Ghost_Of_SAS
2021
My impressions when I played the demo for this during the Steam Nextfest a few years ago were mixed: on one hand it was hard to overlook the interesting sci-fi setting and environments, immediately evocative through the richness of the atmosphere of a late victorian-looking world taken over by killer machines; on the other it was just as difficult to ignore the lackuster combat and less than optimal performance. I was hoping these issues would be ironed out by the time the full release came around, but it wasn' so. If anything, things got worse.
This is a 2-3 hour game whose playtime is evenly split between shooting, puzzle solving and just plain wasting the player's time crossing empty areas, either listening to radio exposition or scavenging for supplies. The developer ensured you will be on the lookout for pickups by greatly limiting the amount of ammunition you can carry, as well as making the enemies quite spongy in regards to their health pools. unfortunately this also greatly limits the fun, because few things are less entertaining in an FPS of this sort than having to watch every shot you take for fear of running out of ammo. You also have a limited flashlight (always a bad idea) with a depleting meter and related battery pickups, but which doesn't seem to ever run out, even when it hits zero, which begs the question of why the mechanic is there to begin with.
Regarding ammo, a little math: you can carry 36 pistol rounds and 64 SMG rounds, but a standard enemy takes 5-8 shots to kill, meaning you will see your resources dwindle very quickly, to the tone of 7-8 enemies leaving your supplies dry, and that's if you are accurate and waste not. There are also a shotgun and sniper rifle (12 total rounds each) which are a bit more ammunition efficient, but will still end up empty in any situation involving sustained combat. It's just not fun at all, especially since the melee attacks are beyond useless, as most enemies will damage you instantly when coming close enough.
The game being this short, the enemy variety is lacking to say the least: there is a vacuum cleaner-looking robot that kamikazes to you and explodes, there is a slow melee based one, a soldier type with a machine gun (which drops no ammo), a slighly faster late-game melee variant that arcs electricity at you, and a dog-like type you'll only face once. Not much at all, which makes even such a short game feel repetitive.
AI isn't great either: near the end of the game there is a Half-Life 2 set piece where you need to activate two levers and wait a minute for an elevator to come down, while you fend off waves of respawning enemies. Now, you could stand and fight them, depleting your stocks of ammunition in a second flat, or you could just jump on a table and in so doing break the enemies' pathfinding, since they can only "see" you when you have your feet firmly on the ground. The results are pretty hilarious, since you can just wait on top of a table as the enemies swarm around it, unable to find you, and then make a run for the elevator without firing a single shot.
The story is nothing you haven't seen before: in late 1980s East Germany, a dimensional travel experiment goes awry, sending its creator somewhere else in the space-time continuum, with his inexplicably militarily gifted colleague/lover going after him to the rescue, only to find that time has passed very differently and 20 years have gone by between the point he arrived and when she does. The rest is pretty much what you expect, without any major twists and turns.
The real issue here is that the voice acting leaves a bit to be desired: while the part of the man who talks to you over the radio is generally well acted, the protagonist is not, often using the wrong tone for the situation and generally coming off as inexpressive and irritating. One more example of a script that could have yielded better results with some simple emotional annotations for each scene. Also, and quite disconcertingly, everyone sounds American which, for a game starring people from East Germany, and made by a German studio at that, feels quite out of place.
There are a few simple puzzles peppered throughout the experience, usually nothing much more complex than activating a few levers and valves in the correct order or following a chemical recipe on a blackboard. To stretch out the play time, aside from the aforementioned walking segments and direct exposition, we have oniric interludes in which you run around an empty office building reading text files and looking at some sort of theater play that doesn't seem to mean anything. It feels pretty transparent why all of that is there. The most aggravating thing about it, is that designing a few more combat set pieces would have been a far more engaging way to squeeze and extra hour out of the game than whatever this is.
One final mention goes to the technical side: while the game looks pretty good, thanks to Unreal Engine 4, as well as good art, lighting and animations, the performance is just as uneven as it was in the demo, even on computers that far surpass the recommended system specs. Stutters and frame drops while dynamically loading new areas are very frequent, and there are quite a few unresolved bugs at that. From the Steam discussions it sounds like the developer has given up on patching the game and moved on to the sequel, so what you have here is what you'll get. At least they patched a game-breaking bug that plagued early adopters on release, which is something.
Industria makes a great first impression, but it doesn't take long to realize the combat is unsatisfying due to stupid and spongy enemies, the story is lackluster and the performance is barely acceptable. Maybe the sequel will be better and fulfill the potential left untapped, but as for this first outing, it can't really be recommended.
This is a 2-3 hour game whose playtime is evenly split between shooting, puzzle solving and just plain wasting the player's time crossing empty areas, either listening to radio exposition or scavenging for supplies. The developer ensured you will be on the lookout for pickups by greatly limiting the amount of ammunition you can carry, as well as making the enemies quite spongy in regards to their health pools. unfortunately this also greatly limits the fun, because few things are less entertaining in an FPS of this sort than having to watch every shot you take for fear of running out of ammo. You also have a limited flashlight (always a bad idea) with a depleting meter and related battery pickups, but which doesn't seem to ever run out, even when it hits zero, which begs the question of why the mechanic is there to begin with.
Regarding ammo, a little math: you can carry 36 pistol rounds and 64 SMG rounds, but a standard enemy takes 5-8 shots to kill, meaning you will see your resources dwindle very quickly, to the tone of 7-8 enemies leaving your supplies dry, and that's if you are accurate and waste not. There are also a shotgun and sniper rifle (12 total rounds each) which are a bit more ammunition efficient, but will still end up empty in any situation involving sustained combat. It's just not fun at all, especially since the melee attacks are beyond useless, as most enemies will damage you instantly when coming close enough.
The game being this short, the enemy variety is lacking to say the least: there is a vacuum cleaner-looking robot that kamikazes to you and explodes, there is a slow melee based one, a soldier type with a machine gun (which drops no ammo), a slighly faster late-game melee variant that arcs electricity at you, and a dog-like type you'll only face once. Not much at all, which makes even such a short game feel repetitive.
AI isn't great either: near the end of the game there is a Half-Life 2 set piece where you need to activate two levers and wait a minute for an elevator to come down, while you fend off waves of respawning enemies. Now, you could stand and fight them, depleting your stocks of ammunition in a second flat, or you could just jump on a table and in so doing break the enemies' pathfinding, since they can only "see" you when you have your feet firmly on the ground. The results are pretty hilarious, since you can just wait on top of a table as the enemies swarm around it, unable to find you, and then make a run for the elevator without firing a single shot.
The story is nothing you haven't seen before: in late 1980s East Germany, a dimensional travel experiment goes awry, sending its creator somewhere else in the space-time continuum, with his inexplicably militarily gifted colleague/lover going after him to the rescue, only to find that time has passed very differently and 20 years have gone by between the point he arrived and when she does. The rest is pretty much what you expect, without any major twists and turns.
The real issue here is that the voice acting leaves a bit to be desired: while the part of the man who talks to you over the radio is generally well acted, the protagonist is not, often using the wrong tone for the situation and generally coming off as inexpressive and irritating. One more example of a script that could have yielded better results with some simple emotional annotations for each scene. Also, and quite disconcertingly, everyone sounds American which, for a game starring people from East Germany, and made by a German studio at that, feels quite out of place.
There are a few simple puzzles peppered throughout the experience, usually nothing much more complex than activating a few levers and valves in the correct order or following a chemical recipe on a blackboard. To stretch out the play time, aside from the aforementioned walking segments and direct exposition, we have oniric interludes in which you run around an empty office building reading text files and looking at some sort of theater play that doesn't seem to mean anything. It feels pretty transparent why all of that is there. The most aggravating thing about it, is that designing a few more combat set pieces would have been a far more engaging way to squeeze and extra hour out of the game than whatever this is.
One final mention goes to the technical side: while the game looks pretty good, thanks to Unreal Engine 4, as well as good art, lighting and animations, the performance is just as uneven as it was in the demo, even on computers that far surpass the recommended system specs. Stutters and frame drops while dynamically loading new areas are very frequent, and there are quite a few unresolved bugs at that. From the Steam discussions it sounds like the developer has given up on patching the game and moved on to the sequel, so what you have here is what you'll get. At least they patched a game-breaking bug that plagued early adopters on release, which is something.
