Video Games
FPS Classic ‘Hexen II’ Receiving Spiritual Successor in ‘GRAVEN’
Raven Software’s Hexen and Hexen II broke out of the Doom clones in the 90s with their own melding of RPG and first-person shooter elements set against a dark fantasy setting. And for those that missed that, 3D Realms and 1C Entertainment, together with developer Slipgate Ironworks, have the next best thing with GRAVEN.
Announced for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam, GRAVEN is set to hit next year. Much like Hexen II, GRAVEN features a “gruesome medieval world of deities and monstrosities”, created with “a stark late 90s aesthetic” in mind with modern development tools.
The story involves you as a faithful priest of the Orthogonal order, exiled for a crime of retaliation against the order for sacrificing your adoptive daughter. You live again in a small boat, adrift in a swamp. A stranger ferries you to solid ground and bestows upon you vague instructions, along with a mysterious staff and book. Your job is to hunt down the foul heretical sects responsible for conjuring plagues and twisting the natural order of the seasons.
Wielding an array of powers and weapons (up to 30 weapons, by the way), you’ll be journeying across three expansive, open-ended regions, and scour the lands to purge evil. You’ll also face the occasional environmental puzzle, and must find hidden gold to upgrade weapons and spells at blacksmiths and alchemists. Play solo, with one friend in split-screen co-op, or even in a party of four online for complete arcane chaos.
Much like many series that made the transition from 2D to 3D open worlds, Konami’s two Castlevania forays on the Nintendo 64 weren’t exactly the best. Still, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is considered the better title when compared to Castlevania 64, and now thanks to one fan’s discovery, it’s been made that much better.
Courtesy of IGN, YouTuber JupiterClimb recently posted a new video revealing that he has discovered the famous Konami Code (well specifically, a variation on it) in the 1999 action-platformer. Inputting the code unlocks all four characters from the very start, their alternate costumes, and the game’s Hard Mode difficulty. Meaning, you won’t have to unlock each character and their alternate costumes by rescuing the children found throughout the game. This also remedies the complaint that Reinhardt and Carrie weren’t available from the beginning of the game, as they were in Castlevania 64.
To get with the goodies, punch in C-Up x4, C-Down x4, C-Left x2, C-Right x2, C-Left x2, C-Right x2, L, R, and Z in the main menu. Create a brand new save, and instead of just having Cornell as the only character to select, you now have Reinhardt Schneider, Carrie Fernandez, and Henry Oldrey all available.
That’s not the only code to have been discovered for Legacy of Darkness. JupiterClimb has also revealed new codes that allow players to max out their inventory, max out attack power and sub-weapon, and even give you 99 jewels. Sadly, these only work on the Japan and European versions of the game, but they’re still cool to have handy. As JupiterClimb speculates, these were most likely debug codes for testing the game, and weren’t removed for the PAL and Japan releases.
Of course, you’ll still have to deal with the finicky camera and the frustrating platforming, but we already knew that.
Meanwhile, if you’re hankering for some newer Castlevania goodness, keep an eye out for V Rising and its Legacy of Castlevania crossover content, coming May 8th to PC via Steam.
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