[/caption]This is the twenty-third post in our Game of the Day series.
This week Yahtzee on Zero Punctuation scoffed at the 2.5D genre, because half a dimension doesn't make sense. Obviously they need a succinct and public way of categorizing the game play (fixed route camera?), otherwise wouldn't we have to rename the 3D genre as well? Would true 3D game would allow you to interact in three dimensions versus input through a controller? Heretic, among others of its day, called themselves 3D games before the 2.5D label existed.
It can have the designation, why not? You can go up and down as well as side to side, certain architecture within the code is "fake" 3D, but the result is the same. Creatures are flat sprites rendered into the scene to try to make them look ... 3D, but the side effect is most things end up always facing you. Like when someone is looking into the camera lens and on everyone's televisions it appears they're looking at them (except when they're poorly hiding the fact that they're reading off a teleprompter).
Heretic was a fantasy FPS using the Doom engine. Just by calling it a FPS, I have to admit you still shot things. Rather than demons from hell/space, they were just monsters. It amounts to the same thing, but thankfully they were different monsters, albeit with probably similar behaviors. Then again, the AI of enemies back then consisted solely of switching between "shoot at player" and "move towards player". Thinking of it now, I can't recall any smart enemies.
The first level stumps me even to this day, maybe it's about time to bring it up and find a walk-through. Sure I can beat it, but according to the score screen between it and the next level, I missed one secret. Thus in a relatively flat environment of minimal options, and one I navigated dozens of times, I never found everything. Secrets are generally just walls you nuzzle up to and press the "use" button; if you're lucky then the wall gives way.
Speaking of walls moving, I do like the roundness of the levels in this game as memory serves. Even in the first level when you find your way out onto this dark watery patch, eventually a switch or whatnot will lower a wall that opens out into the place you started the entire game. A lot of the mazes work that way, so they end up being more compound. I wonder if it had to do with limitations on the maximum size? The downside of this is that when you had defeated all the visible creatures, you were left with bored wandering between areas, "using" all the walls in sight (swearing under your breath).
I think I beat the first part / world of Heretic, but it's hard to recall exactly. I remember playing the initial handful of levels more than anything, but not necessarily the specifics. There was that wonderful feeling of stepping into that initial gloomy chamber of pillars and a door, letting the groaning MIDI music really sink in, and then yelping at the sudden discovery of bats swooping down to attack.
Was there a plot to it all? I never actually read any story if there was one to read. I don't even know who gave me a copy of the game the first time. This game lead me to Hexen which I never did beat, but I'll write about that another day.
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