Even though it’s only 1/3 of the way complete, Emberheart Games’ Wizordum is required playing for not just Hexen fans, but anyone who has ever looked up from messing around with an in-game level editor only to realize it’s 03:00 and you’ve been working on diagetic enemy placement for six hours. As yet another movement shooter from Apogee in the vein of Duke 3D, Wizordum stands out by pulling the same trick Hexen did when it branched off the DOOM engine in 1995; setting itself apart with unique enemies, an elaborate fantasy setting, and magical spells instead of assault rifles. It worked then, and it works here too.
Currently, Wizordum is in early access and has only released the first episode of an eventual three (that’s the 1/3 I mentioned earlier). It’s the 2023 equivalent of how games like DOOM released a free shareware version in order to hook players and then charged them for the rest of the game, but now you pay first and wait for the full launch to have access to the complete experience. The old way was unarguably better for players, but shareware marketing hasn’t been a viable business model since people stopped mailing floppy disks to each other, and the only thing preventing players from waiting until the game is finished is FOMO.
Fortunately, the first episode of Wizordum is exceptionally fun. Hexen was unique in the fact that it let players choose at the start of their adventure whether they would play as a Mage, a Cleric, or a Fighter, and each of these three characters had their own stats and weapons not available to the other two. This was a neat idea, but in practice it could be frustrating; the Mage was the only character who started off with a ranged weapon, for instance, but it was incredibly weak. The Cleric had the coolest ultimate weapon (a staff that summoned deadly ghosts to swarm enemies) and could shoot fire from his hands, but could never put out as much damage as the relatively lame-looking Fighter.
Wizordum fixes this by doing away with the idea of multiple characters and giving the player a grab-bag of the best weapons and magical abilities Hexen had to offer, along with a few new ones. The main melee weapon, a mace not dissimilar to Hexen’s Cleric starting weapon, has the added bonus of being able to be charged with mana just like Timon’s Axe, a feature which makes it useful not just as a last resort but as a viable option in regular combat. The next few weapons players will come across (Fire Rings and a magic wand that shoots ice) are both also improvements on Hexen’s Firestorm and Sapphire Wand respectively.
The core gameplay loop of Wizordum should be familiar to anyone who played 2.5D shooters in the 1990s. Players move through levels at a higher-than-average speed while flipping switches, pulling chains, and just generally finding different variations of keys to open different variations of locks while being attacked by rats, ogres, cultists, and a wide range of other monsters. Sometimes these keys or switches need…
2023-12-07 04:00:05
Post from screenrant.com
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