The Hedon Duology - Crystalpunk Ultraviolence
[CIVVIE] It's so weird, this game keeps crashing because it's running out of video memory, I got an RTX 2060, you know, I wonder what the recommended card on the Steam page is. [H4MM3R] Play the orc girl game, Civvie. [CIVVIE] Oh, you mean Big Booba Hell Sniper? Or you mean Hedon? [GOOGLE] /hi:dən/ [CIVVIE] Yeah, I pronounce that /hi:dən/, yeah, that's right, I pronounce a thing correctly because… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [CIVVIE] - Katie please… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [CIVVIE] - I don't want to do that gag! [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead… [CIVVIE] Are you done? Is it out of your system yet? *Super Mario Bros. 3 Sky Land Theme* [H4MM3R] Use the Head-On Commercial, Katie. Or else… *The Demons From Adrian's Pen* [CIVVIE] So GZDoom is sure getting used a lot for games nowadays. If you want that 2.5D magic, Hedon uses it, Vomitoreum uses it,
a bunch of games at Realms Deep were on GZDoom, Selaco, believe it or not, is on GZDoom, somehow, magically, despite the fact that GZDoom, with all due respect, is optimized only slightly better than that FUCKING DEATHLOOP PC PORT ARKANE AND BETHESDA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TODD, WHEN YOU'RE NOT COUNTING MY FUCKING MONEY?! GZDoom is surprisingly versatile, what with the fact that games like Vomitoreum and Hedon don't feel like Doom, they feel kinda like the Doom engine, but weapons don't have 3 frames of animation anymore, you're not limited to 256 colors, there's colored lighting, dynamic lighting, 3D Floors, what-have-you… But, for anyone out there making a game in GZDoom, A POX ON YOU IF YOU'RE MAKING A FUCKING DEMON SHOOTING GAME IN HELL AGAIN. IF YOU'RE TAKING GZDOOM AND MAKING DOOM AGAIN, STOP! You will not do well and you will bring dishonor upon your family. And I'm not here to talk about the specifics of GZDoom, I'm here to talk about this here game because I played the first one a few months back and I didn't make a video on it despite people asking me to make a video about it because if I made a video about things people asked me to make videos on, I'd be surrendering. I'd have made a TNT video and I'd feel like a coward.
I gotta remember that with 320-ish thousand subscribers, really only a very vocal 1% of the audience wants a TNT video, and a silent majority want the game starring the ripped half-demon, half-orc brick shit-house, which isn't my thing, but people watching this can now masturbate while listening to my voice, which is my thing… *Hannibal-slurping* Hedon 1, also called "The Crystal Heart", feels, in retrospect, more like a prequel chapter to Hedon Blood Rite, which came out last month, and is like twice the size. If you bought Hedon 1 and didn't care for it, too bad because Blood Rite was a free update to everyone who owned the first one! Like I just did a second playthrough of Crystal Heart, which took 6 hours since I kinda knew what I was doing, and my first playthrough of Blood Rite took like 14 hours and I'm pretty sure only a couple of those hours were spent wandering around wondering what the fuck I was supposed to do. That's not to say it's a frustrating HeXen-like switch hunt because it's not.
If you play Hedon 1 and 2 back-to-back instead of months apart, it might actually be easier for you. I vaguely remembered what happened in Crystal Heart, most of what I remembered about Hedon was about the combat, not about the story. Yeah, there's a story, a lot of it! So, to breeze through it: Zan the Bonebreaker, a half-orc, half-demon warrior who lives among the orcs, because the demons are bad, well she's part of the Iron Division, who go to hell to lay siege to the demons, but while doing that, most of those orcs die because the Forge Elementals betray them, hate when that happens, but Zan survives and is transported back to her home, or at least into a dark cave close to her home, with the help of the mysterious Abhaoth who, honestly, may be horny for Zan. She dumps a lot of exposition on you in the middle of Crystal Heart.
She's there to reveal your purpose. Katie, get that clip from The Jerk, where he's talking about his special purpose. [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead! [CIVVIE] - God damn it, GOD DAMN IT! [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead! [CIVVIE] And people in the Iron Division think Zan might have betrayed them since she, you know, survived. But, the demons, they're not really behind it, it's actually Nithriel, a creature from the void, which is weird, I didn't know Adam and Eve delivered there. So that's it, you're all caught up on the main gist of Hedon 1, Nithriel is evil, she's orchestrated a massive slaughter of your Orc sisters, she wants the Crystal Heart, and you gotta stop her from getting it, Hedon 1 is really a nice introduction to Hedon 2. That is the stupidest goddamn line I've ever written, I'm cutting that.
