Heretic

Heretic built on the Doom engine but wrapped it in fantasy scenery, magical weapons, and the ability to fly, which made it a somewhat more interesting candidate for a headset than its predecessor, since flying over the landscape gave the Forte VFX1's stereoscopic display a natural reason to exist. Playing as an elf warrior, the player fights D'Sparil's armies using weapons like the serpent staff, the fireball, or the magic bow, and the passage through gothic castles and dungeons tried to feel darker and more elaborate than shooters of the time usually offered, including elements like a potion inventory and quick transitions between connected levels.

On the VFX1, however, the game ran into the same technical limits as the whole generation of Doom-derived engines, namely the headset's low resolution, which turned the more detailed textures of castles and monsters into a blurry smudge, and a limited field of view that prevented the space from feeling as enclosed and claustrophobic as the authors intended. The ability to fly, even though it was only temporary in the game via a spell, also brought a risk of stronger disorientation, since the combination of vertical movement and stereoscopy was hard for the headsets of the time to handle without a feeling of nausea, so players tended to limit the flight spell on the VFX1 to short exploratory trips.

Heretic is seen today as an important stepping stone between purely sci-fi shooters and later fantasy action RPGs, with atmospheric music and an inventive system of magic items that also became the foundation for its sequel, Hexen. The choice between several types of weapons, each with a different effect against different kinds of monsters, brought a new layer of tactical decision-making to the Doom-derived genre, which players and reviewers of the time appreciated as a refresh of the established formula. In the history of the VFX1, it remains an example of a game where the ambitions of its level design ran into the hard reality of the era's hardware, with the headset serving more as a demonstration of possibilities than a fully viable way to play for the average player.

Why play: Anyone who appreciates tactical weapon choice and atmospheric music will find in Heretic an important stepping stone between sci-fi shooters and fantasy RPGs, even though the headset served more as a demonstration of possibilities.