Unreal and Hexen

For Hexen, get a raven-supporting source port. There's a pretty wide range of ports available, but it really depends on what you want in terms of graphical support and compatibility with the original .exe.

Unreal Gold is the Unreal with included Return to Na'Pali. Play it without any mods.
And old graphics... Man, I don't really know any game more beautiful (in terms of pure Aw!!!) than Unreal on the Voodoo 2.
Regarding Hexen's and Heretic's sourceports, dunno. Always played vanilla.

I'd try to get non-gold version if possible or a bundle including original UT (the one from 99' - it may an MP game, but it's also an excellent mod platform and there are many excellent SP mappacks running under UT only), but if you can't, gold will do.

Under no circumstances buy Unreal 2, unless it's part of a desirable bundle or there is someone threatening to shoot your kneecaps if you refuse. This game is shit.

Definitely go there. Patches, compatibility patches and excellent semi-official patches (done by community but with explicit permission and acknowledgement of the devs).

You can also check www.unrealsp.org for SP mappacks, harsh but fair reviews (40% mappack may be well worth playing, 90% mappack is likely to put official content to shame) and related accessories.

Looks like a good deal.

Heretic isn't a bad game, but looks and plays more like a Doom TC.

Hexen II is definitely a good game although blocky, somewhat empty and containing large amounts of adventure elements that additionally slow the gameplay down.

It's also rather unique in that it puts emphasis on something like mechanical-tactical puzzles during combat, which means that you have to use your weapons and inventory items wisely if you want to survive (even if you're an FPS god) and that a monster that is pretty much cannon fodder to one of the characters can be a miniboss to another - and vice-versa. There are also slight RPG elements.

Some sourceport for Heretic and Hexen might welcome, unless you're so hardcore that you will play them in DOSBox - I recommend Doomsday Engine (google), but without any additional resource packs, to preserve original look and feel.

Hexen 2 might have trouble running, but in this case download Hammer of Thyrion (google) or some other port. If you run it vanilla, you will probably want to run it with +mlook parameter or enter this command in console.

Sounds good, will also try out unreal gold from gog

It was quite recently that I played Unreal + Na Pali through to the end. I found Unreal to consist mostly of a series of loosely connected levels. Some were good, some were not. I found it to be an average game to play through overall. Na Pali, on the other hand, did a much better job by including an actualy storyline and was a solid playthrough all round.

I loved the original Hexen, but never played through the expansion pack. I also never played Hexen 2. I just never could get into it.

Wow wow woow

I am very love these games too. Unreal most awesome hame for all time, + heretic and hexen.
For unreal is good to use oldunreal source port
For heretic and hexen GZDoom
For hexen2 look at quakeone.com other games thread = contain maximum interested things for hexen2.

Unreal very atmospheric game i love to listen soundtracks ^.^

I find your troll... effective.

Well said. I rage with you.

They are both terrible games, FYI

I remember playing hexen years ago. I though there was something special about that game, don't really remember what anymore.

You should probably grab the Direct3D10 renderer for the Unreal Engine. It improves the visual aspects of the game. Other than that you should be fine.
I'm very fond of the first unreal game myself, but it needs to be said that one of the major features of it was the graphics.

Reconite sent me a list of all the id tech 1 WADs, Hexen included, back when I made that thread about Doom. Just ask him, I'm sure he'll send it to you.

If you have a multicore processor, try disabling affinity for "extra" cores for the game. Unreal Engine 1 has some issues with it - Deus Ex, for instance, gets out of synch between speech and cutscene if not tweaked accordingly, and the game is also running too fast. If you feel it's too fast, then it's likely that it's not running like it should.

I tried playing Heretic with a source-port, and didn't like it. The game world was far too big, empty, and the textures didn't stand up to the transition well.

I'd recommend playing it vanilla, perhaps on a netbook or other more accomodating screen size.

Excellent, personally I prefer it all vanilla, but I think that to a new player they are much better. The unreal engine itself has stood the test of time remarkably well for a 3D game, at least if you ask me.
So what are your impressions of the game so far? That is assuming that you've played it for a bit.

The funny thing is, I wasn't even trying to troll anyone.

If it makes you feel better, I went and checked when I played Unreal, and it was back in 2006.

No, he's actually right. Unreal wasn't very consistent as a game. Level design was average at best, and gun play felt dour. It was just extremely pretty. I mean, really fucking pretty, more then any other game i can think of. It also had a great atmosphere, which worked to increase the "wow" factor even more.

Hexen was great, fuck you. Those were the glory days when first person shooters actually had good level design.

I can't wrap my head around someone liking U1 less than RTNP and, especially, considering RTNP to be more consistent and interconnected plot-wise. It just makes no fucking sense.

I'll give it RTNP that it starts off well enough (apart from sissifying our hardened criminal protagonist - #849) and sometimes does interesting things with level progression, but once you find the ship (it isn't even half of the game) anything related to plot consistency or storytelling through environments goes out of the window and game goes full derp.

Unreal levels loosely connected? One follows from another fairly logically, with numerous foreshadowings and multiple levels spanning backplots you can stumble upon.

RTNP, OTOH, is in half composed from Unreal outtakes mashed together.

And the last thing - weapons introduced by RTNP are horribly shit, unimaginative and poorly made.


Regarding the speed - unreal engine is known to have problems with power saving features present in some laptops, in particular CPU throttling. IIRC the engine determines CPU speed on startup so if the CPU is throttled down when idling, the game will end up running at hyperspeed.

Other than that, the only speed problem is that procedurally animated textures go fucking hectic when playing on fast enough rig.

Wait until your first Skaarj.