mishmash

I had three hours sleep, cake for breakfast, knocked back a couple of powerful mugs of coffee, and launched Prodeus. This is not a recommended loadout. I lasted about an hour before I felt queasy. I did much better against Prodeus which was a blast.

First person shooters are not my favourite genre and I’ve never played a Doom or Quake game before. So I’m coming at this quite fresh. What drew me to this FPS? Blood, gore, splatter, sci-fi demons, storming a deserted high tech facility in the desert. Oh, how appropriate. Clearly I’m a degenerate, although at least I’m knocking off monsters instead of kids in Amsterdam. At least not this week. Besides, I can’t 360 to save my life. Yeah, I watched that one video and now I know all the jargon.

Prodeus looks fantastic. The high contrast of its dark environments with accents of primary coloured lighting and weapons fire. The claustrophobia of the corridors and vents in the buildings with little breathers in the rocky landscape. The levels are compact and yet have lots of ground to cover, including many secrets to reveal from exploring every nook, crevice, and jumping point available. At some point the double jump upgrade will be vital. I was surprised at how much exploration there is and how important it is to getting the resources for new weapons at the shop.

There’s a long list of weapons and so far each one has it’s own identity and use. I’m a fan of the shredders and then switching to the chain gun which cuts downs average foes like butter. Did I mention everything gets coated in blood. The rocket launcher is another favourite but has very limited ammo. Then there’s the obligatory laser thingy with red electric coming out the end, which has an effective sniper function. I could go on.

Prodeus is a quality game no doubt. There’s something missing for me that stops it being a great game. Possibly that I get bored of FPS games quicker than most without some proper story or a bit more variety in the action. The only thing I’m not sure about is the checkpoint system. When you die you respawn at the last nexus point. The game state and ammo levels all remain the same. It’s like having infinite lives with the main hinderance being ammo, I guess. If you waste it there won’t be any more. I’d prefer a more traditional save point.

So far I’ve only died a couple of times, when I get swamped in a corner by a mass spawning event. If you’ve got some experience with these things you’re probably gonna want to put it on hard from the start. I’m no expert and on medium difficulty found the early levels easier than expected. I’m about five hours in. No doubt it’ll kick my ass later.

What Prodeus does it does extremely well. The soundtrack and sfx are killer. The weapons feel great. The pixelated blood flows readily as your enemies explode. The character designs are spot on, flying bug thing ftw. There’s a fast growing list of community maps to download and extend the game. And multiplayer of course.

Available from Steam, GOG and console stores.