Heretic II Mania Takes Hold

Since the release of the Heretic II demo, gamers everywhere have been buzzing. Sure, the demo had some bugs but the crew at Raven Software, the game's developer, are hard at work squashing them one by one - in addition to tightening up the hatches and plugging the holes.

GameSpot's servers have been flooded with downloaders hoping to play the game. As gamers have played, they've found more things for Raven to fix. So the Raven crew spent a good deal of the weekend tweaking the demo to near perfection.

Here's the latest on what's been done. As we predicted on Friday, Raven released the first of a series of patches on Friday evening; the first being to fix the time delimiter previously set for November 1.

Even more problems popped up since the demo's launch when players discovered how to hack into active servers and Raven quickly replied with a fix for those running servers. Single player concerns still remain. Launching the demo when not connected to the web cause many to be prompted with a Dial-Up Connection box and saving a game in progress is disabled (Raven wanted to make sure that the save option was more stable). Despite these errors, gamers have taken the game into their hands and have been playing ever since.

In addition, some creative gamers have come up with utilities to add Microsoft mouse wheel support (like that offered as freeware for Quake II) and then there are those who have discovered how to build new levels for Corvus' return. Will Heretic II be a success when it releases to commercial shelves? Considering that support for the game appears extreme, Activision can almost bank on it being a performer at retailers. But with other games set to mount healthy competition - Shogo, Half-Life, Sin, and Tomb Raider III among them - we'll see if gamers' have been positively influenced by the HII demo.

Features that Quake II deathmatch gamers have come to expect won't be readily available for Heretic II gamers: Raven programmer Pat Lipo says in his plan file that support for skins in the game (which is probably one of the most loved new features in Quake II) has not been decided upon yet. And downloadable character meshes won't make it onto the game since models can take up a significant amount of space. Lipso cites, "With all intricacies, model parts, skeletal bones and animation frames, it would just be prohibitive to have these be dynamically downloaded during play. Imagine you're playing in a deathmatch server, having a great time, when suddenly - BAM! Somebody new has joined in and you have to wait for a 3 MB model to download. I don't think so."

While the demo has come in for some last minute fixes, the big picture presents a game that offers enough newness to the genre as to not anger many gamers. With some new kicks, new weapons, and beautiful looking spells, action gamers have found something new to love. Third person titles like Tomb Raider have been popular in the action world but the boys at Raven may have taken the third person perspective to its next evolution with deathmatches.