12 ms·

3D Realms announces Graven, the spiritual successor to Hexen II

103 points by maydemir 6y ago

jbverschoor 6y ago
To be released in 2045
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Maybe I'm getting old but man, I miss the 90's gaming era (you can "ok, boomer" me). Quake, Half Life, Unreal, Hexen, Heretic, Blood... If anyone is interested in a modern 90's style FPS, I recommend you try Dusk.
- badlucklottery 6y ago
  Dusk is honestly amazing. It has great movement/weapons/levels and at times does horror better than most horror games.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I miss the 90's gaming era (you can "ok, boomer" me). Uh, that's more “Ok, Millenial” isn't it? I mean, I'm from the latter half of Gen X, and I miss the late-80s/early-90s era of sims.
  - test1235 6y ago
    apparently ,'xennials' are a thing now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials
- RangerScience 6y ago
  OK Xenial, leave Deus Ex off your list.
- jariRG 6y ago
  I can recomment HROT, it is still in development but you can try the demo on Steam. It is awesome. Fun fact: it looks like Quake engine but not, it is written in Pascal.
- rgoulter 6y ago
  I can recommend Civie11's YouTube channel for well-edited, amusing videos which review FPS games. In particular, his review of Doom II is excellent. https://www.youtube.com/c/Civvie11/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Civvie11/videos
- xioxox 6y ago
  There is also Doom (2016) which (mostly) honours the simplicity of play found in Doom and Quake, but I found the mostly arena-style action rather dull and repetitive after a while. I missed the tunnels and so on in original games. Personally I'm now into modern games like the Dishonored series or Prey (2017), which a great mix of story, puzzle solving and action.
  - minusf 6y ago
    doom 2016 is a great game but it is fundamentally different from classic doom. the biggest difference being resources earned by glory kills vs resource management coming from level design.
badlucklottery 6y ago
It's interesting that 3D Realms, a company that was crushed by Duke Nukem Forever chasing the latest/greatest engines and gameplay trends, it making a big comeback with shooters with a focus on solid art style and "classic" gameplay over graphics and gimmicks. Ion Fury was great and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Graven both seem to be on track to be great as well.
- ido 6y ago
  It has been somewhat marred by yielding to review bombers regarding some trans- and homophobic content https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Fury#Controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Fury#Controversy
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    It's unfortunate these people said/did that but can we please stop conflating the personal transgressions of employees as if it's reflective of the company as a whole? It's a few employees, probably early 20s, making some insensitive and off color remarks. That's it, nothing more
    - asutekku 6y ago
      Having it in your product will affect the whole product.
      - jlawson 6y ago
        Reminds me of a quote from JK Simmons' character in the prison drama Oz. The other prisoner was asking if it was okay to have a black man's tissues used in a dental graft on his gums. "Define purity."
  - jlawson 6y ago
    This was a victory for the common sense right to make fun of things. A parody brand of soap called "ogay" simply is not harmful any more than a gentle parody of white people, America, southerners, Christians, etc as seen all over games like GTA5. Let people laugh at things. In the end it's far more socially healthy for everyone than constantly cranking up the hypersensitivity. Acceptance built of fear and power is not acceptance at all.
Razengan 6y ago
Finally! I hope it's a faithful return to the simplicity of no-nonsense hack-&-slash (and of course zap), untainted by "quests" and "missions" etc. Even the Doom revival somewhat fell prey to complexity for the sake of complexity. There's certainly a lot of merit in reviving old ideas for a new era, even if none of the original fans were alive to bank on the nostalgia alone.
- anakaine 6y ago
  Oh, there's plenty of original fans alive. And plenty of them still game! For many of us I'd say that some of the newer games leave us behind because we don't have all the spare time that we did when we were younger. Hack, slash, and zap with a decent linear story and some problem solving are very much still a good flavour if done well. As are games you can pick up and have 10 minutes of fun in and it doesn't matter overall. Eg Just Cause.
  - Razengan 6y ago
    > Oh, there's plenty of original fans alive. I meant hypothetically, in some farther future, as I'm sure there will always be plenty of old games to revive. :)
- weyland108 6y ago
  Doom eternal is awesome ... I would say the doom revival couldn’t be any better.
  - Razengan 6y ago
    Yes, not saying Doom isn't awesome, just that it would be nice to have games where you just fight without worrying about any distractions. e.g. instead of hunting for keys or cards or levers, or trying to spot secret entrances, they could replace that "artificial" complexity with improved monster AI: Learning enemy patterns and having the enemy learn ours in turn, using a destructible environment to dodge or assist attacks, and figuring out how to deceive their virtual senses (like throwing an object to distract them) and so on.
lostgame 6y ago
There seems to have been a renissance of this old school early / mid 90's FPS genre lately. I love it! I think Quake and Hexen for the Sega Saturn were two of the first FPS games I ever seriously played through, the former running on the exceptional Lobotomy engine that also fueled the fantastic Saturn exclusive 'Exhumed'. :)