Industria makes a great first impression, but it doesn't take long to realize the combat is unsatisfying due to stupid and spongy enemies, the story is lackluster and the performance is barely acceptable. Maybe the sequel will be better and fulfill the potential left untapped, but as for this first outing, it can't really be recommended.
2020
This is like Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, if Jeanne met Cthulhu at the end.
For how amusing the concept is, no amount of metacommentary about housewife drudgery and repetition can cancel the fact they made an agonizingly repetitive game, even when just half an hour long, and the broken physics and Unreal Engine 4 control glitches do not help. Just one more house chore in the rotation (like laundry) would have done the variety a world of good, while still maintaining the themes unaltered.
Still worth playing for what it is.
For how amusing the concept is, no amount of metacommentary about housewife drudgery and repetition can cancel the fact they made an agonizingly repetitive game, even when just half an hour long, and the broken physics and Unreal Engine 4 control glitches do not help. Just one more house chore in the rotation (like laundry) would have done the variety a world of good, while still maintaining the themes unaltered.
Still worth playing for what it is.
2001
It's a rare thing to be able to talk about a game and say that there is nothing quite like it, without it being some kind of hyperbolic statement, and few words are as abused and misused in the world of gaming as "unique". Not so for Project EDEN, Core Design's escape plan from EIDOS' Tomb Raider mines, before being dragged back in kicking and screaming for Angel of Darkness, which sank the studio.
All you need to know about Project EDEN is that it's a 3D action adventure version of Blizzard's The Lost Vikings and Sierra's Gobliiins, set in a dystopian future with a generous helping of John Carpenter body horror.
For those unfamiliar with the games mentioned above, think of a puzzle adventure in which you control multiple characters, each with their particular skills, which must be used in the right context and in synergy with each other in order to progress.
That Project EDEN is something special becomes immediately evident from the CG intro, which establishes the game's universe without need of a single word, through the clever use of a child's teddy bear, which is accidentally dropped from a terrace in a white utopian future city and slowly plummets down and down into increasingly dark and degraded layers of past urban developments and the humanity who lives there in the dark, until it lands at the very bottom, where it's picked up by the hand of what is implied to be a horribly disfigured mutant. It's brilliant averbal storytelling that gives you all the context you need without any kind of exposition dump. From there we follow our team of four police operatives in their descent into the underworld in search of two missing engineers, which quickly spirals into something much more sinister.
The levels are essentially massive puzzle boxes in the vein of Core's own Tomb Raider, except far more complex, since you have to use four people to solve them instead of one. You might have to send your robot through toxic gas to open a door so your engineer can repair a fuse box so the hacker can maneuver a platform around to ferry the team leader across a chasm to open a door and let everyone through, or you might have to drive a remote controlled car into maintenance ducts to fix a broken circuit so a bridge can be extended. It's very in-depth, so much so it can get confusing at times.
It's not all puzzle solving, as there is quite a lot of action too: cultists and mutants threaten the team at every turn. To fight them off, the game gradually unlocks about a dozen weapons, each with its own alternate fire: rapid or charge laser pistols, rockets launchers, proximity bombs, deployable auto turrets, even a stasis field to slow down time. There is a lot of variety in the way you can face the abominations you will meet in the lower strata of the city. It may not be the smoothest combat ever, but if you know Core Design, you already know the shooting was never their forte, and it doesn't significantly harm the experience. Furthermore, dying is only a temporary setback in Project EDEN, as the developers saw fit to remove the frustration factor by allowing the player to respawn each dead operative at set regeneration points, rather than going back to a checkpoint. A wise decision, since the puzzle-solving aspect is the main course of the game, and too much emphasis on action would have gotten in the way.
If you're looking for a lengthy and deep action puzzle experience that doesn't hold your hand at all and provides a huge sense of accomplishment when things click together to find the solution, this overlooked gem is exactly the game for you. I can't recommend it enough.
All you need to know about Project EDEN is that it's a 3D action adventure version of Blizzard's The Lost Vikings and Sierra's Gobliiins, set in a dystopian future with a generous helping of John Carpenter body horror.
For those unfamiliar with the games mentioned above, think of a puzzle adventure in which you control multiple characters, each with their particular skills, which must be used in the right context and in synergy with each other in order to progress.
That Project EDEN is something special becomes immediately evident from the CG intro, which establishes the game's universe without need of a single word, through the clever use of a child's teddy bear, which is accidentally dropped from a terrace in a white utopian future city and slowly plummets down and down into increasingly dark and degraded layers of past urban developments and the humanity who lives there in the dark, until it lands at the very bottom, where it's picked up by the hand of what is implied to be a horribly disfigured mutant. It's brilliant averbal storytelling that gives you all the context you need without any kind of exposition dump. From there we follow our team of four police operatives in their descent into the underworld in search of two missing engineers, which quickly spirals into something much more sinister.
The levels are essentially massive puzzle boxes in the vein of Core's own Tomb Raider, except far more complex, since you have to use four people to solve them instead of one. You might have to send your robot through toxic gas to open a door so your engineer can repair a fuse box so the hacker can maneuver a platform around to ferry the team leader across a chasm to open a door and let everyone through, or you might have to drive a remote controlled car into maintenance ducts to fix a broken circuit so a bridge can be extended. It's very in-depth, so much so it can get confusing at times.
It's not all puzzle solving, as there is quite a lot of action too: cultists and mutants threaten the team at every turn. To fight them off, the game gradually unlocks about a dozen weapons, each with its own alternate fire: rapid or charge laser pistols, rockets launchers, proximity bombs, deployable auto turrets, even a stasis field to slow down time. There is a lot of variety in the way you can face the abominations you will meet in the lower strata of the city. It may not be the smoothest combat ever, but if you know Core Design, you already know the shooting was never their forte, and it doesn't significantly harm the experience. Furthermore, dying is only a temporary setback in Project EDEN, as the developers saw fit to remove the frustration factor by allowing the player to respawn each dead operative at set regeneration points, rather than going back to a checkpoint. A wise decision, since the puzzle-solving aspect is the main course of the game, and too much emphasis on action would have gotten in the way.
If you're looking for a lengthy and deep action puzzle experience that doesn't hold your hand at all and provides a huge sense of accomplishment when things click together to find the solution, this overlooked gem is exactly the game for you. I can't recommend it enough.
2002
Deep dives into console libraries are fun precisely because you can find games like these that nobody ever talks about but deserve a fair look. Add Run Like Hell to the pile of titles I wish I could call hidden gems and that I could love a lot more than I do. In many ways this is Dead Space many years before Dead Space, and somewhat answers the question of what would happen if The Thing had infected the starship Enterprise.
In the far future, former war hero turned mining prospector Nick Conner sees his space station invaded by an unknown species of murderous aliens and has to struggle to survive, along with a handful of crew members.
Reading developer posts about it reveals Run Like Hell had a five years development hell cycle during which they changed all of the creative staff multiple times and saw management impose a complete rework of the game from what started as a survival horror "Resident Evil in space" sort of deal into a pure action game that had to be built from the ground-up in ten months. Sadly, this shows, and we can only imagine whatthe game might have been had it been allowed to follow the original vision.
And what a vision it was: you can tell the people at Digital Mayhem (MDK2, Giants: Citizen Kabuto) set out to make a fully featured sci-fi movie in videogame form, starting from a cast that I can only defy a pun to describe as stellar. the protagonist is played by Lance Henricksen from Aliens and the supporting cast includes names such as Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside from Starship Troopers, Kate Mulgrew from Star Trek Voyager, Brad Dourif from Dune and Alien Resurrection and Tom Wilson from back to the Future and the Wing Commander games. Doubtless a cast that would have sold many sci-fi horror films in the late 90s to early 2000s and not only that, because, unlike other gaming productions which cast established Hollywood talent who phoned in unconvincing performances, everyone here tries their absolute best to sell a script which was way above average for a turn of the century videogame, back when fleshed out stories and dialogue werre still considered accessory if not superfluous.
How disconcerting is it, then, that none of these actors' names appear in any capacity on the front or back cover of the game? What sort of production company spends several millions on an expensive movie nstar cast and makes sure nobody can tell from the box? The answer is Interplay, and that explains more things other than the simple commercial failure of this game.
