As the resident “reviews all the old stuff” guy here, I was very excited to see both Heretic and Hexen make their jump onto the Switch. I was also super confident about reviewing them—yeah, I’ve played them, no worries, I remember it all. I booted up the games, and it all started to flow back: the menus, the music, the weapons. But after about the first level of each, I turned into Gandalf: “I have no memory of this place.”

See, aside from the original PC release of Heretic and the N64 release of Hexen, I haven’t played these games since their debuts—and neither have a lot of people. While they’ve always been available on PC in their original forms, unlike Doom, these games haven’t really had re-releases or new additions in the intervening years. But who better than Nightdive Studios to bring them back now? Raven Software the original developers of these are now caught up in the Call of Duty machine. 

Both games get the full suite of Nightdive’s remastered features: widescreen toggles, resolution scaling, the option to use the original fonts, and gyro controls. There’s even a brand-new soundtrack for both games—but if nostalgia’s calling, you can switch back to the originals.

Labelled a Doom clone (like almost anything with a weapon centred on the screen in the ’90s), Heretic actually plays quite differently. Sure, it’s built on the Doom engine, it has keys and doors like Doom, but the entire fantasy setting sets it apart—and it even has an inventory system. However, as I soon learned, maybe I didn’t remember much because there are changes to the map layouts and even textures. There are also plenty of tweaks to the weapons to make some of them more powerful, and some enemies have been toned down in terms of their sponginess.

Hexen moved even further away from Heretic, offering three different classes to choose from: Fighter, Cleric, or Mage. You can now change your class throughout the game now as well—perfect if you’re getting bored, or just want to try out all the different weapons.

Hexen also had a very different map structure, with everything being interconnected. It was all too easy to lose your way and never figure out where anything was. You’d end up running around, wall-humping with the spacebar, desperately trying to find something to activate. Now, though, there are map markers showing objectives and key items. They don’t tell you how to get there—just where they are. If you’re too hardcore for that improvement, you can turn it off and stay faithful to the original experience. As well as the original games, there’s two new expansions Heretic: Faith Renewed and Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur. Nightdive Studios has done a really good job of matching the original vibe in these expansions, despite this content being made all these years later. 

Performance on both Switch consoles is solid; and sure, I’d love to see this get some Switch 2 love down the line to take advantage of 120 Hz and 4K. Online multiplayer is a bit of a laugh—it really does feel like back in the day. You jump onto a server and get immediately assaulted until you figure out what’s going on. It’s all a bit all over the shop too, and you never quite feel like you’re in proper control of a match… or maybe I’m just rubbish at the game now, all these years later (most likely that). The co-op mode is a little odd too. If you’re playing together on the same system or online, you simply move through the levels without any lasting progress if you stop—it’s essentially just a level select. On the positive side, though, online play supports split-screen, local wireless, and full online with cross-play. It’s a bit finicky, but much easier to live with than hauling a PC and CRT monitor to your mates for a LAN session.

There’s also something odd about the save system. Whenever you save a game, that save becomes available across all the other games. So if you play Heretic, do a quick save, then switch to another game and perform a quick load, you’ll end up back in Heretic. There are no separate quick saves per game, which feels very strange. 

Like other Nightdive releases, there’s also support for mods (as much as Nintendo will allow anyway). There are only a few right now, but if this does well, expect to see more added over time—the Doom releases are still getting new ones, after all. For the historians, there’s also the Raven’s Vault, which shows off production materials, artwork, and more. Also, some of the cheat codes have changed, the cheeky buggers. Also, did I mention these are just a little over $20AUD? Bargain.

Nightdive knows what they’re doing with these releases, and it’s great to see Heretic and Hexen updated for a modern audience—whether that’s people discovering them for the first time, or people like me coming back after too many years. There are plenty of changes here for the better, though a few weird ones too, like some maps being different. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from having a great time if you’re a fan of the era. 

Rating: 4.5/5