So, have you ever been on vacation from work and desperately searched for a "vacation game?" A game you want to just sink your teeth into with all your free time and play the SHIT out of. Sometimes they are hard to find, I remember when I was 17 and on my summer vacation finally scoured through the entirety of Deus Ex. I remember that summer like I was IN Deus Ex. It was awesome! I also didn't get laid a lot until my 20s.

Anyway, thank fucking god for the Hedon games for being exactly what I was looking for, like no joke, EXACTLY, what I had been wanting. I was thinking, "I really want a first person shooter with as dense of level design as Unreal, but I've played Unreal so much there is nothing new I can find there." Lo and behold, the Horny Orc game was thinking what I'm thinking.

It took me about 35 hours to finish both games while on my vacation, which is almost an entire work week! Maybe I should get a new job battling monsters in hell? I digress.

The way the game presents itself is so unassuming that I think the developer, Zan, is kind of brilliant. Disguise your thoughtfully designed first-person adventure as a generic boomer shooter with a horny coat-of-paint. It's so brilliantly done I fell for it for a few years! It wasn't until this last playthrough that something finally clicked into place. It was after the mission "Errant Signal" in Act I, you are teleported to a mountainside and you have to navigate through a MASSIVE facility carved into the sides of the mountain, and some drop-dead gorgeous music from Alexander Brandon starts playing. Genuinely from that moment I understood perfectly what Hedon was all about and knew I was playing an all-time favorite.

While combat is genuinely really fun, a lot of meaty sound-effects and great challenges, it really is that thrill of exploration and problem solving that I think gives Hedon its own spice. ESPECIALLY in Act II, where the levels become BIG. Like, BIG big. I am deeply in love with games that feel like journeys, that I have just completed and grand adventure, covered the entire world, and maybe even went to Dimension X, and Hedon absolutely captures that sensation in a way that feels like a Dream Game scenario.

So I would like to formally thank Zan for making the game of my dreams so I didn't have to!

An absolutely gargantuan game, the maps are some of the most complicated maps I've ever seen in a shooter, and the shooting isn't even the selling point. Just exploring these massive, really densely built labyrinths is the real fun. Add in to that gameplay based more on completing objectives and puzzle solving, it's very surprising that they've used the big booby orcs with guns to try and trick the Sweaty Teenager demographic into a game that is going to be wayyyyy too esoteric for them.

As for me? I love it!!

I also resent this being lumped in with other Boomer Shooters who are nothing but an extremely loud blast of nothing and nostalgia baiting for the sweatiest 30 year olds you've ever met. Hedon is much more intelligent than it lets on.

EDIT: Also having music from Alexander Brandon in the game is EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION. of COURSE I am going to like a game with that music in it.