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Tag: Raven Software

  • Heretic + Hexen: Raven Software’s classics get the Nightdive makeover.

    Heretic + Hexen: Raven Software’s classics get the Nightdive makeover.

    Updated 8/21/2025 with clarification and some new information.

    Last year, Bethesda surprised us with Yet Another Remaster of Doom. Titled DOOM + DOOM II, this one replaced the 2019 remaster done by Nerve Software with a from-the-ground-up approach by Nightdive Studios, which have become the go-to developers for FPS remasters these days. It even came with a brand new Doom episode made by members of id, Nightdive, and MachineGames called Legacy of Rust, which I wrote about last year. I jokingly asked when they’re gonna tackle Raven Software’s Heretic and Hexen next. Well, I got my wish.

    Back to back badassery.

    Heretic + Hexen – keeping the naming convention from DOOM + DOOM II – is a complete overhaul of Raven’s two medieval action games from 1995-96, pushing the Doom engine to its limits at the time. New levels, new art, a vault of concept art from the previous games, and of course, a newly arranged soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult. (there’s the option to revert to Kevin Schilder’s original soundtracks if you wish, but I like Hulshult’s work when he’s not doing generic metal covers of game music, this remaster included.) This also marks the first time in over 25 years that you can play Heretic and Hexen on modern platforms with all the niceties that come with it.

    This also means Nightdive has officially remastered every major commercial Doom engine game from the 90s: Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, and Strife. Congratulations, y’all. Now if you wanna count stuff like Chex Quest and HacX, you’re more than welcome to, but I’m excluding those here, as Chex Quest was a free* product and HacX has been made freeware by the developers for a while now. I can’t see a remaster of either of these, though I wouldn’t mind one for Chex Quest, just for laughs.

    When DOOM + DOOM II came out,I said that they “didn’t need to do this,” that the Nerve Software remaster was perfectly fine for what it set out to do: Make it so you could play Doom on modern devices, without the need for DOSbox wizardry. Anyone who’s diehard into Doom know they can just drag DOOM2.WAD into a source port of choice – GZDoom, dsda-doom, Doomsday, you name it – and play.

    A screenshot I took earlier this year while playing Hexen through dsda-doom, which was the ideal Hexen experience until now.

    Heretic and Hexen, however, are different. Heretic never left its DOS origins, and the last time Hexen got home ports was the mid 90s, on the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64. (From what I’ve heard, the PS1 port is the worst, while the N64 port was the best.) While Doom had been ported to every platform under the sun, these two games haven’t. So this is the chance for a new audience of folks dealing with annoying Iron Liches spitting tornadoes, or get annoyed at trying to find the hidden switches in Winnowing Hall.

    Enhanced, but these guys are still as obnoxious as ever.

    If you’re familiar with Nightdive’s remaster work – They’ve remastered System Shock 2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Blood, Quake and Quake II, Powerslave, Killing Time, Rise of the Triad, among countless others – you know what to expect here. Polishing up the original game assets, updating levels for clarity and fun factor, and, especially in more recent remasters, a new set of levels often made by Nightdive themselves. Heretic + Hexen have all of those in spades, with a bunch of enhanced features.

    Speaking of enhanced features, let’s talk about the updates the port brings. Nightdive updated all the maps from both games to be a bit nicer looking, moving them a bit more closer to “modern” custom Doom map sensibilities. This surprised me to find out during Heretic, as I was trying to find the secret levels in episode 2 (Hell’s Maw) and episode 5 (The Stagnant Demesne), only to realize that the regular way you’d discover them in the original game wouldn’t work here. That’s when I discovered they updated the maps as well.

    I liked whoever at Raven thought that Episode 3’s theme should be “backdrop of a seafood restaurant.”

    The last time I played Heretic in its entirety – the three episodes plus the two bonus episodes from the Shadow of the Serpent Riders expansion – was 2016, so I just figured the levels just looked like that. I should’ve expected this, as that seems to be their MO with every remaster. Well, barring DOOM + DOOM II, they treat all 68 levels of those two games as sacred and don’t touch a thing on them besides maybe fixing a bug or two.

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  • Some Weekend Writing about Battle Royale and Call of Duty Warzone.

    Some Weekend Writing about Battle Royale and Call of Duty Warzone.

    Please note: This was written in April 2020 and reflected what the state of the game was like around launch. In the years since, the game has added events and such not mentioned here. I’m adding this disclaimer since I wrote about a live service game, and thus some things mentioned here may not reflect what Call of Duty: Warzone is currently. Thank you.

    For a long time, I never really liked the battle royale game mode. There was some things about that mode that put me off in various ways. Over the years I’ve tried some of the notable ones, and even some of the off-shoots. Most of them were enjoyable for a pinch, but then I’d drop off of them for some reason or another. But then another battle royale game came out recently. And for some reason, this is the one that got me.

    This post was available on Patreon one week early. You can join the Patreon to see this post first and see some exclusive-to-Patreon posts for just $1. Check it out here.

    I honestly found 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare entertaining, yet rote. While I didn’t play the campaign, I did play the multiplayer beta before launch, and while I was having a blast like before, it just felt like I’ve been here before. To me, it seems like Infinity Ward has given up creatively, with this current effort trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle that they did with the original Modern Warfare.

    There were still attachments, perks and killstreaks, many of the same game modes, even maps I’ve seen in past entries started cropping up. It seemed the biggest innovation the game had at the time was basically ripping off Battlefield’s long-standing Conquest mode. Yet despite the game being fairly derivative, it was still fun to play.

    At this point, Call of Duty as a franchise has been a glimmer of nostalgia more than something I get incredibly hyped for. To me, Modern Warfare 3 was when it started going downhill, what with its busted multiplayer and ham-fisted conclusion of a campaign mode. I was so disappointed with it that I advised people shouldn’t play it way back when I played it on a Steam free weekend in 2012.

    This is pretty much WWII‘s multiplayer in a nutshell: People randomly watching others open lootboxes. To think this was so common a few years ago.

    The only Call of Duty game I played with regularity after that was, surprisingly, WWII. All the others might as well just exist in my mind, something where I play the campaign once, play through some of the multiplayer for a while, then move on to something else that piques my interest.

    Love how this is front-and-center. Probably annoying to those who play the standard multiplayer.

    In late March, Activision announced something I was worried they were gonna repeat: They were adding battle royale mode in Modern Warfare. I figured that with multiplayer, singleplayer and a zombies mode being in every yearly installment, that trying to make a yearly battle royale mode was the easiest way to kill battle royale’s popularity faster than something new taking its place. After all, this is Activision, a company that clearly sticks to what works until it stops making money.

    I was not really interested, until they announced the surprise: Warzone was free to play for anyone, Modern Warfare was not required to play. Now they’ve caught my interest, as I wasn’t really interested in spending more than $20 on a Call of Duty game in 2020. So I tried it, and somehow… it all clicked. After playing several battle royale games, I found the one that worked for me.

    Hey, this looks kinda familiar…

    Warzone really doesn’t need much explanation if you’re familiar with other battle royale modes. You drop as a squad of 3-4 or play on your own and try to be the last one standing. Search buildings and areas for armor, weapons, grenades and some of the Call of Duty hallmarks like killstreaks and the new field upgrades. Kill, try not to die yourself, seems simple. So you’re probably wondering what makes this different from the others you’ve played. Well, it’s complicated.

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