The writing is nothing too crazy by today's standards, especially considering the naif use of Shakespeare quotes as chapter titles and occasional musings, but for 2002 this was not the bare minimum by a long shot: characters behave logically and show a believable range of emotions, helped along by a number of plot devices like the war hero being forced to interact with a member of the alien species he has fought against years before, forming an uneasy alliance with a satisfying arc. It's good stuff, and moreso given the lengthy development cycle of the game, which would place its conception and perhaps its writing somewhere in the mid-90s. The music is also excellent: setting aside the licensed tracks by rock bands Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin, which were a sign of the times, the original orchestral soundscape is chillingly effective in generating a sense of dread and urgency.
So we have great production values, a big name cast and a story that works; what is wrong with this game? Quite simply, the gameplay has been vandalized by corporate interference, as mentioned before, which transformed what might have been a quality REsident Evil clone into a rushed and botched action game that's simply no fun at all to play. It is evident that the developers were only given enough time to cobble together something that worked well enough and playtest it enough to ship it, without any opportunity to polish the fun factor into it. The result is a frustrating and stressful 10 hour ride in which you are constantly beset by damage sponge enemies spawning in behind you, which are fought with barely effectual weapons that require an ungodly amount of button mashing to dish out anything resembling a decent damage output. The dodge move, essential to defeating the bosses, is emblematic of the rush conversion job from Resident Evil-like to action, as it is a barely functional hobbling animation whose input you have to keep tapping in order to cover any passable distance.
Any and all survival elements were stripped out of the game, with workhorse weapons having infinite ammunition and the game showering you with health recovery items. Boss fights are abominable and the checkpoint system is frustratingly limiting, occasionally forcing the replay of lengthy sections with unskippable cutscenes.
It's a mess, and it's such a crying shame, because what good is there is really good. It doesn't quite live up to its potential in the narratove department, since you will be expecting a shocking body horror revelation that never comes, but it's still plenty satisfying to experience the story of Nick Conner and his crew.
My advice is to play this game with cheats, which allow to bypass the frustration factor and to enjoy the storywithout too much hassle. Do this and you will experience one of the most interesting, and sadly completely forgotten despite being undoubtedly influential, sci-fi horror games of the early 2000s.
In the far future, former war hero turned mining prospector Nick Conner sees his space station invaded by an unknown species of murderous aliens and has to struggle to survive, along with a handful of crew members.
Reading developer posts about it reveals Run Like Hell had a five years development hell cycle during which they changed all of the creative staff multiple times and saw management impose a complete rework of the game from what started as a survival horror "Resident Evil in space" sort of deal into a pure action game that had to be built from the ground-up in ten months. Sadly, this shows, and we can only imagine whatthe game might have been had it been allowed to follow the original vision.
And what a vision it was: you can tell the people at Digital Mayhem (MDK2, Giants: Citizen Kabuto) set out to make a fully featured sci-fi movie in videogame form, starting from a cast that I can only defy a pun to describe as stellar. the protagonist is played by Lance Henricksen from Aliens and the supporting cast includes names such as Clancy Brown and Michael Ironside from Starship Troopers, Kate Mulgrew from Star Trek Voyager, Brad Dourif from Dune and Alien Resurrection and Tom Wilson from back to the Future and the Wing Commander games. Doubtless a cast that would have sold many sci-fi horror films in the late 90s to early 2000s and not only that, because, unlike other gaming productions which cast established Hollywood talent who phoned in unconvincing performances, everyone here tries their absolute best to sell a script which was way above average for a turn of the century videogame, back when fleshed out stories and dialogue werre still considered accessory if not superfluous.
How disconcerting is it, then, that none of these actors' names appear in any capacity on the front or back cover of the game? What sort of production company spends several millions on an expensive movie nstar cast and makes sure nobody can tell from the box? The answer is Interplay, and that explains more things other than the simple commercial failure of this game.
The writing is nothing too crazy by today's standards, especially considering the naif use of Shakespeare quotes as chapter titles and occasional musings, but for 2002 this was not the bare minimum by a long shot: characters behave logically and show a believable range of emotions, helped along by a number of plot devices like the war hero being forced to interact with a member of the alien species he has fought against years before, forming an uneasy alliance with a satisfying arc. It's good stuff, and moreso given the lengthy development cycle of the game, which would place its conception and perhaps its writing somewhere in the mid-90s. The music is also excellent: setting aside the licensed tracks by rock bands Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin, which were a sign of the times, the original orchestral soundscape is chillingly effective in generating a sense of dread and urgency.
So we have great production values, a big name cast and a story that works; what is wrong with this game? Quite simply, the gameplay has been vandalized by corporate interference, as mentioned before, which transformed what might have been a quality REsident Evil clone into a rushed and botched action game that's simply no fun at all to play. It is evident that the developers were only given enough time to cobble together something that worked well enough and playtest it enough to ship it, without any opportunity to polish the fun factor into it. The result is a frustrating and stressful 10 hour ride in which you are constantly beset by damage sponge enemies spawning in behind you, which are fought with barely effectual weapons that require an ungodly amount of button mashing to dish out anything resembling a decent damage output. The dodge move, essential to defeating the bosses, is emblematic of the rush conversion job from Resident Evil-like to action, as it is a barely functional hobbling animation whose input you have to keep tapping in order to cover any passable distance.
Any and all survival elements were stripped out of the game, with workhorse weapons having infinite ammunition and the game showering you with health recovery items. Boss fights are abominable and the checkpoint system is frustratingly limiting, occasionally forcing the replay of lengthy sections with unskippable cutscenes.
It's a mess, and it's such a crying shame, because what good is there is really good. It doesn't quite live up to its potential in the narratove department, since you will be expecting a shocking body horror revelation that never comes, but it's still plenty satisfying to experience the story of Nick Conner and his crew.
My advice is to play this game with cheats, which allow to bypass the frustration factor and to enjoy the storywithout too much hassle. Do this and you will experience one of the most interesting, and sadly completely forgotten despite being undoubtedly influential, sci-fi horror games of the early 2000s.
2019
Ever since Penumbra and especially its successor Amnesia hit the PC gaming scene in the latter half of the 2000s, the first person "hold lantern, hide from monsters and pull drawers, occasionally run away" psychological horror genre has become so saturated that you can reverse image search a screenshot of any given one of them and watch as the search engine gets confused trying the impossible task to tell them apart. Even Resident Evil copied the formula to an extent with 7 and 8, and just how much good that did to the franchise is up for debate.
The Beast Inside deviates very little from the recipe, aside from the fact it offers a dual protagonist: Adam, a CIA codebreaker in the late 1970s and Nicolas, a troubled man living a hundred years in the past. The story it tells is intriguing enough, even if the twist is far from impossible to figure out. There is some above average writing on offer, though the incessant swearing of the present day protagonist comes off as jarring and juvenile and the voice acting unfortunately does little to properly convey what the writer did right. This is voice work done on a kickstarter budget, and it shows, despite not being by any means inadmissible, it's nothing more than functional, with characters in dire situations reacting in neutral tones that betray a poorly annotated script that didn't properly direct the actors in the recording booth.
A tip for anyone who seeks to embark on a project like this: if you write the emotion the character is feeling next to each line of dialogue in your script you'll be able to get so much more out of your voice actors. You'll definitely avoid ending up with a scene where someone rips a beating heart out of someone's chest and offers it to the protagonist, who reacts sounding like they just lost the TV remote under a couch cushion.
Of the two gameplay segments, the 19th century one is your standard no frills Amnesia clone, while the other spices things up a little with a decent number of Frogwares-style puzzles that wouldn't feel out of place in one of their Sherlock Holmes game, if not for being anachronistic. A couple standout examples involve following instructions to operate a 1940s enigma machine and investigating a room looking for hidden pieces of a code. it's good stuff, and the rest of the game leaves you wanting more of that and less of what remains, which are disconcertingly poor action adventure sequences that drag the production down. You have a horrid though mercifully brief sequence in which you are given a revolver and a comically excessive amount of ammunition and made to stumble though thick fog, bumping into map boundaries as you try to follow lamps to a destination (which is a dreadful boss fight), after which the gun is taken away from you for good.