- robin_reala 6y ago
  All hail Ezra Dreisbach! Eurogamer managed to get an interview with him a decade ago: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/death-tanks-ezra-driesbach-interview https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/death-tanks-ezra-driesbac...
orliesaurus 6y ago
I love these kind of games, check out WRATH: Aeon of Ruin by the same studio, I truly recommend it! So much fun, reminds me of being young and silly.. wasting afternoons exploring and admiring the same level for countless hours (back when internet was only very limited by my parents haha)
shmerl 6y ago
Oh, after Ion Fury that should be good, if they'll make the Linux version.
iakov 6y ago
If you find yourself itching to play a retro FPS on your modern machine, give DUSK [0] a try. The style is on point. This game is ugly where it counts, the environments are blocky and grotesque. The guns have satisfying sounds and animations, the enemies are numerous and the bosses are fun. This game really makes me feel like I'm a kid playing video games instead of last classes of school. I'm waiting for HROT [1] to be released. It's supposed to be similar to DUSK, but set in Czechoslovakia. The screenshots are very promising... [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/519860/DUSK/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/519860/DUSK/ [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/824600/HROT/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/824600/HROT/
- aooeeu 6y ago
  Or GOG, though the price is higher right now. https://www.gog.com/game/dusk https://www.gog.com/game/dusk
albertzeyer 6y ago
I really would like to see a proper successor of Commander Keen. Although I have no idea how it would look like with modern technology. Afaik, 3D Realms has the rights on it, right? https://legacy.3drealms.com/keenhistory/ https://legacy.3drealms.com/keenhistory/
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  Purists might hate me but an open world commander keen has been something I’ve wanted for a while. They have a lot of foundation for a great universe. Hopefully they go Mario 64 style and don’t get gritty/realistic. It could be awesome.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  You're in luck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpneMd8xTFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpneMd8xTFw It looks like they went for a cartoon aesthetic similar to Fairly Odd Parents & co.
  - Narishma 6y ago
    Not much luck. That's a mobile game and probably cancelled since there hasn't been any news about it for more than a year.
    - thih9 6y ago
      Cancellation seems likely, the "gokeen.com" link from the trailer now points to https://bethesda.net/en/dashboard https://bethesda.net/en/dashboard , with no information about the game.
- rektide 6y ago
  Someone on social mentioned that one of the main current IP holders was an individual who is racist or white supremacist or some grossly ugly thing. I just did some fast searching to try to suss out how BS this is but didn't get anywhere. Apologies for passing on rumors I couldn't even find to cite. But that would change my interest, for sure. Also yeah I'm struggling to imagine what we'd do with modern graphics technology here.
b0rsuk 6y ago
Yess!! I'm probably going to be disappointed by this one, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Definitely the best 2020 news so far. HeXeN was one of most thrilling games of my childhood. It left a big impression on me. I even made a pretty creative balancing/fun mod for HeXeN using the source port Vavoom. I lost the code in a hard drive crash though. The game was far from perfect and there are good reasons it didn't reach the popularity of DooM or even Heretic. What would you do to make HeXeN and HeXeN II more fun? Here's my take: 1. Both HeXeN games suffered from unfun level design. It was nice looking, but confusing to navigate, especially switch hunting. You alternatively had adrenaline rushes and pixel hunting. I think both provide a different experience and doesn't mesh better than Chess Boxing. 2. HeXeN classes don't really have distinct playstyles. They're all shooters at core except for Warrior/Paladin. More could be done to diversify them. In particular, no late game weapon was meant for up close. 3. The game is too linear and not very modular in its level design. You can warp to any Heretic level and start slaughter from that point. It was a legacy of DooM design which was originally meant to play with limited lives, arcade-style. 4. HeXeN 1 was notorious for "haha, you die!" traps that required either foreknowledge or LIGHTNING reflexes to dodge. 5. Low enemy variety compared to DooM 2. You kept fighting the same few dudes over and over, and 4 weapon limit per class is... not a lot, even with Tome of Power. 6. They should limit the ability to hog inventory items, for example like in Heretic where you can only carry 1 of each to next level. 7. HeXeN never rewarded people for finding secret rooms. It punished those who didn't find them, because instead of goodies they had switches and keys mandatory to progress. H1 and H2 had very few optional secret rooms.
- SuperPaintMan 6y ago
  A few months ago I did a passthrough of Wrath Of Chronos, and it really breathed some life into Hexen. It even works for other DOOM wads and can be a fun change of pace to your standard IWAD, give it a shot if DOOM RPGs sound up your alley :) https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=35846 https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=35846
unixhero 6y ago
2020 has been a great year in this regard; https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_...

