Product Description

A high-powered and mystical three-dimensional environment will enthrall you, with spectacular sound and visual effects, non-stop action and adventure. Prepare to be ensnared in the visual feast that is the worlds of D'sparil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32419 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Loki Entertainment Software
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Linux

Customer Reviews

Heretic 2 is definately worth a look.
Heretic 2 is a great game for the sort of person who likes a cross between Tomb Raider and Quake 2. If your idea of computer gaming heaven is to explore increasingly tough maps (with great graphics and audio all the way) shooting (magical items and spells) at other creatures/things while trying to solve puzzles and battling against occasional tougher end of level characters and hidden bonuses, this could be the game for you.

It is in essence a 3D shoot-em-up with some puzzle solving problems in it and a plot revolving around Corvus (you) and a rather nastly plague that needs curing.

There appears to be a 2+ player mode so no doubt you can easily use Heretic 2 to 'frag' your friends in a graphically superior manner to Quake 2. I have not tried this myself, but it looks remarkably like the multiplayer system for other Quake-like games.

In case your 3D card is not supported, or you can't make any sense of the instructions to get your 3D hardware working in Linux :-). I can report that it works perfectly OK using the software renderer in 640x480 with xFree86 v4.0 on a 541MHz Celeron running Caldera Open Linux eDesktop.

Alas, all is not perfect in the game. Not only is there a plague problem for your character to sort out, but the game also has a few bugs as well. It will crash at certain (repeatable) points. I suggest saving the game before pressing any switches or collecting key items just to be safe. All the crashes are avoidable once you know where they are.

Try to get hold of version 1.06a of this game. I have no idea what version is currently in stock, but when I got the game it was version 1.06 in early August 2000. Version 1.06 will crash at a key point rendering the game unfinishable (in my opinion, I could see no way round the problem). People have completed version 1.06a, and I have gotten way past the key point that killed version 1.06.

A patch is downloadable (size 1536458 bytes, called heretic2-1.06a-x86.run) from assorted Linux resources. Version 1.06 save games are NOT compatible with version 1.06a, so if you play version 1.06 for a while and then download, its back to the start for you.

Version 1.06a also has the advantage of running in full screen mode (as opposed to a Window on X) and also appears to be somewhat faster as a result of this. This information was correct as of July/August 2000, but the game will no doubt be subject to future patches as it still has crashes that warrant more often than usual use of the save game facility.

All in all, I'd say the game is worth the purchase, despite the occasional crash. It is the crashes and the fact that version 1.06 save games aren't compatible with version 1.06a (which is annoying, why not patch the save game files as well) that prevent me from giving it 5 stars that I think it would otherwise deserve.