Heretic II
Hyperion's first effort for the Amiga has finally been released. Is it as good as we've hoped for?
2000-07-09
Heretic II starts where the prequel ended. Elven hero Corvus has defeated Serpent Rider D'Sparil, and is now on the journey back to his hometown. But when he finally reaches Silverspring things aren't what they're supposed to be. All the elves has been infected by a mysterious plague that makes them go mad and attack everyone at sight. If it wasn't enough, Corvus himself gets infected. Now there's no turning back. You have to find the cure. While the first Heretic was based on a modified version of the Doom-engine, Heretic II is based on the Quake 2-engine. But once again Raven has used a very modified version. The first thing you'll notice is that Heretic II isn't played in a first person view. It's played in a third person view, where you see Corvus from his back. Much like Tomb Raider and that kind of games. The reason for using this view is obvious. Corvus has a lot of different moves. He can swim, dive, crawl, slide, run, jump, pole jump and a lot of other things. Surely it could have played from your typical Quake-like view, but this helps keeping the overview. Unfortunately it has made aiming a little tricky. Apart from the view and the complexity, Heretic II is pretty much like it's prequel. You go from the beginning of a level to the end. Along you must solve small puzzles and kill loads of monsters. To do this you've got a set of defensive and offensive magic spells that work just like weapons. Overall Heretic II looks really nice. Corvus runs through cities, swamps, temples and castles. All levels are very nice and very detailed. A great deal of attention has been paid to keep the atmosphere high. The game uses tons of textures and objects in high quality. One thing that could have been better is the light effects. Lens flares, magic spells and other effects that should have been alpha blended looks somewhat strange. The drawback of all the beautiful scenery is but one thing: low framerate. I played the game in 640x480 (less would really be a shame) on a 604e/200 MHz with a CVision/PPC 8MB graphics card. The game is playable but it certainly ain't smooth! Often the game drops to extremely slow framerates, causing control problems. When everything suddenly freezes in the middle of a long jump, it just have to go wrong. Then it's a good thing you can save all the time. Unfortunately loading a saved game takes like forever. A Quick Load option would have been great. While I am talking about problems in Heretic II, there are more to be mentioned. Even though Hyperion has made a very descriptive installer to the game, it still caused troubles. I used hours getting the game to run from Workbench, but never succeded. Luckily a RAD boot option has been included. Rewriting this one, I finally managed to get the game playing. Less experienced Amiga users may get into problems here. While the sound effects in Heretic II are very nice and atmospheric (a lot of monsters speaks to you, which can be very entertaining), I can't comment on the CD music. I never got it working. I haven't had this problem in other games, but this one wouldn't run at all. And finally the game crashes. It doesn't happen a lot but once in a while it does. It's especially annoying that it happens when saving a game. Heretic II is also a multiplayer game. Up to 32 players can battle it out over a local network or the internet. I haven't had the chance to try this out, and I doubt this is nearly as entertaining as say Quake. Not only will the slowdowns be even more annoying in multiplayer, but Heretic II is simply not meant as a multiplayer game. It's strength is singleplayer. For sure the Amiga port of Heretic II has some problems. The main problem being, that it is just too slow. I guess we should blame the hardware, but that doens't help the game much. On the other hand, Heretic II is a really great game. It's fun to play and there's many hours in it. It's overwhelming and beautiful as no other Amiga game. Heretic II is the kind of game no one thought possible on the Amiga. So if you have the necessary hardware, this is definelty a game to get - despite the flaws.
Rune J. Keller
Graphics
The game looks really great. Advanced objects and well variated textures. Some of the light effects could have been better though.
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9.5
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Sound
Very atmospheric sounds that really help the games.
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8.5
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Gameplay
The framerate really drags the game down. It's fun to play but can become frustrating.
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7.5
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Overall
One of a kind for the Amiga. A great game with some flaws.
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8.5
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Info
Title
Heretic II
Official site
Heretic II
Publisher
Titan
Developer
Hyperion
Genre
Shooter
Release
00/06/11
No. of players
1-32
Supports
CVision PPC,
CVision/3D
Requires
PPC 160MHz,
64MB Ram,
300MB HD,
WarpOS/3D
Tested on
060 50MHz,
604e 200MHz,
CVisionPPC 8MB,
128MB Ram
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Pictures
Corvus is up against one of the first bosses.
Heretic II offers very detailed objects and locations.
Corvus stumples onto a statue of himself. Very strange indeed.
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