103 points by maydemir 6y ago

To be released in 2045

Maybe I'm getting old but man, I miss the 90's gaming era (you can "ok, boomer" me). Quake, Half Life, Unreal, Hexen, Heretic, Blood... If anyone is interested in a modern 90's style FPS, I recommend you try Dusk.

badlucklottery 6y ago
Dusk is honestly amazing. It has great movement/weapons/levels and at times does horror better than most horror games.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I miss the 90's gaming era (you can "ok, boomer" me). Uh, that's more “Ok, Millenial” isn't it? I mean, I'm from the latter half of Gen X, and I miss the late-80s/early-90s era of sims.
- test1235 6y ago
  apparently ,'xennials' are a thing now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials
RangerScience 6y ago
OK Xenial, leave Deus Ex off your list.
jariRG 6y ago
I can recomment HROT, it is still in development but you can try the demo on Steam. It is awesome. Fun fact: it looks like Quake engine but not, it is written in Pascal.
rgoulter 6y ago
I can recommend Civie11's YouTube channel for well-edited, amusing videos which review FPS games. In particular, his review of Doom II is excellent. https://www.youtube.com/c/Civvie11/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Civvie11/videos
xioxox 6y ago
There is also Doom (2016) which (mostly) honours the simplicity of play found in Doom and Quake, but I found the mostly arena-style action rather dull and repetitive after a while. I missed the tunnels and so on in original games. Personally I'm now into modern games like the Dishonored series or Prey (2017), which a great mix of story, puzzle solving and action.
- minusf 6y ago
  doom 2016 is a great game but it is fundamentally different from classic doom. the biggest difference being resources earned by glory kills vs resource management coming from level design.

badlucklottery 6y ago

It's interesting that 3D Realms, a company that was crushed by Duke Nukem Forever chasing the latest/greatest engines and gameplay trends, it making a big comeback with shooters with a focus on solid art style and "classic" gameplay over graphics and gimmicks. Ion Fury was great and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Graven both seem to be on track to be great as well.

ido 6y ago
It has been somewhat marred by yielding to review bombers regarding some trans- and homophobic content https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Fury#Controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Fury#Controversy
- kristopolous 6y ago
  It's unfortunate these people said/did that but can we please stop conflating the personal transgressions of employees as if it's reflective of the company as a whole? It's a few employees, probably early 20s, making some insensitive and off color remarks. That's it, nothing more
  - asutekku 6y ago
    Having it in your product will affect the whole product.
    - jlawson 6y ago
      Reminds me of a quote from JK Simmons' character in the prison drama Oz. The other prisoner was asking if it was okay to have a black man's tissues used in a dental graft on his gums. "Define purity."
- jlawson 6y ago
  This was a victory for the common sense right to make fun of things. A parody brand of soap called "ogay" simply is not harmful any more than a gentle parody of white people, America, southerners, Christians, etc as seen all over games like GTA5. Let people laugh at things. In the end it's far more socially healthy for everyone than constantly cranking up the hypersensitivity. Acceptance built of fear and power is not acceptance at all.

Razengan 6y ago

Finally! I hope it's a faithful return to the simplicity of no-nonsense hack-&-slash (and of course zap), untainted by "quests" and "missions" etc. Even the Doom revival somewhat fell prey to complexity for the sake of complexity. There's certainly a lot of merit in reviving old ideas for a new era, even if none of the original fans were alive to bank on the nostalgia alone.

anakaine 6y ago
Oh, there's plenty of original fans alive. And plenty of them still game! For many of us I'd say that some of the newer games leave us behind because we don't have all the spare time that we did when we were younger. Hack, slash, and zap with a decent linear story and some problem solving are very much still a good flavour if done well. As are games you can pick up and have 10 minutes of fun in and it doesn't matter overall. Eg Just Cause.
- Razengan 6y ago
  > Oh, there's plenty of original fans alive. I meant hypothetically, in some farther future, as I'm sure there will always be plenty of old games to revive. :)
weyland108 6y ago
Doom eternal is awesome ... I would say the doom revival couldn’t be any better.
- Razengan 6y ago
  Yes, not saying Doom isn't awesome, just that it would be nice to have games where you just fight without worrying about any distractions. e.g. instead of hunting for keys or cards or levers, or trying to spot secret entrances, they could replace that "artificial" complexity with improved monster AI: Learning enemy patterns and having the enemy learn ours in turn, using a destructible environment to dodge or assist attacks, and figuring out how to deceive their virtual senses (like throwing an object to distract them) and so on.

