i will now fear spiders for the rest of my life
A great port of a 90s classic with some real care and consideration put into it. Having not played it previously, I was extremely impressed at the quality of the level design (notably, I never got lost in the mazy levels even though I thought the keys and doors were visually too indistinct and the map isn't great) and the weapons were decent, though it did lack a good shotgun equivalent.
The thing that I liked the most was the sense of progression though. It goes from a game where you slowly pick off enemies with a pistol and can tank a fair amount of damage to one where you're a glass cannon flying around spewing fire and lightning from your hands; it reminded me of the progression in Control. The intelligent map design made returning to levels for items and new routes a lot of fun.
Thanks to the addition of checkpoints the game feels surprisingly fresh, too. If I'd been chucked to the start of a level on death I might have found it a bit frustrating but having checkpoints (and no quick saving) meant that I just had to push on rather than getting too caught up on things. I did have to manually restart a level once when I hit a checkpoint with almost no health and a bunch of tough enemies ahead but otherwise it felt nicely balanced.
Having watched some videos of the 'original' PC version running on Build I'd like to give that a look too, as it looks completely different aside from the graphics.
The thing that I liked the most was the sense of progression though. It goes from a game where you slowly pick off enemies with a pistol and can tank a fair amount of damage to one where you're a glass cannon flying around spewing fire and lightning from your hands; it reminded me of the progression in Control. The intelligent map design made returning to levels for items and new routes a lot of fun.
Thanks to the addition of checkpoints the game feels surprisingly fresh, too. If I'd been chucked to the start of a level on death I might have found it a bit frustrating but having checkpoints (and no quick saving) meant that I just had to push on rather than getting too caught up on things. I did have to manually restart a level once when I hit a checkpoint with almost no health and a bunch of tough enemies ahead but otherwise it felt nicely balanced.
Having watched some videos of the 'original' PC version running on Build I'd like to give that a look too, as it looks completely different aside from the graphics.
A very good port of a very good game. Worthwhile to check out if you happen to like both Metroid Prime and Doom/Duke and ever wondered "hey what if these two fused together".
Great remaster work by Nightdive, as usual. They clearly put lots of love into this port.
Deeply respect this game's vibes, I can roll with some of this game's incongruities better than others. Way too many one-hit kill traps towards the end and the hitbox is rough. Worth the plunge if you're into old-school FPSes.
Deeply respect this game's vibes, I can roll with some of this game's incongruities better than others. Way too many one-hit kill traps towards the end and the hitbox is rough. Worth the plunge if you're into old-school FPSes.
A really ambitious game for a build engine era game, particularly in level design. Sometimes that ambition bites it in the ass, but it results in a cool game still.
A big thing about this game over it's fellow shooters' of the era is it's progression which is often compared to a metroidvania. In short as you progress through the game you'll unlock new movement options/ect (longer underwater breathing, bigger jumps, floating, ect). This will make new paths/items available in previously done levels, which will let you progress further in the game.
The pros of this is that the items make the movement fun, and the level design is pretty spiffy to benefit it. One of the last items might as well be flight, and somehow it doesn't completely break the game.
The Cons is that going back and repeating levels actually kinda sucks. You go through Karzak or w/e its called like 4+ times through the game, and while it's neat to see what part you can go in now with the new relic it's tiresome. you can also feel the devs realizing that the backtracking isn't actually that cool because by the half way point of the game you stop reseting to karzak constantly and becomes really fast to get to the part of an old level you did that unlocks a new level. You also need to backtrack to get the items that unlock the true endings, and that is a vibe killer for me imo. (that being said i think like all of these have skips you can do with grenade jumping or w/e to get them early, but w/e)
Backtracking can work for a lot of games, but there's something about backtracking through actual levels that's killer.
I think the last few levels are kinda wack and there's some actual obtuse sections, but most of the levels in this game are really cool, especially with a pretty big emphasis on platforming/movement, and most are pretty complicated.
Most enemy types are more annoying than enjoyable. There's nothing Insanely Offensive but there's a pretty small amount of and there's stuff like the mummies with tracking attacks with insanely vague rules for how they track you, or the lava snakes which feel like timesinks to fight.
Cool gun selection, it takes a while for the game to unlock the weird guns though. I don't really have much to say about them other than I think the RA ring is cool and I enjoy a M-60 and flamethrower being propped up as ancient egyptian artifact. That being said I dont like all the weapons using the same ammo source especially seeing how much ammo you get is mostly based on random drops from enemies/pots, it leads to a lot of awkward moments of ammo conservation and you will cherish the full ammo replinish items like they wre family. Infact i don't like most of your item drops just being RNG from destructible objects/enemies, especially when they started adding those pots that just explode sometimes. If you were the guy who added that i wish you the worst.