You also have far too many trial and error Outlast-inspired escape sequences where you die immediately when caught; you have exploration sections with nothing but jumpscares trying to startle you and failing most of the time, partly because they are so trite and telegraphed you can count down to each one and be right more often than not, and also because they self-sabotage by having the player constaly scavenging for matches and lantern oil, meaning you'll often be looking at a chest of drawers when a scare is happening off screen. There's the obligatory "don't step in the water" segment that Amnesia clones copied to no end, there are climbing and platforming segments that don't quite work and stealth bits with enemy patterns that are either too simple or too frustratingly random to be satisfying.
The Beast Inside wears its influence on its sleeve, actually both sleeves and both pants too: as such it is a drop in the ocean in a genre that is so tired it needs to be put to bed for good. It's not a terrible game, but far better ones exist, and what little it does to differentiate itself isn't enough to recommend it to anyone other than the most hardcore of Anmesia fanatics, assuming such people even exist.
The Beast Inside deviates very little from the recipe, aside from the fact it offers a dual protagonist: Adam, a CIA codebreaker in the late 1970s and Nicolas, a troubled man living a hundred years in the past. The story it tells is intriguing enough, even if the twist is far from impossible to figure out. There is some above average writing on offer, though the incessant swearing of the present day protagonist comes off as jarring and juvenile and the voice acting unfortunately does little to properly convey what the writer did right. This is voice work done on a kickstarter budget, and it shows, despite not being by any means inadmissible, it's nothing more than functional, with characters in dire situations reacting in neutral tones that betray a poorly annotated script that didn't properly direct the actors in the recording booth.
A tip for anyone who seeks to embark on a project like this: if you write the emotion the character is feeling next to each line of dialogue in your script you'll be able to get so much more out of your voice actors. You'll definitely avoid ending up with a scene where someone rips a beating heart out of someone's chest and offers it to the protagonist, who reacts sounding like they just lost the TV remote under a couch cushion.
Of the two gameplay segments, the 19th century one is your standard no frills Amnesia clone, while the other spices things up a little with a decent number of Frogwares-style puzzles that wouldn't feel out of place in one of their Sherlock Holmes game, if not for being anachronistic. A couple standout examples involve following instructions to operate a 1940s enigma machine and investigating a room looking for hidden pieces of a code. it's good stuff, and the rest of the game leaves you wanting more of that and less of what remains, which are disconcertingly poor action adventure sequences that drag the production down. You have a horrid though mercifully brief sequence in which you are given a revolver and a comically excessive amount of ammunition and made to stumble though thick fog, bumping into map boundaries as you try to follow lamps to a destination (which is a dreadful boss fight), after which the gun is taken away from you for good.
You also have far too many trial and error Outlast-inspired escape sequences where you die immediately when caught; you have exploration sections with nothing but jumpscares trying to startle you and failing most of the time, partly because they are so trite and telegraphed you can count down to each one and be right more often than not, and also because they self-sabotage by having the player constaly scavenging for matches and lantern oil, meaning you'll often be looking at a chest of drawers when a scare is happening off screen. There's the obligatory "don't step in the water" segment that Amnesia clones copied to no end, there are climbing and platforming segments that don't quite work and stealth bits with enemy patterns that are either too simple or too frustratingly random to be satisfying.
The Beast Inside wears its influence on its sleeve, actually both sleeves and both pants too: as such it is a drop in the ocean in a genre that is so tired it needs to be put to bed for good. It's not a terrible game, but far better ones exist, and what little it does to differentiate itself isn't enough to recommend it to anyone other than the most hardcore of Anmesia fanatics, assuming such people even exist.
A criminally overlooked and seldom talked about game, Bujingai may not be the second coming of action game design, nor does it achieve excellence in its barebones narrative compartment, but its flashy and satisfying combat system is above competent and offers a lot of replayability for those who enjoy mastering such intricate systems.
While the platforming and puzzle sections aren't great by any means (so about on par with similar games of that period), the action props this game up, especially if you enjoy this kind of very stylized, very intense Hong Kong style martial arts acrobatics with a generous seasoning of theatrical flair.
Should you play this over, say, Genji? No, but if you've been through the PS2 action library and somehow missed this one, you owe it to yourself to give it a go.
While the platforming and puzzle sections aren't great by any means (so about on par with similar games of that period), the action props this game up, especially if you enjoy this kind of very stylized, very intense Hong Kong style martial arts acrobatics with a generous seasoning of theatrical flair.
Should you play this over, say, Genji? No, but if you've been through the PS2 action library and somehow missed this one, you owe it to yourself to give it a go.
While janky, unpolished and with mediocre production values, the game that spearheaded the resurgence of The Lord of the Rings in the gaming landscape after a decade of radio silence is not a bad effort, chiefly because it does its own thing and tries to stick closer to the books, instead of serving as a mindless movie tie-in. Tom Bombadil is in this, complete with Frodo and Sam wondering about who he is and what he meant by his claim of being odler than the trees and the stones; do you need to know more? Glorfindel is in this, as well as minor details like Frodo selling Bag End to the Sackvilles.
Released a mere week before the far more popular The Two Towers, Fellowship didn't stand a chance and is probably remembered as being worse than it really is because of this comparison.
Developer Surreal Software, who had made Drakan on PC and would go on to make its really good PS2 sequel as well as both outings of cult classic franchise The Suffering, crafted a melee system that can only be described as "acceptable", doing the bare minimum to toe the line between functional and annoying, without crossing over.
Depending on the level you control either Frodo, Aragorn or Gandalf, each with his own skills and attacks: Frodo is weak but can use the One Ring to become invisible for a brief time, Aragorn has an infinite bow and a kick move to topple enemies for a satisfying ground finisher and Gandalf can cast a variety of spells, ranging from offenive to healing to mind control.
Health comes at a premium, as healing items aren't overly abundant, so you'll be looking for ways to avoid taking damage. Hilariously, the best strategy is to hang back and let your invincible NPC allies deal with the enemies as you snipe from afar. There are frew things funnier than seeing a gaggle of hobbits make short work of a cave troll or two in such a way.
It's not much, but it's enough to be a passable game when you take the narrative element into account. If you are one of those hardcore LOTR book fans who were always annoyed by the liberties taken by the movies, this is as close an action game is likely to get to a faithful adaptation of Fellowship, and that has to be worth something.
Released a mere week before the far more popular The Two Towers, Fellowship didn't stand a chance and is probably remembered as being worse than it really is because of this comparison.
Developer Surreal Software, who had made Drakan on PC and would go on to make its really good PS2 sequel as well as both outings of cult classic franchise The Suffering, crafted a melee system that can only be described as "acceptable", doing the bare minimum to toe the line between functional and annoying, without crossing over.
Depending on the level you control either Frodo, Aragorn or Gandalf, each with his own skills and attacks: Frodo is weak but can use the One Ring to become invisible for a brief time, Aragorn has an infinite bow and a kick move to topple enemies for a satisfying ground finisher and Gandalf can cast a variety of spells, ranging from offenive to healing to mind control.
Health comes at a premium, as healing items aren't overly abundant, so you'll be looking for ways to avoid taking damage. Hilariously, the best strategy is to hang back and let your invincible NPC allies deal with the enemies as you snipe from afar. There are frew things funnier than seeing a gaggle of hobbits make short work of a cave troll or two in such a way.
It's not much, but it's enough to be a passable game when you take the narrative element into account. If you are one of those hardcore LOTR book fans who were always annoyed by the liberties taken by the movies, this is as close an action game is likely to get to a faithful adaptation of Fellowship, and that has to be worth something.
2022
Evil West is a mid-budget God of War 2018 clone against Wild West vampires. If that sounds good to you, go play it immediately, it's good.
It's especially recommended for fans of that old PS2 game Darkwatch, which more or less shared this vision of a civil war-era America infested with bloodsuckers and other creatures of the night. While this is not a shooter, as guns exist in it the same way they exist in, say, Bayonetta, they add a welcome sprinkle of extra variety to the action.
The story is surprisingly fleshed out, though it's nothing special from either the narrative of performance side of things.
Give it a chance, it's more fun than it looks.
It's especially recommended for fans of that old PS2 game Darkwatch, which more or less shared this vision of a civil war-era America infested with bloodsuckers and other creatures of the night. While this is not a shooter, as guns exist in it the same way they exist in, say, Bayonetta, they add a welcome sprinkle of extra variety to the action.
The story is surprisingly fleshed out, though it's nothing special from either the narrative of performance side of things.
Give it a chance, it's more fun than it looks.
