good, because there's a lot more ground
to cover in Part II. So… so much more. Blood Rite is… massive. It feels like it's an order of magnitude
more complicated than Crystal Heart, the first part isn't. The first part is kind of
what you'd expect, I think, Zan drops into an area very similar to the first
game's first level, except something's wrong… Nithriel has the Crystal Heart, and this NPC from the end
of the last game is here, First objective of the game
is to make a potion to save her, and the part right after that should tell you
how fucking hard this game is going to be. I suppose it's a linear difficulty curve going
from the last game, which gets harder at the end, and to give you an idea,
the first weapon you'll probably get is the crylance and the first enemies you'll
probably face are the golems, so the game is practically
spelling it out for you. Once you revive this NPC,
they will follow you and help out, using Brutal Doom friendly AI, and you need them to do that,
you need them. I left them behind cause they were
bitching at me, terrible idea. There's notes all around town written
in a language you don't understand so you have to go to the library
to find a book that will let you translate, and you've gotta jump around on rooftops
and this is my other major problem with Hedon, a thing that's a problem in both games, which is that it has platforming in the Doom engine,
and we all know how that goes, right? Oh shit, is that Nithy
with the Crystal Heart? I'd better… Blood Rite is spicy. Like as soon as you try to chase her down,
the entire town gets invaded. By every enemy from the last game,
including the high-level Pit Lords, and a new enemy, which you saw
in the prequel section of Hedon 1, the Hellblaze,
who drops the Hellclaw which is a decent enough projectile weapon
with an invaluable secondary that lays a trap, but you won't be thinking about that because
you've got some quests to do in this town, like digging up a key
from behind a shed, and everything is trying to kill you,
teleporting in, it is brutal, and a lot of Blood Rite is like this and when
it's not like this, it's leading up to being like this. You get an enemy count on the map here,
over 200 in the very first level. If you can't tell,
Hedon is no longer fucking around! The second level opens with you having
to rush past these monsters and seal off a door because they will spawn
indefinitely if you don't. What follows is an enormous,
intricate mansion level, and everything is just doubling down on the world
building and story stuff from the first game. Yeah, that too. Okay, I can manage this… There's pickups in this game that let you
carry more of the throwable axes. I found some in my first
playthrough of Crystal Heart, not the last one… that I recorded,
I kinda skipped them, and I didn't get any in Blood Rite because I wouldn't
even consider using melee this whole time, I don't care if I can throw them,
this shit is crazy. This is hour 3. Second level! I'm impressed by the attention to detail,
the interactivity, the environments, it's insane the amount of work
that's gone into this. When you're playing,
thinking of this as a "Doom" style game is wrong. The way the levels open up and the way
the environments can be scripted to change and break is closer
to something in Build. Once you escape the mansion, all your friends are
waiting for you outside. To take you to the main hub. That's right, after level 2,
the game gets RPG elements, an open world, quests, a journal
to track those quests, an economy, use the shops
because you'll need ammo, if I were to do a full, total exploration of everything
in Hedon 2, this video would last hours. For example, you go along with someone
to do a little prison break, where you sneak
into this citadel, or not! And free some of your friends,
this overworld, this main hub, basically has every kind of
environment you saw in Crystal Heart, except it's one big thing,
it's enormous, it's ridiculous. It's not even half the game. It's not even the best half of this game. And you get a fucking minigun,
oh I'm sorry, the paingun… and also some new enemies too,
that's right we got chaingunners in this, oh boy, do we have chaingunners! There is an entire optional quest in this level
where you collect statues, place them, fight an invading horde of monsters, and you get an item out of it that you have
to take to a fire mage back at camp who will give you
2 single-use spells that are so ludicrously overpowered that
I'm amazed the game gives you two of them. Look who's back. [LO WANG]
Everybody dead, I like that. [CIVVIE]
There's so much more
character interaction here too, because the Grand Earth Mother
sends someone along with you, keep her around
because she heals you, off to the underwater ice base
that the dwarves have, where you have to make a diving suit, and the whole place looks like
it was actually built for dwarves because all the ceilings and doorways
are too low for you, I am constantly amazed
by all of the stuff in this man, this started out as a free Doom mod, and I'm playing this for a video
and there's a bunch of stuff I missed. So here's where you're confronted by Blue Baron,
who is actually the antagonist of this game, he is a Lovecraft-faced bastard and his disciples are also fishy-tentacle-faced
and use very arch-vile-like attacks on you, and I thought, "Oh, this should be okay,
they're boss enemies", and I charged my psy-crown, you know the item
you wear to prevent psychic damage that I decided to obtain a special crystal for to charge it
because I thought it could be useful, and it is! for this part. But then these guys start
showing up as regular enemies and… Those fish-faced-fucks
won't stand up to the paingun. Too bad I can't use
that underwater, right? By this point, I've been playing
the game for seven hours. I'm trying to bypass
this awful defense system so me and the girls
can invade this cult town and win. So we do. And when I think I'm about to win,
you know this huge, climactic battle, *Super Mario Bros. 3
Airship Theme* I'm hit with the lava boat level, chasing the Blue Baron, who digital glitches when you try to shoot him
and also who arch-vile attacks you while you're jumping from boat to boat. And I'm right there, waiting to win this game,
when BAM, Nithriel shows up and wrecks everything. The boat crashes, I'm in ACT II. Yes. All of that, was ACT ONE! All of that… was the first half! Remember the open world from before?
