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Quake 2 fanatics needn't worry. Although the 1st person POV has been dispensed with, the 3rd person view is actually a breath of fresh air. Yes controlling your character (Corvus) is just as simple as it always was/is. Similar to the 3rd person view available in Jedi Knight, using your regular mouse (even inverted!) and keyboard combo you can do everything you always could do- and some. In fact, because of the 3rd person POV, you can actually see what Corvus is doing and because the need for a wide-angle lens is dispensed with, you actually get a much better view of the beautifully rendered environments. The only draw back is aiming at enemies, which feels somewhat more precise with a 1st person camera. This turns out to be really a minor issue because aim you must (unless you select the optional auto aiming feature) and fun it is.
Although playing Heretic II on a Pentium II 450 MHz with dual Voodoo2 setup posed no problems, it wasn't until we wanted to see what the G200 would bring that incompatibilities started to arise. Without the required current OpenGL beta drivers, it was a cursing and downloading punch up. Even with the G200 D3D Wrapper, Heretic II still provided us with a blank screen. But after uninstalling and reinstalling back to the Voodoo2s, we had no further problems. It even kept our previously saved games. So if you do happen to have a similar set-up be warned… Most attractive of all though had to be the OpenGL version on the nVidia TNT, which was crisper and more detailed than the Voodoo2 version (albeit with a slight performance hit and some drastic gamma, brightness and contrast adjustments). Need we mention that the game also possesses a software renderer? It pains us to say that the software version is as good as can be done. So even if you happen to be a gamer without a 3D card, Heretic II's visuals will still impress you. But you should get a 3D card so you can play this visually exquisite game at maximum speed!
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