An intriguing adaptation of Tezuka's Dororo, both taking huge liberties and sticking remarkably close to the source material, alternately, just as it alternates fairly compelling gameplay to some of the most baffling and unbalanced stuff the genre had to offer at the time.
Regarding the story, it sure does a decent enough job of condensating the adventures of amputee ronin Hyakkimaru and child thief Dororo by retaining most of the manga's set pieces and merging multiple ones into single missions in the game, though some narrative decisions are puzzling to say the least. It's worth premising that while a number of adaptations have appered over the years, by late 2004 when the game released, the only material in existence was the original 1968 manga and its 1969 cartoon version. With this in mind, it's hard to figure out where some of the design calls made for the game came from; for instance, a throwaway line from the last few pages of the manga (in which Hyakkimaru explains he decided to spare the villain's soldies by disarming them using the dull side of his weapon) has been rewritten into a sworn oath to never use his blades to harm another human being, when in the manga he slices and dices people like it's nothing. This translates to a regular recurrence in which the player must defeat dozens of enemies using a severely limited move set. Even bosses must, on rarer occasions, be fought this way, which is mildly aggravating.
It is clear that the violence in the game was considerably watered down compared to the manga which, in spite of Tezuka's childish artistic style, is shockingly brutal, both in its depiction of graphic violence and the themes, since no one in it is spared cruel fates, not women, nor the old and infirm, not even children. The game tones this down considerably, having little to no blood on display and changing the story so some characters who were slaughtered in the manga now are saved by the heroes. The villains are also sensibly less fiendish and callous, having more of a semblance of honor and more intricate character arcs than in the source material.
///Spoilers follow///
The game also takes it upon itself to daringly fill some of the narrative gaps left by the original story, for instance what the demons have done with the 48 body parts taken from Hyakkimaru, though the answer to that might appear a tad cavalier to some: the idea that the demons used the parts to make Dororo is not only a hard pill to swallow, but also makes no sense at all, since with that premise Dororo should be losing body parts as Hyakkimaru regains them, and that doesn't happen. The game's writers cleverly used the character of competing ronin Saburota (an average human in the manga) as red herring to convince the player he was the person put together with the stolen body parts, only to later reveal it wasn't so. One must appreciate the effort of trying to tie Dororo and Hyakkimaru together a bit more than they were in the manga, especially at the end when the latter needs to reject the offer to slay the former in order to regain his final body part the easy way, instead opting to leave and return years later to rejoin a now grown-up Dororo for a final battle. It's good stuff, even though it doesn't make a lot of sense (not that the manga did either).
///Spoilers end///
Playing it fast and loose with the source also spills over to the gameplay: Hyakkimaru no longer limits himself to his signature blade arms, as he now also packs a machinegun hand and a rocket launcher hidden in his leg, both of which are straight out of 004's repertoire from the Cyborg 009 manga, which is not by Tezuka, but looks close enough to be easily mistakable. These are used in combat to target distant enemies but also as navigation tools, to open new previously blocked paths.
Particularly praiseworthy is the adventurous manner in which the game designers simulated Hyakkimaru's gradual reacquisition of his senses: for instance the game simulates his blindness by starting in black and white and remaining so for a good couple of hours and simulates the lack of a central nervous system by precluding access to a controller rumble options for about half the game. Incredible brave choices from a bygone era of gaming in which risking the player to be put off the game due to the perceived lack of a basic feature was still acceptavble risk on the development studio's part. It really is quite unique in what it does in this regard.
Perhaps the biggest issue with the game lies in how unbalanced it is: since there are 48 demons to hunt, most of which hidden and optional, and since each one grants a significant stats boost when killed, the thorough player will quickly end up with a grossly overpowered Hyakkimaru, who will make comically short work of most bosses, even the strongest ones. "Comically" not even being an exaggeration: we are talking a few seconds to take down even endgame bosses, so much so that you might not even see their move set. By contrast, the secret final boss that is unlocked after slaying every demon in the game is so ridiculously difficult and ends with such a stupidly punishing QTE (only doable with one particular hidden sword) that it violently clashes with how easy the rest of the game is. To break up the pace of the combat-heavy game, you will periodaclly switch control from Hyakkimaru to Dororo who, mostly unarmed, will have to sneak around and try to avoid confrontations whenever possible, even though there are a few bosses who are fough as Dororo alone. Needless to say, these sections aren't the h9ighlight of the game: they serve as a much needed antidote to monotony, but you'll be glad when they are over.
Another problem lies with the controls, which aren't at all bad when it comes to the actual fighting, rather the issue is the camera: instead of a simple orbital camera, something that by 2004 had already become an industry standard, we are stuck with a Nintendo 64-style burron to align the camera behind the character, while the right analog stick activates some kind of first person mode that has little to no use in both exploration and combat. It's archaic, and makes you wonder whether the game started out as a PS1 title before being moved to the PS2.
There is a lot to like in Osamu Tezuka's Dororo (or "Blood Will Tell" if you were dropped as a baby), despite its problems. This is a game that holds up surprisingly well even 20 years later, provided you possess a degree of tolerance for PS2 jank. If that describes you, you will be rewarded with an engaging story that complements the original manga fairly well as an alternative and expanded take with some design decisions to match the narrative side that you are unlikely to find anywhere else. Just be sure to grab the fanmade undub version which restores the original Japanese voice acting, since the English one is beyond bad.
Regarding the story, it sure does a decent enough job of condensating the adventures of amputee ronin Hyakkimaru and child thief Dororo by retaining most of the manga's set pieces and merging multiple ones into single missions in the game, though some narrative decisions are puzzling to say the least. It's worth premising that while a number of adaptations have appered over the years, by late 2004 when the game released, the only material in existence was the original 1968 manga and its 1969 cartoon version. With this in mind, it's hard to figure out where some of the design calls made for the game came from; for instance, a throwaway line from the last few pages of the manga (in which Hyakkimaru explains he decided to spare the villain's soldies by disarming them using the dull side of his weapon) has been rewritten into a sworn oath to never use his blades to harm another human being, when in the manga he slices and dices people like it's nothing. This translates to a regular recurrence in which the player must defeat dozens of enemies using a severely limited move set. Even bosses must, on rarer occasions, be fought this way, which is mildly aggravating.
It is clear that the violence in the game was considerably watered down compared to the manga which, in spite of Tezuka's childish artistic style, is shockingly brutal, both in its depiction of graphic violence and the themes, since no one in it is spared cruel fates, not women, nor the old and infirm, not even children. The game tones this down considerably, having little to no blood on display and changing the story so some characters who were slaughtered in the manga now are saved by the heroes. The villains are also sensibly less fiendish and callous, having more of a semblance of honor and more intricate character arcs than in the source material.
///Spoilers follow///
The game also takes it upon itself to daringly fill some of the narrative gaps left by the original story, for instance what the demons have done with the 48 body parts taken from Hyakkimaru, though the answer to that might appear a tad cavalier to some: the idea that the demons used the parts to make Dororo is not only a hard pill to swallow, but also makes no sense at all, since with that premise Dororo should be losing body parts as Hyakkimaru regains them, and that doesn't happen. The game's writers cleverly used the character of competing ronin Saburota (an average human in the manga) as red herring to convince the player he was the person put together with the stolen body parts, only to later reveal it wasn't so. One must appreciate the effort of trying to tie Dororo and Hyakkimaru together a bit more than they were in the manga, especially at the end when the latter needs to reject the offer to slay the former in order to regain his final body part the easy way, instead opting to leave and return years later to rejoin a now grown-up Dororo for a final battle. It's good stuff, even though it doesn't make a lot of sense (not that the manga did either).
///Spoilers end///
Playing it fast and loose with the source also spills over to the gameplay: Hyakkimaru no longer limits himself to his signature blade arms, as he now also packs a machinegun hand and a rocket launcher hidden in his leg, both of which are straight out of 004's repertoire from the Cyborg 009 manga, which is not by Tezuka, but looks close enough to be easily mistakable. These are used in combat to target distant enemies but also as navigation tools, to open new previously blocked paths.
Particularly praiseworthy is the adventurous manner in which the game designers simulated Hyakkimaru's gradual reacquisition of his senses: for instance the game simulates his blindness by starting in black and white and remaining so for a good couple of hours and simulates the lack of a central nervous system by precluding access to a controller rumble options for about half the game. Incredible brave choices from a bygone era of gaming in which risking the player to be put off the game due to the perceived lack of a basic feature was still acceptavble risk on the development studio's part. It really is quite unique in what it does in this regard.
