There have been a ton of first-person shooters made over the course of modern video game history. Some are revolutionary: Doom, Duke Nukem, and Wolfenstein 3D. Some are legendary: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Goldenye 007. Some are respectable entries in the genre: Turok and Quake. And then there are some forgettable ones - and the one in particular I shall discuss is Hexen. Ever heard of it? Probably not. If you played the Nintendo 64, the Playstation, or the PC back in the late 1990s, you may remember it amongst the slew of other FPS's to be released around that time. There are reasons that many gamers today won't remember Hexen, and those who do, don't remember it as fondly as they did then.

     I remember renting this game back in the day and really enjoying its atmosphere. I liked it enough that I eventually landed a copy of it on the cheap. It was similar to Doom 64 in many ways because it had a very hellish and creepy feel throughout. It also had its own unique visual style, with its moody looking Church-like structures, the bizarre looking skies, eerie portals, and some really unusual looking creatures. What the game did well was its presentation - it was very convincing it was it was trying to do. It conveyed an outer-world like experience, hosted by a cast of demons and monsters. Even the games instruction manual seems convinced this game takes place unto its own universe. The music and sound effects were often quite effective, and that only enhanced its weird atmosphere.

     A game though isn't necessarily good just because it conveys an interesting atmosphere. Hexen, at least the version for the Nintendo 64, suffered some terribly blurry visuals, and fairly slow gameplay. Perhaps though, the most disappointing part of this game is its heavily pixelated graphics which looked decent in 1997, but look horrendous now. Of course, it's natural for games to evolve over time, but even for 1997, it wasn't a looker.

     To Hexen's credit though, it did offer the player some really dynamic choices. You were presented with three different classes of characters - the Warrior, Cleric, or Mage. Each character has their own unique style of attacks, and that is actually pretty impressive for such an old game. I usually pick the Cleric since he has a pretty wicked mace-ball attack, and he is also the most balanced among the three. The Warrior is the slowest, with the shortest range, but of course is the most powerful. As for the Mage, he has the magic, but is apparently the weakest. It provides some replay value for the player, but it is a shame that the game itself wasn't particularly captivating.

     I often found Hexen quite confusing, and it has something of a learning curve to figure out, but, it isn't a terrible game. It's forgettable, but, it does have some things of merit as well. Personally, I don't intensely dislike it, nor do I love it. It's passable, but could have been better, and ultimately more memorable. Perhaps I'll someday play it for the Sony Playstation - which I've heard is the better port of the game - but as for the N64 version, it's alright.

     In the end Hexen has essentially been hexed from the mainstream and relegated to video game obscurity. If you are interested in this game, you may get a cheap thrill out of it, but, it won't last. There were and are far better first-person shooters out there.

-Kurt L.

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