lostgame 6y ago

There seems to have been a renissance of this old school early / mid 90's FPS genre lately. I love it! I think Quake and Hexen for the Sega Saturn were two of the first FPS games I ever seriously played through, the former running on the exceptional Lobotomy engine that also fueled the fantastic Saturn exclusive 'Exhumed'. :)

robin_reala 6y ago
All hail Ezra Dreisbach! Eurogamer managed to get an interview with him a decade ago: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/death-tanks-ezra-driesbach-interview https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/death-tanks-ezra-driesbac...

orliesaurus 6y ago

I love these kind of games, check out WRATH: Aeon of Ruin by the same studio, I truly recommend it! So much fun, reminds me of being young and silly.. wasting afternoons exploring and admiring the same level for countless hours (back when internet was only very limited by my parents haha)

shmerl 6y ago

Oh, after Ion Fury that should be good, if they'll make the Linux version.

iakov 6y ago

If you find yourself itching to play a retro FPS on your modern machine, give DUSK [0] a try. The style is on point. This game is ugly where it counts, the environments are blocky and grotesque. The guns have satisfying sounds and animations, the enemies are numerous and the bosses are fun. This game really makes me feel like I'm a kid playing video games instead of last classes of school. I'm waiting for HROT [1] to be released. It's supposed to be similar to DUSK, but set in Czechoslovakia. The screenshots are very promising... [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/519860/DUSK/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/519860/DUSK/ [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/824600/HROT/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/824600/HROT/

aooeeu 6y ago
Or GOG, though the price is higher right now. https://www.gog.com/game/dusk https://www.gog.com/game/dusk

albertzeyer 6y ago

I really would like to see a proper successor of Commander Keen. Although I have no idea how it would look like with modern technology. Afaik, 3D Realms has the rights on it, right? https://legacy.3drealms.com/keenhistory/ https://legacy.3drealms.com/keenhistory/

godzillabrennus 6y ago
Purists might hate me but an open world commander keen has been something I’ve wanted for a while. They have a lot of foundation for a great universe. Hopefully they go Mario 64 style and don’t get gritty/realistic. It could be awesome.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
You're in luck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpneMd8xTFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpneMd8xTFw It looks like they went for a cartoon aesthetic similar to Fairly Odd Parents & co.
- Narishma 6y ago
  Not much luck. That's a mobile game and probably cancelled since there hasn't been any news about it for more than a year.
  - thih9 6y ago
    Cancellation seems likely, the "gokeen.com" link from the trailer now points to https://bethesda.net/en/dashboard https://bethesda.net/en/dashboard , with no information about the game.
rektide 6y ago
Someone on social mentioned that one of the main current IP holders was an individual who is racist or white supremacist or some grossly ugly thing. I just did some fast searching to try to suss out how BS this is but didn't get anywhere. Apologies for passing on rumors I couldn't even find to cite. But that would change my interest, for sure. Also yeah I'm struggling to imagine what we'd do with modern graphics technology here.

b0rsuk 6y ago

Yess!! I'm probably going to be disappointed by this one, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Definitely the best 2020 news so far. HeXeN was one of most thrilling games of my childhood. It left a big impression on me. I even made a pretty creative balancing/fun mod for HeXeN using the source port Vavoom. I lost the code in a hard drive crash though. The game was far from perfect and there are good reasons it didn't reach the popularity of DooM or even Heretic. What would you do to make HeXeN and HeXeN II more fun? Here's my take: 1. Both HeXeN games suffered from unfun level design. It was nice looking, but confusing to navigate, especially switch hunting. You alternatively had adrenaline rushes and pixel hunting. I think both provide a different experience and doesn't mesh better than Chess Boxing. 2. HeXeN classes don't really have distinct playstyles. They're all shooters at core except for Warrior/Paladin. More could be done to diversify them. In particular, no late game weapon was meant for up close. 3. The game is too linear and not very modular in its level design. You can warp to any Heretic level and start slaughter from that point. It was a legacy of DooM design which was originally meant to play with limited lives, arcade-style. 4. HeXeN 1 was notorious for "haha, you die!" traps that required either foreknowledge or LIGHTNING reflexes to dodge. 5. Low enemy variety compared to DooM 2. You kept fighting the same few dudes over and over, and 4 weapon limit per class is... not a lot, even with Tome of Power. 6. They should limit the ability to hog inventory items, for example like in Heretic where you can only carry 1 of each to next level. 7. HeXeN never rewarded people for finding secret rooms. It punished those who didn't find them, because instead of goodies they had switches and keys mandatory to progress. H1 and H2 had very few optional secret rooms.

SuperPaintMan 6y ago
A few months ago I did a passthrough of Wrath Of Chronos, and it really breathed some life into Hexen. It even works for other DOOM wads and can be a fun change of pace to your standard IWAD, give it a shot if DOOM RPGs sound up your alley :) https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=35846 https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=35846

unixhero 6y ago

2020 has been a great year in this regard; https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_...