Copyright nintendolife
Last month Bethesda and retro specialists Nightdive Studios announced the return and shadow drop of Heretic + Hexen - a "definitive re-release" of the classic spell shooters. Now, much like the re-releases of DOOM and Quake, this latest package has now received its first major update. As explained on the Slayers Club website, Update 1 introduces a variety of new features, gameplay changes, fixes, and modding improvements, and has been made available across all platforms. Here's the full rundown of what you can expect: New Features Heretic: Added original game's Firemace placement randomization (albeit with 100% spawn chance instead of the original's 75%) Added option to disable cutscene subtitles in Accessibility menu Added option to restore original two-button press behavior when selecting inventory items Added option to restore original behavior where flying forward or backward will keep you at the same height, regardless of looking up or down Added option to disable weapon animation smoothing Added 'look up', 'look down', and 'center view' key bindings Allow use of more buttons to advance through intermission text screens Gameplay Modifiers menu is now accessible from episode and player class screens, instead of just difficulty selection Hexen: Buffed Bloodscourge damage and adjusted autoaim behavior to work better with large crowds of enemies Hexen: Slightly increased attack speed of Timon's Axe Hexen: Decreased Quietus mana usage from 14 of each type to 10 Hexen: Slightly increased Wraithverge mana usage from 18 to 20 Hexen: Improved smoothness of weapon attack animations for the weapons: Timon's Axe, Hammer of Retribution, Mace of Contrition, Wraithverge, Sapphire Wand, and Bloodscourge Improved smoothness of weapon raise and lower animations Disable menu ambience if music soundtrack is set to None Automap now scrolls at a consistent speed regardless of screen resolution Automap now zooms more quickly when using a mouse wheel Strafe left and right keys will now cancel each other out to match original game behavior Monsters can no longer be pushed off ledges by player weapon attacks Triggers can no longer be skipped in certain circumstances when sliding along walls Enemy missiles will no longer fire slightly downward, preventing incorrectly exploding on certain windowsills Monster melee attacks no longer have infinite height Multiplayer scoreboards will no longer show zeroed out stats in certain cases Fixed cases where disabling viewbob would cause weapon sprites to offset incorrectly Locked door messages will no longer print if door is activated from back side Fixed strafe modifier key not working for mouse or controller movement Fixed missing accented glyphs in supported languages when using Classic typeface Prevented messages at the top of the screen from being stuck after loading certain save games Heretic: The Chaos Serpent in Faith Renewed will no longer shoot fireballs over the player’s head Heretic: Gauntlets will no longer push enemies backward Heretic: Fixed status bar not redrawing correctly on level transition if crossfade option is disabled Heretic: Shadowspheres will now correctly penalize enemy aiming at the player Heretic: Fix black box on Firemace sprite Hexen: Fixed cases where weapon sprites for certain melee weapons (e.g. Cleric Mace) would occasionally jitter Hexen: Fixed explosions having infinite height Hexen: Messages for switch sequences in Deathkings will now print properly Level Changes & Fixes Heretic: Fixed inconsistent blood floor texture behavior; blood floors will no longer deal damage) Heretic: Fixed inconsistencies between types of locked door textures to be consistent with original game Heretic: E1M6: Fixed an instance of overlapping monsters on Hard difficulty Heretic: E2M1: Removed a few Weredragons in singleplayer, for a bit less grind Heretic: E2M2: Remove mid-air floating stalactite Heretic: E2M5: Fixed non-damaging lava sector around yellow key Heretic: E2M7: Remove unreachable enemies from disabled green key track on easier difficulty modes Heretic: E3M5: Fixed gargoyles getting randomly stuck on hanging corpses Heretic: E3M6: Remove out-of-bounds Quartz Flask which caused 100% items being unobtainable Heretic: E4M2: Fixed softlock caused by skipping triggers for lowering the yellow key pyramid Heretic: E5M1: Fixed unobtainable secrets; add additional Tome of Power to maze area Heretic: E5M2: Fixed missing texture on waterfall steps after blue door Heretic: E5M3: "Pod-walk" and "Barrel-walk" sections are no longer required to reach the non-secret exit Heretic: E5M5: Fixed unobtainable secrets Heretic: E5M6: Fixed sky-pillar cutoff when viewing the starting area from the secret ledge outdoors Faith Renewed: E5M1: Fixed unobtainable secret Faith Renewed: E1M3: Fixed softlock caused by progressing beyond the green doors without a green key Faith Renewed: E1M6: Fixed non-lava damaging floor sector Faith Renewed: E1M7: Fixed unintended skip to yellow key and softlock caused by leaping into firepits near start Faith Renewed: E1M9: Fixed being able to escape beyond the playable bounds of the map in certain areas Vestiges of Grandeur: Serpent Temple: Fixed portals to Garden of Medea and Korax's Domain only being usable one time Vestiges of Grandeur: Korax's Domain: Fixed softlock when choosing incorrectly for the final puzzle switch Vestiges of Grandeur: Korax's Domain: Fixed co-op shortcut teleporter only being usable one time Microsoft Store New Features Added support for using the Windows virtual keyboard for text inputs Removed option for exclusive fullscreen to fix some issues with Game Bar overlays and to allow virtual keyboard to work Modding Changes Added warning that the mod uploader is not available when using a controller Heretic: Added a new non-randomized Firemace actor that can be placed in custom maps Heretic: Resolved issue where wand start option was not available when launching Heretic mods Heretic: Removed ambient sound limit Heretic: Removed D'Sparil boss teleport spot limit Heretic: Sector type 4 will now visually scroll again Added WF_AUTOAIMFARTHEST flag for weapons; instructs weapon to priortize the furthest available target for autoaim, rather than the nearest Added A_MStaffAttackEX (customizable Bloodscourge attack) codepointer Fix issue when setting playerclass flags in EXDEFS A_RadiusDamage now has flags for customizing behavior Added 'endpalette' and 'enddemon' UMAPINFO keys, allowing arbitrary maps to use finales for Heretic Episodes 2 and 3 Fix crash when loading certain old mods that utilize custom textures Updated order of graphic lumps in IWADs to match the originals, to fix potential HUD display issues in community source ports Moved UMAPINFO lump for Heretic to heretic_ex.wad, for better compatibility with community source ports Only evaluate the -warp commandline option on first launch, not when switching games in the game selection screen You can find out more about Heretic + Hexen in the original announcement post and our full review here on Nintendo Life: Will you be checking out this update? Have you tried out this package on the Switch yet? Let us know in the comments.