There's another one! By this point, I was slightly upset
and feeling a bit of murderous rage after killing literally thousands
of cultists and monsters only to be sucker punched at the endpoint
by that fishnet-wearing void-thing who was probably just horny for Zan. Time to calm down, time to relax, on this beautiful, deserted island, where the water was hurting me
for some reason. Nothing I could do about
those armies of hell-spawn, might as well smash up a bouncing fruit
and wait for all this to blow over. *laughing* Damn that's smooth!… If you thought the first act was a bit much,
Act II is that, plus more. At least, there's a slightly
clearer overarching objective here, which is that you have to pass through the gates
to get to the Blue Baron and lead the assault, Zan has to get 5 demon taints from 5 Primarchs,
as part of blood rites. I can't even begin to explain
how you do all of this, but I'll tell you what, I didn't expect it would
involve the misplaced brain of a gardener. I absolutely expected that
we'd have to bang a demon. This succubus is absolutely horny for Zan. And everyone and everything. She lives in a massive palace where she likes
to entertain herself by spawning enemies, having stripper demons in cages, placing Orc Lancers inside of paintings that require you to collect an item that allows you to see
through illusionary walls and then get that item upgraded with that gardener brain I mentioned earlier, most of the quests in this game
didn't break my brain too much but how in the ever-loving fuck
was I going to piece that together? I hate the gargoyles.
I HATE THE GARGOYLES. You need three soul fragments
to defeat The Blue Baron, you'll see why later,
but this succubus is willing to help, if you go through a lot of shit,
and then fuck her, she is so horny for you, it is wild! And she puts you through hell for it. We're talking mirror dimensions,
waking hallucinations and dreamscapes, twisted libraries,
furniture shopping, the works. This is only one-fifth
of what needs to be done. There is another taint
you have to get in this map too. The face in the wall wants money
for a taint, I just pay him off. Did I say I could pay him off? Because he decides to send you into the coin
cornfield instead and not betray his master. One of your sisters
got trapped in here too. You'll have to solve his riddle to escape, and that took me
a lot longer than I'd like to admit because I didn't even consider
that a chicken was worth half. Half? For a chicken? If I wanted to get ripped off
for livestock I'd play… what would I play for that?… After getting the Iron Key,
one of the six you need in this section, I entered a sealed-off area
of a massive tomb, trust me, this took
way longer than I'm showing, and I found some friendly-is,
humans who want to help me and an alchemy machine, and a primarch
who wants a potion of life and a potion of death, and you'd better remember
the vision quest you went on or else you'll never know that
to get one of the ingredients, you need to go back to camp where
all your allies are planning an attack, really all just waiting on you
to sort this whole thing out, and you have to get by this doggo,
and the only way to do that is to poison him. Or, if you've found
the recipe for a sleeping potion while exploring
ALL OF THIS, which I did, see, a lot of these quests have more
than one way of completing them because the person
who designed this is insane. So, elixir of life and death,
one more taint acquired. One of those humans I met earlier,
who is a mute, will make a statue of me, so that I can use it to get another taint,
which is probably the most straightforward one of these. I have to collect seven pieces of crimson
salt rock so he can make a Zan statue, One of the primarchs wanted me
to betray someone for their taint. Now, I thought, at first, kill the dog, but I decided
against it, there's some things you just don't do. Here's a golden opportunity though, this Pit Lord wants me to open up these gates
so his demons can attack my camp, yeah, sure, deal. *Civvie laughs like a maniac* I actually felt something close
to loyalty to a bunch of fictional Orc people, at least enough to not murder their dog. I feel like I'm forgetting
something really important. There is a way to do this, and to bypass having sex with
this demon and get an extra quest, but there was no way I'm gonna
deprive you kids of this, come on! *the Succubus laughs out of horniness* Yes, it's a fade out,
and you don't see it, but one of those ridiculous minor
details that Hedon does is that during cutscenes,
the face graphics on the HUD change, it's only janky sometimes when it looks like god mode
during sections where the scripting makes Zan invincible, like at the end of a boss battle,
but here, she bangs, she sleeps, wakes up, it's all very tasteful
and relatable. I'm out for blood at this point.
