Hedon Bloodrite

Hedon : a new, fresh Doom-like masterpiece or, simply, an act of pure love. That's about it, this game has everything that a FPS ( and not just Doom like) should have : hand crafted levels, a surprisingly good and solid lore to support the story ( and just the right way to develop it and help the players discover it), a good variety of creeps to fight ( this is actually the ONLY part where the game could be accused of having flaws, which, in reality, it is just a ''good enough'' part, everything else is ASTONISHING.) and solid action-but-also-explorative gameplay. Usually, there is a review for the retrò gamer and another for the more ''modern'' one : in this case, there is only one, and that only one spells b-u-y i-t, you won't be disappointed. No, seriously. This game has multiple, interesting items to use, a engaging story that manages to be have classical fantasy races but ''delivers them'' in a seldom way ( a very particular but refreshing way, believe me), a 90' feeling with a silent and badass protagonist, solid and different weapons and, most importantly, a beautiful level design, with much to explore and tons of secrets and easter eggs to discover. Not to mention the cooperation of Alex Brandon, I mean... that alone is worth the ticket. So, After my not-so-impartial-but-perfectly-honest review, I'd say : give the Demon blood gal a chance, she really wears the heavy mantle of 90' fps ( and not only that) perfectly.

Really fun gameplay. If you like old school shooters, you'll love this one. I personally really like that this game blends old-school doom (more like duke nukem) gameplay with a bit more RPG and story. Really awesome game.

I didn't expect a single-dev "boomer shooter" to enthrall me so. It has a wonderful old-school philosophy of not holding your hand, letting you discover the mechanics at a steady pace on your own accord. Level design is the star of the show. The maps are sprawling, the layouts make sense and flow well. You can see the dev is an architect by trade :) The game makes you explore the world and some text to solve puzzles, and I really enjoyed the pacing – however, being based on the Doom engine, many players will go in expecting much less downtime between shooting, leading to complaints about "padding". The lighting isn't very refined and makes some shapes blend together, but this stopped bothering me too much after 1-2 hours in and just became part of the esthetic. I had zero problems making out enemies from the environment or each other. The character art has drawn some criticism, and while the animations are indeed quite spartan, the art style is nice and distinctive. The worldbuilding has seen a great deal of love and effort. I'm thankful that while the writing is solid, it's not self-indulgent – the game won't lecture you about its lore, instead it's integrated in environments and short text snippets. There's one level that's all backstory and no combat, but it's at the right point in the story and quite inventive in its presentation. The songs by Alexander Brandon obviously slap, and for Unreal/Deus Ex players will fill you with all kinds of warm emotions. The grumbling guitars and dark pads of the ambience fit really well with the visuals too. There's just the right amount of weapons and they're all fun to use. (The Crylance is introduced a bit late for its own good though.) Minimal hitscan is a design decision I love. The Bearzerk difficulty/mode transforms the game with carefully re-designed weapons and encounters for a very different, melee-focused playthrough. Chapter 2 dev diaries show blueprints of even sprawlier levels. Can't wait!

After playing the first 'episode' of Hedon last year during lockdown, I was hoping that a second would be in the works....it was. And it was/is awesome! No faffing about, I'm just going to quickly say that this has all the hallmarks of 90s shooter like Hexen, Heretic, Doom, Wolfenstein, etc. And if you consider yourself a fan of these beauties then I highly recommend picking Hedon up, as - from the very first E1M1 moment, it does not disappoint, as not only Zan has created an awesome shooter in it's own 'rite', but has developed an accompanying lore that - IMHO - far surpasses that of Hexen/Heretic themselves. Not only that though, it possesses a killer soundtrack full of awesome tunes, and the puzzles themselves in the game are really cleverly thought out and implemented. In short, I can't recommend this game highly enough, so if you feel you have a spare few bucks or so, consider getting this and being blown away by the awesomeness that is Zan and the Iron Division! Cheers!

Weapons: A serviceable set of weapons that inflict grievous damage on enemies. You can immolate enemies, chop them in half or explode them in various satisfying ways. Besides the ways they make enemies die, there aren't to many stand out features to the weapons. Level Design: Levels are mostly well designed. Where levels usually loop around so when you find a button, item or key you can quickly get to the place to use the item or key. And if you do need to backtrack, 'reminder' enemies can spawn near the place you need to take the item you just got. So just following the enemies can lead you to your destination. Marking the auto map with the locked door markers is also a great help. There are only 10 levels, but the clear times are usually around 30 minutes. My play time though on easy was nearly 6 hours. Features mid level auto save system after reaching a new areas to prevent losing large amounts of progress. The levels also make efforts to have the structures seem liveable. It seems each complex has at least one bathroom. There are also some occasional changes to typical kill enemies and key hunt gameplay. With short sections where you can work smelters to forge quest items, lite platforming elements and even a cool horrorish section near the end of the game. The only two parts of the levels that were unintuitive for me were: The dwarf fort, where I made a iron bar though I had no idea what for. I never realised there was a key inside the gate until I backtracked out of the fort then came back. Finding the secret magic slate to open the top most vines in the tree. The trigger to find it blended into the background, even with a guide telling what to look for it was still hard to actually see it. And other negative points would be in game dialogue is done via text run on a timer. So the lore dump in the middle of the game was pretty long. And there are a lot of doors that do nothing in some places, that look the same as normal doors.