Perhaps the biggest issue with the game lies in how unbalanced it is: since there are 48 demons to hunt, most of which hidden and optional, and since each one grants a significant stats boost when killed, the thorough player will quickly end up with a grossly overpowered Hyakkimaru, who will make comically short work of most bosses, even the strongest ones. "Comically" not even being an exaggeration: we are talking a few seconds to take down even endgame bosses, so much so that you might not even see their move set. By contrast, the secret final boss that is unlocked after slaying every demon in the game is so ridiculously difficult and ends with such a stupidly punishing QTE (only doable with one particular hidden sword) that it violently clashes with how easy the rest of the game is. To break up the pace of the combat-heavy game, you will periodaclly switch control from Hyakkimaru to Dororo who, mostly unarmed, will have to sneak around and try to avoid confrontations whenever possible, even though there are a few bosses who are fough as Dororo alone. Needless to say, these sections aren't the h9ighlight of the game: they serve as a much needed antidote to monotony, but you'll be glad when they are over.
Another problem lies with the controls, which aren't at all bad when it comes to the actual fighting, rather the issue is the camera: instead of a simple orbital camera, something that by 2004 had already become an industry standard, we are stuck with a Nintendo 64-style burron to align the camera behind the character, while the right analog stick activates some kind of first person mode that has little to no use in both exploration and combat. It's archaic, and makes you wonder whether the game started out as a PS1 title before being moved to the PS2.
There is a lot to like in Osamu Tezuka's Dororo (or "Blood Will Tell" if you were dropped as a baby), despite its problems. This is a game that holds up surprisingly well even 20 years later, provided you possess a degree of tolerance for PS2 jank. If that describes you, you will be rewarded with an engaging story that complements the original manga fairly well as an alternative and expanded take with some design decisions to match the narrative side that you are unlikely to find anywhere else. Just be sure to grab the fanmade undub version which restores the original Japanese voice acting, since the English one is beyond bad.
2006
Back before Rebellion started churning out mediocrity and plain and simple crap, they made things like this. Rogue Trooper is one of the prototypes for what the cover shooter genre would become, and it does a lot of things right, though a few crucial ones wrong that keep it from being a classic.
It's extremely cinematic and has an abundance of weapons and tools to play around with: your basic rifle can deliver automatic fire, it can zoom in to double as a sniper rifle (both of which can be suppressed via attachment), it can be deployed at will to serve as an automated turret, it can mount shotgun, homing rocket, mortar and gauss underbarrels; you have four different types of grenades, you can sneak and stealth kill enemies for bonus resources, you can place landmines to cover your back and even generate a holographic decoy to draw enemy fire away.
There is a lot in this arsenal, though not all of it useful: the most disconcreting one is the rifle itself, since its default fire barely seems to tickle your enemies, who are unflinching bullet sponges who absolutely need to be shot in the head in order to obtain any result. The same applies to the auto turret mode, which will distract the enemies, yes, but will take minutes to kill a single one, if it manages to do so at all.
In fact, the turret is so ineffectual that you will discover a powerful weapon you wouldn't expect: your basic infinite pistol. Since you have to abandon your rifle in order to set it to turret mode, you run around with just a pistol, and you will quickly realize it is far more effective at taking enemies down than your primary weapon. It's like the developers were so worried that you would be left defenseless when using the game's advanced features, that they made the pistol absolutely overpowered. So which would you rather do: waste copious amounts of your weak primary ammunition (which you have to spend collected resources to craft) or just use your infinite sidearm that can actually get the job done? Luckily the shotgun and sniper rifle are effective, so they are fun to use.
Rogue Warrior has all the right ideas, but the execution is not quite there. A little more time in the oven would have done this game a lot of good but it's still a pretty good shooter for 2006.
It's extremely cinematic and has an abundance of weapons and tools to play around with: your basic rifle can deliver automatic fire, it can zoom in to double as a sniper rifle (both of which can be suppressed via attachment), it can be deployed at will to serve as an automated turret, it can mount shotgun, homing rocket, mortar and gauss underbarrels; you have four different types of grenades, you can sneak and stealth kill enemies for bonus resources, you can place landmines to cover your back and even generate a holographic decoy to draw enemy fire away.
There is a lot in this arsenal, though not all of it useful: the most disconcreting one is the rifle itself, since its default fire barely seems to tickle your enemies, who are unflinching bullet sponges who absolutely need to be shot in the head in order to obtain any result. The same applies to the auto turret mode, which will distract the enemies, yes, but will take minutes to kill a single one, if it manages to do so at all.
In fact, the turret is so ineffectual that you will discover a powerful weapon you wouldn't expect: your basic infinite pistol. Since you have to abandon your rifle in order to set it to turret mode, you run around with just a pistol, and you will quickly realize it is far more effective at taking enemies down than your primary weapon. It's like the developers were so worried that you would be left defenseless when using the game's advanced features, that they made the pistol absolutely overpowered. So which would you rather do: waste copious amounts of your weak primary ammunition (which you have to spend collected resources to craft) or just use your infinite sidearm that can actually get the job done? Luckily the shotgun and sniper rifle are effective, so they are fun to use.
Rogue Warrior has all the right ideas, but the execution is not quite there. A little more time in the oven would have done this game a lot of good but it's still a pretty good shooter for 2006.
2003
Depending on how you feel about the mid 2000s-mid 2010s cover shooter invasion, Kill.Switch may look like the great innovator or a harbinger of the stop & pop apocalypse: pioneering many of the mechanics that would become standard in the genre, it is without a doubt what inspired Gears of War and kickstarted a veritable craze.
It expertly sidesteps a number of key pitfalls of the time: instead of unflinching bullet sponges, enemies are glass cannons who go down quickly but are able to deal significant damage to you, it features a dedicated reload button (not a given for the time) and a dedicated grenade button, grenades which also work properly instead of erratically impacting with level geometry, something that still trips up many games to this day.
It even attempts to feature a dramatic Hollywood-style storyline which, while being cheesy and unconvincing due to poor acting performances and amateur hour writing, is still better than a lot of what shooters of the time had to offer. Points for effort, if nothing else.
What brings the game down is the repetition: for a game that clocks in at a paltry 3-4 hours, its firefights get significantly monotonous really quickly, which is salvaged by the considerable difficulty of some of the sections which, along with the lack of checkpoints, will at least keep you on your toes.
Kill.Switch was very quickly surpassed and overshadowed by its emulators, and for good reason, but the fact remains that the seminal achievements are not to be forgotten.
It expertly sidesteps a number of key pitfalls of the time: instead of unflinching bullet sponges, enemies are glass cannons who go down quickly but are able to deal significant damage to you, it features a dedicated reload button (not a given for the time) and a dedicated grenade button, grenades which also work properly instead of erratically impacting with level geometry, something that still trips up many games to this day.
It even attempts to feature a dramatic Hollywood-style storyline which, while being cheesy and unconvincing due to poor acting performances and amateur hour writing, is still better than a lot of what shooters of the time had to offer. Points for effort, if nothing else.
What brings the game down is the repetition: for a game that clocks in at a paltry 3-4 hours, its firefights get significantly monotonous really quickly, which is salvaged by the considerable difficulty of some of the sections which, along with the lack of checkpoints, will at least keep you on your toes.
Kill.Switch was very quickly surpassed and overshadowed by its emulators, and for good reason, but the fact remains that the seminal achievements are not to be forgotten.
2020
Prodeus is Doom 2016 without the glory kills nonsense. Kickstarted by a handful of ex-Raven Software and Irrational Games people, it's mechanically solid and has great music, but some baffling design decisions hamper its potential, namely overly spongy enemies, locking some of the best ugrades behind well-hidden secrets and, above all else, the fact that you essentially cannot die.
That's right, in every level except the arena that serves as a final boss, whenever your health reaches zero you instantly respawn out of a conveniently placed checkpoint, with full health and ammo and no penalty whatsoever beyond giving up some of your score, which serves no purpose beyond leaderboard placement.
