Hedon Bloodrite

On paper, Hedon sounds like a interesting take as a mix of first person shooter and story driven adventure. The designer deserves credit for undertaking such an ambitious project. In execution... As other reviewers have touched on, the title screen features fantastic art and a very catchy metal tune, leading you to potentially think "oh great! This is going to be awesome!". Then you see the sprites in game, hear the background ambient music and expectation meets reality. Somewhat painfully. The enemies all look rather unremarkable. For denizens of the "Underworld", they're rather plain. You, the titular Zan, and NPC allies of the Iron Division, all look like Amazonian women, albeit with different coloured skin. It's like a strange gallery of the artist's work, and it's jarring to the intended tone of the game. On a side note, the portrait of "Zan" pointing at something...what expression is that? Seductive? Boredom? Freshly lobotomized? The opening level is...serviceable, with an interesting small section that helps convey the backstory. You're introduced to one of the melee weapons and a couple of weapons from the ranged arsenal, and the whole level is over fairly succinctly. The melee weapons have a nice solid sounding impact. The subsequent levels are dramatically slower. Backtracking is present, as mentioned in the store page's description, but each level requires a frustrating amount of it. When the level par times are 45 minutes, that is not a good thing. That is padding by way of forcing the player to faff about running back and forth, to the point where frustration and then boredom set in, and once that wall is reached it's hard to get back into the game. The weapon models are...well, look at the model for the shotgun/flamethrower as an example. That is not a healthy angle for a wrist, and that hand is tiny. Minor issue yes, but noticeable. In short, the design choices seriously hamper what was a good idea in principle.

Hedon really surprised me with it's divergent gameplay. Being built in the GZdoom engine, a sourceport of the original Doom engine with some extra horsepower under its hood, you'd expect the same gameplay loop. But Hedon breaks from tradition and offers a slower, more methodical approach -- and I genuinely enjoy it. The fast-paced, lock and load action you'd expect from a boomer shooter is there in all it's glory, but it's paced out and sprinkled all over an otherwise lore-rich exploration and puzzles. It's different, but it feels fun to play. And when you finally get to those exhilarating moments of intense firefights, where the enemies start to flood in and the music swells, it feels rewarding. Also, as far as I'm concerned Zan stands shoulder-to-shoulder with all the grandaddies: Duke, Caleb, Doomguy, etc.. I highly reccomend this game.

To every who wishes the game had better lighting and depth and there was better distinction of edges and corners, turn on ambient occlusion. Options -> Display Options -> Hardware Renderer -> Postprocessing -> Ambient Occlusion Quality. And if you want turn on Bloom while you're there.

TD;DR: If you're a fan of the new batch of retro fps or older fps games like Hexen, I recommend this game at a discount price at its current state (one episode with 10 levels, about 10 hours of gameplay), and full price when episode 2 is released (it's in the works). You can also replay the game with other game type modes, one of the modes only give you various melee weapons. Graphics: the hand-drawn art is in my opinion quite refreshing and it's different from the low poly pixel-based retro shooters with post-processing (like Project Warlock, Strafe, or Nightmare Reaper). You really have some inspired places and vistas, with a steampunk/fantasy theme! I think that one problem is the lightning since the game looks a little bit flat/shadowless in some areas. My suggestion to "fix" it: go to Display Options\Hardware Renderer\Postprocessing on GZDoom options, turn Bloom on, and set Ambient Occlusion to "High", and you'll get more lively flames/lava and more depth to the environment! Gameplay: the puzzles are reminiscent of Hexen or Thief since you collect objects or craft new ones to unlock doors or fix some broken machines to progress. The game will not hand guide you and will require you to explore the level, check the map often, and read various notes. It's not that hard, and most of the time the solution is just around the corner, although I think the first level is a bit more difficult to navigate than the following ones. A big plus is the absence of hitscan enemies - every shot from you and your opponents is projectile based -, and the weapons available follow the much-proven formula of pistol/shotgun/rocket launcher, but with alt-fire modes and some original powerups to spice things up a bit. Although it was made by just one person (not counting the cover art and the soundtrack) it doesn't feel like it. And kudos to the developer for releasing the freeware (and older, beware!) version of the game as a Doom mod, so you can try the game before you buy it.

Hedon is a fantastic game that combime 2 of my favorite games of all times, Doom (the first game I ever played) and Arx Fatalis (because it has a similar setting), it's incredible what GZDoom Engine is capable of, big environments, a bunch of cool new effects, good platforms sections (for a FPS) and an interesting story that you want to know more about it! Zan is a great protagonist, weapons are fun to use, and sounds good and the graphics are really nice. I here some people complaing because is a paid Doom mod but nothing more far from the truth, this is a completely different game build in a modify Doom Engine with completly new and original assets!!! I super recommend this game, at the moment of writing this review is 25% and is super cheap, give it a try, you won't regret it!!!