You will get a couple new weapons in Hedon 2, but you're mostly operating with the same arsenal here: punches and kicks as a last resort, an axe you can throw, that is… really wonderful, I enjoy it. The Spike Rifle, which is the boring one that's practical, and has ammo lying around for it everywhere. The Fragfire Gun is also wonderful. Superhot particles of death as the primary and the secondary is a flamethrower. Essential and great. That's right, another game with a good flamethrower, it's like we've learned! The Potion Launcher, with two flavors: poison, an area of effect attack that will slow enemies down and hurt them; and the acid potions which are also, really good and effective.
The Crushbow is your rocket launcher, and does everything a rocket launcher should. Now that I'm recording this, I realize that I never used the secondary for it. Too bad. Towards the end of Crystal Heart, you get the Crylance, which is kind of like a high-powered rifle.
It's also really good. Its secondary is a decent explosive attack. All around, a fantastic arsenal. There's even a difficulty with its own unique set of weapons which is called Bearzerk, melee only, I haven't played it but it looks… unforgiving.
Crystal Heart isn't really that difficult on the medium skill, Hedonistic, once you get the hang of the enemies and the weapons and the power-ups, the different damage types, all that. There are 10 levels in Crystal Heart and most of them are giant, and occasionally confusing. But, the puzzles and the item collection are done in such a way, and this is mostly true for Blood Rite as well, where if you have a thing, and you know where that thing goes, follow that lead before going to the next thing in line because you'll probably have to go there and use the map, yeah, that's essential, and in case any of you didn't know this, in Doom engine games, you can open your map, go to a place on it, and mark it with a number.
This is going to save you so much trouble. Key doors are marked on the map already, thank fuck, but if there's one thing the dev probably should have done is hide some of these lines, like these are a mess, and you can hide them from the player on the map, they're where all the slopes are, which is everywhere because the terrain in Hedon is GZDoom shit, not regular Doom, there are slopes everywhere. The levels in Crystal Heart take you mostly to the Orcs' main settlements around Valc, forges, fortresses, this Ice Castle level which I think is probably my favorite, just for the atmosphere. All the ambient sound stuff that was introduced in the Raven Doom Engine games was carried over all the way to GZDoom and it's used wonderfully here. The music, too, is damn good, and I remember thinking, "Hey, this track sounds like something out of Unreal", because there's a gentleman named Alexander Brandon whose music was licensed for Hedon, who also composed for Unreal, and Deus Ex, you know, those games with kickass soundtracks.
And then there's other tracks by the main composer for Hedon, Akhzul, who made more atmospheric tracks for certain levels that are great, honestly, the soundtrack for this game could get its own video. Unlike in Blood Rite, the story of Crystal Heart is very reactive, you're trying to find out what happened in the aftermath of a massive invasion by a sinister cult and other demonic forces, cultists themselves aren't much of a problem but like, these hell-hounds, I don't like the way they move. And those Forge Elementals I mentioned before, imagine a Pain Elemental, but worse.
It's about as tanky, but it spawns Iron Urchins instead of Lost Souls, who can be quickly killed, except they zip all over the place and explode and I hate them. I HATE THEM EVEN MORE THAN LOST SOULS. They're all over the place in this level, Technical Space, along with lava that isn't as kind to you as Doom lava. Yeah, she's dead. I could go into detail explaining how massive some of these levels are, but there's a Hedon wiki for that, which lists the individual areas for this one map: [AX3 reading] The Pumping Station, the Forge Portal, The Great Forge, The Workshop, The Mould Forge, The Dwarven Forge, The Repair Bay, the Shops.
And also the eight sections in the caverns, one of which is a secret side quest. Yeah, there's only 10 levels but they're massive. This would be a problem if the areas weren't usually unique and recognizable with obvious landmarks. As the game goes on and the enemies get stronger, you face flying warlocks, who have homing projectiles, hooray! Let's do… spoilers! That's right, this game has enough story and characters to warrant a spoiler warning.
In fact, it has enough of all of that stuff for a detailed wiki that I had to use liberally to check things. Katie, throw up the spoiler warning. [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - Katie, what did I do? I'm sorry, please… [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead.
[CIVVIE] - Please stop it, Katie, [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - I don't know what I did, whatever it was, I'm sorry, please just stop! [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] - Please stop, I can't take it- [HEAD-ON COMMERCIAL] Head-On, apply directly to the forehead. [CIVVIE] So Nithriel is a powerful, nigh-invincible creature who hijacks your exposition dream halfway through and you have to fight her. You don't kill her. There's even some kind of a stealth section that works, you know, because it relies on dream logic and scripting, and not sophisticated AI.
Let me tell you, those power-ups are great for breaking the game because you can just no-sell magic attacks with the ring, or physical attacks with the stone-skin potion, or regen health with the dog collar?… I promised I wouldn't talk any more about how horny this game is sometimes…
2021-10-03 04:11