When Prey did something less forgiving than that in 2006 people got incensed, when Bioshock did it one year later people dismissed it, and now that Prodeus does it nobody cares, despite the fact that it pretty much demolishes any semblance of challenge the game might present. All of the tension of combat is gone once you know you can just die and respawn and pick up where you left off, and it is, in fact, far more efficient to just die and respawn than it is to waste time and effort looking for health and ammo pickups. Usually the respawn points are in the same room as the big encounter that might kill you, so there really is no penalty to you losing.
How is combat then? It's good, as mentioned before it's Doom 2016 with the key difference that guns are designed to actually kill enemies, instead of putting them in a drowsy state for an unskippable Mortal Kombat fatality animation every few seconds. The gallery of monsters is precisely what you expect: zombie, shotgun zombie, fireball imp, chaingunner, chunky melee-oriented monster, kamikaze lost soul, flying blob that shoots fireballs, flying blob that vomits kaamikaze lost souls. It's Doom, except for how much of a damage sponge each enemy is. It takes two point blank shotgun shells or three headshots with the plasma rifle to down the most basic zombie and sometimes up to four for a shotgun zombie. This eats through your ammunition fast, especially considering the low max stocks (30 shells for your shotgun without a costly upgrade) and how high the fire rate is with certain weapons, especially the minigun, which can drain your ammo reserves in a matter of seconds. If there's something that both Doom and Serious Sam taught us is that economizing ammo is antithetical to the fun factor os a fast paced shooter like this and should never be a major concern. It is no surprise then that the most entertaining levels in Prodeus are those late games ones that contain ammo refill platforms, which removes the penny pinching needed to conserve your ammo and allows you to cut loose and have fun.
The arsenal is what you'd expect: pistol, shotgun with sniper alt fire, super shotgun, rocket launcher with grenade variant, plasma gun with the homing beacon alt fire from Resistance Fall of Man, railgun doubling as a tesla gun from Wolfenstein, plus a number of unlockable weapons you are unlikely to ever use, since they are locked behind the discovery of an ungodly amount of secrets around the levels, as are mobility upgrades such as double jump and airdash, as well as an ever so necessary bandolier to carry more ammunition. Both the plasma gun and super shotgun need to be unlocked, and you'll want to do so, as they are easily the best guns in the game, even though the way the latter was handled is bizarre to say the least: ever since Doom 2 introduced the super shotgun it's been a tradeoff between increased firepower vs double the consumption of ammo and slower reload, which didn't make the basic boomstick obsolete; here you have this quad barrel beast which can fire without delay, reloads faster and deals more damage per shot than the basic conterpart while firing the same amount of the same ammo (wrap your head around that one), plus it can discharge all barrels at once to deal massive damage to even the strurdiest of foes. There will be no reason to ever use the normal shotgun again, unless you need the precision alt fire, a role shared with multiple other guns.
Locking mobility upgrades behind secret hunting is a questionable choice, as many players might never find enough hidden tokens to afford them, thus missing out on the best the game has to offer in term of movement: when you're zipping around double jumping over acid pits and airdashing out of the way of incoming fire it's some of the finest moments a shooter can offer, too bad these are missable upgrades and as such the levels can't be designed with them in mind.
On the tecnical side, the game is less than stellar: while the game aims at a steady 60 frames even on consoles, performance is poor, with frequent and long load times, common frame drops around the 30fps mark and even occasional freezes lasting up several seconds, guaranteed to get you killed (don't worry though, remember: no consequence for dying...). The art style is bizarre to say the least: in the ocean of retro-themed shooters on the indie market, it is not uncommon to see intentionally low resolutions and low detail models and sprites, but Prodeus takes it to the next level by replacing all of the enemies with sprites that do not billboard like in most 1990s FPS, rather they can be viewered from sixteen different angles per level, meaning at eye level, from above and from below, which must heve been a massive amount to work to get working.
Unfortunately, for all that effort, the gimmick doesn't even look very good: stationary objects especially will jerk around unnaturallyas you strafe around them and I suspect this was not what the developers had intended for the visual effect. Not only that, but I can't think of a single 90s shooter that did this, so it doesn't even look authentic for what it pourports to mimic. Fortunately you can toggle an option which replaces all enemy sprites with polygonal models, which is an absolutely massive improvement, which sadly does not affect dropped weapons and item pickups.
There are around 30 levels in the base campaign, with a lot more content available for free in the workshop menu, thanks to a robust map editor. What comes with the base game is well designed, with very Quake-like multilayered fortresses and moon bases filled withs ecrets. It's great stuff, but easy to get lost in due to the flatness of the color scheme, usually a belend of brown and greys that ends up feeling doisorientating due to lack of signposting. Thankfully an 3D automap is present, which is composed of a low-poly version of the current level, which you can noclip through at will, to get your bearing that way.
In conclusion, Prodeus is a mixed bag: while the action is solid and frenetic, its acts of self-sabotage keep it from being a truly excellent shooter. Maybe if they reworked the difficulty to remove the instant respawns, increased damage output just a tad and optimized performance a bit more it could really be something special. Even so, it's a good retro shooter that is worth playing, especially if you were frustrated with the Doom reboots and wanted the same thing but without some of their most glaring flaws.
That's right, in every level except the arena that serves as a final boss, whenever your health reaches zero you instantly respawn out of a conveniently placed checkpoint, with full health and ammo and no penalty whatsoever beyond giving up some of your score, which serves no purpose beyond leaderboard placement.
When Prey did something less forgiving than that in 2006 people got incensed, when Bioshock did it one year later people dismissed it, and now that Prodeus does it nobody cares, despite the fact that it pretty much demolishes any semblance of challenge the game might present. All of the tension of combat is gone once you know you can just die and respawn and pick up where you left off, and it is, in fact, far more efficient to just die and respawn than it is to waste time and effort looking for health and ammo pickups. Usually the respawn points are in the same room as the big encounter that might kill you, so there really is no penalty to you losing.
How is combat then? It's good, as mentioned before it's Doom 2016 with the key difference that guns are designed to actually kill enemies, instead of putting them in a drowsy state for an unskippable Mortal Kombat fatality animation every few seconds. The gallery of monsters is precisely what you expect: zombie, shotgun zombie, fireball imp, chaingunner, chunky melee-oriented monster, kamikaze lost soul, flying blob that shoots fireballs, flying blob that vomits kaamikaze lost souls. It's Doom, except for how much of a damage sponge each enemy is. It takes two point blank shotgun shells or three headshots with the plasma rifle to down the most basic zombie and sometimes up to four for a shotgun zombie. This eats through your ammunition fast, especially considering the low max stocks (30 shells for your shotgun without a costly upgrade) and how high the fire rate is with certain weapons, especially the minigun, which can drain your ammo reserves in a matter of seconds. If there's something that both Doom and Serious Sam taught us is that economizing ammo is antithetical to the fun factor os a fast paced shooter like this and should never be a major concern. It is no surprise then that the most entertaining levels in Prodeus are those late games ones that contain ammo refill platforms, which removes the penny pinching needed to conserve your ammo and allows you to cut loose and have fun.
The arsenal is what you'd expect: pistol, shotgun with sniper alt fire, super shotgun, rocket launcher with grenade variant, plasma gun with the homing beacon alt fire from Resistance Fall of Man, railgun doubling as a tesla gun from Wolfenstein, plus a number of unlockable weapons you are unlikely to ever use, since they are locked behind the discovery of an ungodly amount of secrets around the levels, as are mobility upgrades such as double jump and airdash, as well as an ever so necessary bandolier to carry more ammunition. Both the plasma gun and super shotgun need to be unlocked, and you'll want to do so, as they are easily the best guns in the game, even though the way the latter was handled is bizarre to say the least: ever since Doom 2 introduced the super shotgun it's been a tradeoff between increased firepower vs double the consumption of ammo and slower reload, which didn't make the basic boomstick obsolete; here you have this quad barrel beast which can fire without delay, reloads faster and deals more damage per shot than the basic conterpart while firing the same amount of the same ammo (wrap your head around that one), plus it can discharge all barrels at once to deal massive damage to even the strurdiest of foes. There will be no reason to ever use the normal shotgun again, unless you need the precision alt fire, a role shared with multiple other guns.
Locking mobility upgrades behind secret hunting is a questionable choice, as many players might never find enough hidden tokens to afford them, thus missing out on the best the game has to offer in term of movement: when you're zipping around double jumping over acid pits and airdashing out of the way of incoming fire it's some of the finest moments a shooter can offer, too bad these are missable upgrades and as such the levels can't be designed with them in mind.