I am enraged, and if I could chop everything to bits with an axe and
not get murdered by even the lowest enemy by doing so, I would. Maybe the melee mode
would be better for this. Anyway, you remember that lancer
who was stuck in the painting? She comes back and gives you
an amulet worth 600 armor. You want this, and you absolutely need it! After clearing
the overworld with your allies, you are the only one who can enter the fortress
because of all the tainting and demon blood, you know, so you mercilessly
slaughter fucking everything. But it's not over, because you still have to use those soul
fragments, install them in three places in this, frankly mind-boggling-on-Doom-
engine-even-if-it's-GZDoom level. It's brutal, it takes a while,
and it's surprisingly cathartic for all the shit you had
to do to get here. And also,
Abhaoth is trapped down here, she's not just a creepy shadow
that's a little horny, she is, in fact… yeah… The last battle of Hedon Blood Rite
goes on for about thirty years. I'm not complaining,
this is an excellent climax to the game and it does elevate it beyond the final boss
of the last game where you just shot at it a lot. [LO WANG]
Snatch pebble from hand! [CIVVIE]
The Blue Baron fucks with you, endlessly, at one point, you know after he teleports you out
into the sea where there's a giant version of him, and after a couple trips into
the arena, I thought I'd lost, I thought I'd died
and hit the bad ending, thinking the game was capable of having
a bad ending because why wouldn't it? This game has violent dog poisoning,
nothing is off the table! So you're back in a familiar place, I remembered it because I thought this area
looked really cool in Hedon 1 in the Grove map, except it's not full of cultists,
and the demons are coming for a sacrifice. It looks like a post-defeat flash-forward until everyone decides to not take any more
shit and murder every demon there, And you're back into the fight, I'm really glad I saved power-ups for this, you know,
the kind that negate most of the damage you take, unless it's from the Blue Baron himself who… ohhhh you… Nithriel is still hanging around
but I'm sure that won't be a problem. I only spent a couple hours being hopelessly lost
trying to understand what I was supposed to do, spread out over about 15 hours
which is, in itself, miraculous to me. Please leave your comments
about how it only took you 6 hours because you're a ninth-level 4D chess
genius goblin who gets a rash from sunlight. I wasn't all that impressed by Hedon 1,
it was fine, it was fun, and then Hedon 2 comes along
and it's a massive fantasy story with a fleshed-out world. And now that we've saved that world, all of the races live in harmony
and try to pick up the pieces, and I think I just played something,
using this word unironically, and without memetic connotations, "epic". And it's cringe to call things "epic" now. It's cringe to call things "cringe", and if it's not, watch this video again
in 10 years and it will be. You know, when YouTube is rebranded
to be Google Entertainment Services and pay out ad revenue
with PlayBucks while the dude in the bunk
above me at the Play Barracks fucks that cute PR girl
from Content Mill 8. On the moon. *How'd I Do? remix*
I love that they got some of Alexander Brandon's music in this. His style is very distinct and gives me massive nostalgia vibes!
Great to see Zan's work finally get some big love and the Civvie 11 treatment of Hedon 1 & 2. Also nice for the other 'big stronk monster gal' enthusiast Scumhead to get a shout out for Vomitoreum in the beginning, another real treat of a GZDoom retro shooter (which also uses big metroid-ish world design).
I generally love this game, so I post my steam review to give some ideas:
This is for Crystal Hearts only, but the second part is equally good. It has a stronger focus on exploration, and I find it a bit harder than Crystal Hearts. It is important to keep an accurate mind map and it is helpful to maybe write some things down. Coming back after 2/3 days is probably the worst. You can make notes on the map, but everyone forgets to do it. ^^
19hrs Doom 2016 vs ~45hrs of Hedon. The melee-only modus and the changes to hard mode make it more interesting to replay.