The infamous pendulous mobile testicle monster was a horrific revelation in the original game, but a bit of a chore to fight. Unfortunately, things get less impressive when the player encounters the Gonarch. There's a few too many power cable puzzles in this part of the game, but nothing too outrageous.
This part of the game is great fun, with a lot of thought that's clearly gone into how to make Xen better from a gameplay perspective whilst retaining its alien landscape and atmosphere. There's even some new enemies, such as underwater barnacles that pull you down rather than up, and infant houndeyes which now explode rather than erupting sonic blasts at you. The first half of Xen has been improved a lot with pacing and more focus on traversing larger environments through logical puzzles and ferocious combat, with a lot of the detailed platforming from the original release thrown out.
Xen is more than twice as long as its 1998 incarnation and maybe closer to three times.