Also, the actual nightdive remaster aspect of the game is pretty fantastic. Looks great, runs great, sounds great, and the game itself already had a fun egpytian aesthetic and even has some cool tracks. The most weird issues i saw was the fire snake monsters in particular has a weird issue where half their sprite would vanish fairly often, but it's w/e. Checkpoins I believe is a exhumed release thing and I consider it a godsent because on hard sometimes i'd just randomly get my ass ate by things like exploding pots, but if you're a purist you can turn them off.
Ambitious ideas that are 50% really cool 50% drag it down, cool aesthetic, movement and level designs with descent guns and meh enemies. It's a cool unique game among build engine era games despite it's flaws, I'd recommend it.
A big thing about this game over it's fellow shooters' of the era is it's progression which is often compared to a metroidvania. In short as you progress through the game you'll unlock new movement options/ect (longer underwater breathing, bigger jumps, floating, ect). This will make new paths/items available in previously done levels, which will let you progress further in the game.
The pros of this is that the items make the movement fun, and the level design is pretty spiffy to benefit it. One of the last items might as well be flight, and somehow it doesn't completely break the game.
The Cons is that going back and repeating levels actually kinda sucks. You go through Karzak or w/e its called like 4+ times through the game, and while it's neat to see what part you can go in now with the new relic it's tiresome. you can also feel the devs realizing that the backtracking isn't actually that cool because by the half way point of the game you stop reseting to karzak constantly and becomes really fast to get to the part of an old level you did that unlocks a new level. You also need to backtrack to get the items that unlock the true endings, and that is a vibe killer for me imo. (that being said i think like all of these have skips you can do with grenade jumping or w/e to get them early, but w/e)
Backtracking can work for a lot of games, but there's something about backtracking through actual levels that's killer.
I think the last few levels are kinda wack and there's some actual obtuse sections, but most of the levels in this game are really cool, especially with a pretty big emphasis on platforming/movement, and most are pretty complicated.
Most enemy types are more annoying than enjoyable. There's nothing Insanely Offensive but there's a pretty small amount of and there's stuff like the mummies with tracking attacks with insanely vague rules for how they track you, or the lava snakes which feel like timesinks to fight.
Cool gun selection, it takes a while for the game to unlock the weird guns though. I don't really have much to say about them other than I think the RA ring is cool and I enjoy a M-60 and flamethrower being propped up as ancient egyptian artifact. That being said I dont like all the weapons using the same ammo source especially seeing how much ammo you get is mostly based on random drops from enemies/pots, it leads to a lot of awkward moments of ammo conservation and you will cherish the full ammo replinish items like they wre family. Infact i don't like most of your item drops just being RNG from destructible objects/enemies, especially when they started adding those pots that just explode sometimes. If you were the guy who added that i wish you the worst.
Also, the actual nightdive remaster aspect of the game is pretty fantastic. Looks great, runs great, sounds great, and the game itself already had a fun egpytian aesthetic and even has some cool tracks. The most weird issues i saw was the fire snake monsters in particular has a weird issue where half their sprite would vanish fairly often, but it's w/e. Checkpoins I believe is a exhumed release thing and I consider it a godsent because on hard sometimes i'd just randomly get my ass ate by things like exploding pots, but if you're a purist you can turn them off.
Ambitious ideas that are 50% really cool 50% drag it down, cool aesthetic, movement and level designs with descent guns and meh enemies. It's a cool unique game among build engine era games despite it's flaws, I'd recommend it.
NightDive are the masters of the remaster, adding lost content, splicing together versions, modernising features and visuals without losing a single thing that made the game so beloved in the first place. They absolutely clown Bluepoint, who have an incredible knack of sucking the fucking life out of all of their "remakes".
Anyway, PowerSlave Exhumed is a mix of two really good console FPS games (the PS1 and Saturn games featured some different levels, abilities and visual effects, merged together here) that stood out during a time when everyone was trying to copy Doom wholesale and any ports of Doom were a total coin toss as to whether the framerate hit double figures. It ran smooth as butter, looked fantastic and had a bit more going on that the usual "kill everything, find keys" stuff that was the norm for the genre during that period. It's got a bit of a Metroidvania edge, which has helped it stand the test of time better than a lot of its peers and still feel pretty fresh even here in 2022.
I'd recommend checking out PowerSlave regardless but when it is NightDive at the helm you know it is top tier stuff.
Anyway, PowerSlave Exhumed is a mix of two really good console FPS games (the PS1 and Saturn games featured some different levels, abilities and visual effects, merged together here) that stood out during a time when everyone was trying to copy Doom wholesale and any ports of Doom were a total coin toss as to whether the framerate hit double figures. It ran smooth as butter, looked fantastic and had a bit more going on that the usual "kill everything, find keys" stuff that was the norm for the genre during that period. It's got a bit of a Metroidvania edge, which has helped it stand the test of time better than a lot of its peers and still feel pretty fresh even here in 2022.
I'd recommend checking out PowerSlave regardless but when it is NightDive at the helm you know it is top tier stuff.