Prodeus

For the past decade my experience with first person shooters have been extremely underwhelming. Prodeus is probably the first game aside from Doom and Doom Eternal that actually got my blood pumping. I find many things about this game to be done absolutely flawlessly. The sound design is on top of my list, and you may think "If sound design is the best thing about your FPS game then it's a bad FPS game" and you'd be wrong. It's just that the sound in Prodeus is absolutely stellar, I can't name a single game that would so consistently shake me to my core with every vibration my headphones produce. The visuals are amazing as well, they seem to somehow set the expectations at first when you just start playing the game, and then also surpass those same expectations they've just set. I don't know how the creators did it, but they did and it works. Absolutely love it. Levels in the campaign that are available at the time of me writing this review are incredibly designed, and fit seemlessly with your weapon progression. The bigger battle arenas masterfully utilize the impecable movement creators implemented for your enjoyment, paired with incredibly satisfying weapons, and juicy, meaty enemies. The lowest point of this game is honestly its menu design, but I could not possible care less about it. I also didn't seem to notice any performance issues some other reviews mention, but that might be because I'm late to the party and those have been fixed. Bottom line is - if every time another Call of Duty ad trailer pops up in your social media feed you feel any degree of nausea, Prodeus just might be the cure.

The shooting is excellent, the weapons, levels, art direction, music, enemy variety. FPS glory. The only gripe I have is the respawn system. There are no quicksaves, you only respawn onn checkpoints, but that doesn't reset the game. It's like a mandatory vita chamber mode that I didn' like very much. Aside of that though, buy this game if you like old school FPS.

Perhaps this game shares a common ancestry with the original DOOM, but if you associate boomer shooters with fast-paced, visceral combat, DOOM 2016 and others do it so, so much better. The issue is the combination of enemy design and level/encounter design. In D16, you need to move, you cannot really hang back. The game is designed to make that an inefficient and often ineffective tactic. Movement is life. In Prodeus it is actually often the most effective way to play. You turn a corner and there is an enemy. You shoot him once, retreat behind the corner, wait for him to shoot, come back and finish him off. Efficient and saving resources. The enemies cannot really counter this. Their movement is slow, if they move at all. This kills any kind of dynamic and fluent engagement. If there are several enemies, you just hop in and out of cover again and again. It becomes a predictable formula. The devs were very much aware of this circumstance because they use some really tedious methods to break this loop. 1) spawning in enemies around you - including behind you. This forces you to move but it also feels really cheap when you get hit from behind by an enemy that spawned in a location you just passed. 2) Cheapshot enemy locations: open a door? bang, enemy behind it shot you. Drop down a shaft? Bang, 3 melee enemies in melee range. Lastly, the music might be nice but it often ramps up too late, ends too soon or doesn't start at all. E.g. I had the more metal part kickstart when engaging 3 enemies. 10 seconds later it stopped while I was aiming at the last enemy. The engagement wasn't even done yet. In conclusion: it's an ok game, but honestly, if you want the best fast-paced action shooter, there are better options out there. The pixel gore might be nice but honestly it just passed me by while I was playing Prodeus and thinking about how much better shooters like DOOM 2016 or Nightmare Reaper are in this category.

I wish I could tell you why I just keep starting this game up and playing for about an hour whenever I get the chance!! It must be because its Quake/DOOM and a few others all rolled into one, and most importantly it's lean without any of the fat. It's RAW, that could be it! or the games attention to detail!! or the music that never gets boring!! or, I just don't know. There is ONLY ONE annoying thing about the game, and that is it takes about 10 clicks from starting it up to get it started, other than that it's a true winner.

Take the feel of DOOM 2016, tone the graphics down slightly, and expand the color pallete and in a nutshell you have Prodeus. Game play is closer to the Doom and Build engine games than Quake or the more recent Dusk and Ultrakill. Graphics are excellent. You have all the visually effects that one is accustommed too and with everything cranked up looks modern. Adjusting the settings lets you introduce screen effects replicating playing it on a crt or making it look more like somehting from the late 90s. Movement feels smooth but sprinting sometimes doesn't give a real feel of speed. Weapons are all statsifing from the look, feel, and use perspectives. Despite being early acess it feels polished and already has a map editing and user created maps.