On the tecnical side, the game is less than stellar: while the game aims at a steady 60 frames even on consoles, performance is poor, with frequent and long load times, common frame drops around the 30fps mark and even occasional freezes lasting up several seconds, guaranteed to get you killed (don't worry though, remember: no consequence for dying...). The art style is bizarre to say the least: in the ocean of retro-themed shooters on the indie market, it is not uncommon to see intentionally low resolutions and low detail models and sprites, but Prodeus takes it to the next level by replacing all of the enemies with sprites that do not billboard like in most 1990s FPS, rather they can be viewered from sixteen different angles per level, meaning at eye level, from above and from below, which must heve been a massive amount to work to get working.
Unfortunately, for all that effort, the gimmick doesn't even look very good: stationary objects especially will jerk around unnaturallyas you strafe around them and I suspect this was not what the developers had intended for the visual effect. Not only that, but I can't think of a single 90s shooter that did this, so it doesn't even look authentic for what it pourports to mimic. Fortunately you can toggle an option which replaces all enemy sprites with polygonal models, which is an absolutely massive improvement, which sadly does not affect dropped weapons and item pickups.
There are around 30 levels in the base campaign, with a lot more content available for free in the workshop menu, thanks to a robust map editor. What comes with the base game is well designed, with very Quake-like multilayered fortresses and moon bases filled withs ecrets. It's great stuff, but easy to get lost in due to the flatness of the color scheme, usually a belend of brown and greys that ends up feeling doisorientating due to lack of signposting. Thankfully an 3D automap is present, which is composed of a low-poly version of the current level, which you can noclip through at will, to get your bearing that way.
In conclusion, Prodeus is a mixed bag: while the action is solid and frenetic, its acts of self-sabotage keep it from being a truly excellent shooter. Maybe if they reworked the difficulty to remove the instant respawns, increased damage output just a tad and optimized performance a bit more it could really be something special. Even so, it's a good retro shooter that is worth playing, especially if you were frustrated with the Doom reboots and wanted the same thing but without some of their most glaring flaws.
Kurohyou 2 is very much more of the same as the original, with some extensive quality of life improvements: save anywhere, no more storage limitations and taxis to get around town above all else. It adds a second city, Sotenbori, and also builds on the stub that was the gang recruitment mechanic, actually adding partners to help you out in combat, instead of confining it to a long dead multiplayer mode. On top of that it features a reworked leveling system that is much more flexible in creating your own (overpowered) build and fighting style.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows though: while having a second city is great, the gang war side questline has you going back and forth on a constant basis, which can be very tedious, especially sinc eit's not a particularly involving plot to begin with, unlike the main story, which is a lot of fun. The new characters are great, and while you are bound to miss some who do not return, there is a lot to like here on the narrative front.
In a baffling decision, the game chooses to limit when you can engage with the fight club minigame, only allowing to accept matches from the dedicated NPC during specific time windows that pop up seemingly at random. The result is that you receive a text message telling you a match is available and are expected to drop whatever you are doing and run to the NPC to accept it before the time window closes and the fight is cancelled until the next SMS. It's seriously bad, and likely to discourage you to engage with the fight club at all, especially since progression is much slower and the rewards unlisted, which doesn't do much to entice you to out up with the stupidity of the whole system. It's optional anyway.
If you liked Kurohyou, this is bigger and better, with just a few caveats to speak of.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows though: while having a second city is great, the gang war side questline has you going back and forth on a constant basis, which can be very tedious, especially sinc eit's not a particularly involving plot to begin with, unlike the main story, which is a lot of fun. The new characters are great, and while you are bound to miss some who do not return, there is a lot to like here on the narrative front.
In a baffling decision, the game chooses to limit when you can engage with the fight club minigame, only allowing to accept matches from the dedicated NPC during specific time windows that pop up seemingly at random. The result is that you receive a text message telling you a match is available and are expected to drop whatever you are doing and run to the NPC to accept it before the time window closes and the fight is cancelled until the next SMS. It's seriously bad, and likely to discourage you to engage with the fight club at all, especially since progression is much slower and the rewards unlisted, which doesn't do much to entice you to out up with the stupidity of the whole system. It's optional anyway.
If you liked Kurohyou, this is bigger and better, with just a few caveats to speak of.
1998
A remarkable game this 007 on Game Boy, made by people with a history of uncommonly ambitious projects that try to do more than the bare minimum (Robin Hood on NES, Oddworld Adventures, Super Star Wars).
For all intents and purposes, a James Bond game on a Nintendo handheld could safely have been a run of the mill platformer without anything special and receive no particular complaints. Absolutely no one was expecting these developers to instead make a 007-themed Zelda meets MSX Metal Gear, and you have to commend them for it.
You have the top-down view, the item management with the two slots set to the A and B buttons, you run around talking to people, trading objects and finding secrets in order to proceed. Bond can punch, block, use a machete and a variety of firearms, explosives and Q workshop tools. There is even a fully featured suite of casino minigames.
It doesn't always work, alternating pretty solid mechanics, presentation and even writing with some obtuse game design here and there, along with stupid difficulty spikes later on. Still, it is such a cool curiousity that this even exists that it's shame not to take a look at it.
For all intents and purposes, a James Bond game on a Nintendo handheld could safely have been a run of the mill platformer without anything special and receive no particular complaints. Absolutely no one was expecting these developers to instead make a 007-themed Zelda meets MSX Metal Gear, and you have to commend them for it.
You have the top-down view, the item management with the two slots set to the A and B buttons, you run around talking to people, trading objects and finding secrets in order to proceed. Bond can punch, block, use a machete and a variety of firearms, explosives and Q workshop tools. There is even a fully featured suite of casino minigames.
It doesn't always work, alternating pretty solid mechanics, presentation and even writing with some obtuse game design here and there, along with stupid difficulty spikes later on. Still, it is such a cool curiousity that this even exists that it's shame not to take a look at it.
1997
The Aeon Flux adaptation that never was is a strange game: on one hand it is known (to those who even know it at all) as one of the worst games on the PS1, on the other you get the feeling it could have been so much more with just a little bit of extra polish.
The story is as 90s as it gets: in a future world where only women with big tits exist, the titular Pax Corpus, a VR machine created to ease the suffering of depressed people, is converted into a mind control weapon by a woman with big tits. Only a woman with big tits can save womanity from this terrible threat.
The moment to moment gameplay isn't even that bad: dodging incoming fire and blasting enemies is actually kind of fun, and the player movement is responsive enough. What really destroys the experience are the load times (close to a minute a pop, and frequent at that) and especially the horrendous jumping sections over death pits, which, combined with janky jumping controls, will send you back to a loading screen and the start of the level every single time you fail.
The bosses are all atrocious: without exception they are irritating puzzle encounters requiring stupid amounts of trial and error to bypass, with no fun involved whatsoever.
These issues are what makes Pax Corpus a disaster, and it's a shame. French developers of the time had a knack for producing games that were almost fun, but with one or two devastating problems that completely demolish the fun factor.
Worst game on the PS1? Not even close, but still really bad due to how punishing the jumping puzzles are. If you're curious to see what it's all about, play it with save states, or not at all.
The story is as 90s as it gets: in a future world where only women with big tits exist, the titular Pax Corpus, a VR machine created to ease the suffering of depressed people, is converted into a mind control weapon by a woman with big tits. Only a woman with big tits can save womanity from this terrible threat.
The moment to moment gameplay isn't even that bad: dodging incoming fire and blasting enemies is actually kind of fun, and the player movement is responsive enough. What really destroys the experience are the load times (close to a minute a pop, and frequent at that) and especially the horrendous jumping sections over death pits, which, combined with janky jumping controls, will send you back to a loading screen and the start of the level every single time you fail.
The bosses are all atrocious: without exception they are irritating puzzle encounters requiring stupid amounts of trial and error to bypass, with no fun involved whatsoever.
These issues are what makes Pax Corpus a disaster, and it's a shame. French developers of the time had a knack for producing games that were almost fun, but with one or two devastating problems that completely demolish the fun factor.
Worst game on the PS1? Not even close, but still really bad due to how punishing the jumping puzzles are. If you're curious to see what it's all about, play it with save states, or not at all.