From The ComicBookBin.com
Review: Pariah
By Eli Green
Sep 26, 2006 - 11:45:00 AM
Developer:
Digital Extremes
Publisher:
Groove Games
Rated:
M
Genre:
First Person Shooter
Platforms:
Xbox and PC
The
year is 2520 A.D. You are Jack Mason, a military doctor working for
the Transgenic Control Commission. En route to Milcom headquarters,
your transport ship is shot down during the routine transfer of a
quarantine subject. When the quarantine subject, Karina, is released
from her cryogenic chamber you become infected, and with nowhere to
go and no one to trust, the two of you are stranded in the violent
wasteland that Earth has become.
While
the story above may seem like a good a good plot line for a game on
its own, add in Jack Mason's ability to wield firearms, some Havok
engine tools, for better physics and realism, and the Unreal Engine
and you've got yourself an instant first person shooter. That must
have been what the team at Digital Extremes was thinking when they
made Pariah, because, while the game definitely has many good
aspects, it falls short on many others.
The
story is just one of the details that takes what Pariah could have
been and brings it to a lower level. The plot in the game was thin,
and there was no real connection from level to level. Most of the
storyline looks like it was based on the level maps and objectives,
rather than an actual story or focus. Most of the time you'll be
occupied with trying to stay alive and fighting off enemies, but
there aren't even any side stories to get involved with, so there
isn't much to keep your mind on the story. Even the attempt to make a
connection between Mason and Karina was botched by the fact that she
has no backstory and the interaction time between the two of them is
minimal.
Gameplay
One
of the not so weak points in Pariah was its control system. Even with
the Xbox controller, the game played fluidly and had minimal control
problems, though some of the button placement could have been done
slightly differently. Specifically, the use of the up and down
buttons on the D-pad for selecting weapons was too hit or miss and,
most of the time, completely pointless. I found myself using the Y
button most often for weapon selection because it allowed me to
quickly choose whichever weapon I wanted, without having to cycle
through the entire inventory. The only other problem I had with the
controls, other than a bit of a learning curve when it came to
driving the vehicles, was the sometimes wonky aim sensitivity. At
some points while I was trying to quickly
turn Mason around, he would start turning slowly and then quickly
speed up and end up looking at the ground. While it didn't happen
often, it was annoying.
Weaponry
in the game, however, is certainly something to talk about. While
many FPS games allow for a large array of weapon choices ranging in
levels of power and force, Pariah uses a small amount of weapon
choices with upgrade options. This means that you can be using the
same weapon throughout the game, and the same weapon you've been
using since the first level can go through some variations by the
time you've finished, which can make taking out enemies all the more
fun. My selection for weapon of choice is between the grenade
launcher with remote detonation upgrade and the sniper rifle with
enhanced sight. While a properly lobbed grenade, with a timely
detonation, in a crowd of enemies makes for a very nice corpse
fireworks display, there's nothing quite like getting that perfect
pickoff from on top of a mountain, or from the complete opposite side
of a factory.
There
were some weapons that I didn't quite see a point for though. The
Plasma Rifle and the Bonesaw were two weapons that were either too
annoying to use, or were simply unnecessary. The Plasma Rifle is
supposed to be a very powerful weapon, yet it's only able to fire a
maximum of three rounds at a time, and then it charges up for a
single shot which uses the rest of the magazine's energy, all 150
shot's worth. The Bonesaw, on the other hand, is completely useless,
at least on the easiest difficulty. I never used it, and the only
times Mason ever wielded it were the times I accidentally pressed the
L button. The development team clearly knew it was was an unnecessary
weapon, because they didn't even put it in the list of Y button
weapons or the D-pad toggling list.
The
use of the Havok tools were a nice touch used for adding realism to
the game. A good physics engine is always nice to see when playing
games where the characters, even slightly, interact with the
environments. Looking at the bodies of your fallen enemies, you can
see the engine at work. This is especially true in the cases where
their body has collided with an object, like a wall, and the position
of their body matches the way they fell.
The
last thing I want to mention about the gameplay is how irritating it
was to have some weapons of the weapons, not the Bonesaw, seem as if
they were useless. I'm talking particularly about the Assault Rifle,
or Bulldog. Having to sometimes empty more than half of the Bulldog's
magazine directly into an enemy, only to have him still coming at me
was, to say the least, frustrating. One I saw the recoil stabilizer
upgrade, I thought, surely, that was the reason Mason wasn't able to
get past enemies as easily as he should have been able to, but once I
upgraded, there was barely any difference. How can 75 bullets not put
a man down?
Environment
and Graphics
If
the developer deserves any praise for Pariah, environments and
graphics is the place to do it. Hands down, the levels in Pariah
looked lush, distinctive and every bit like you would expect jungles,
command centres and factories to look. Terrain had form and texture,
buildings looked uniform, but had architecture and even military
bunkers had the appearance one would expect. There were some slight
glitches with the environments though. At one point, while riding a
vehicle, the terrain beneath the vehicle and the vehicle itself suddenly disappeared from underneath
Mason and he fell to his death.
The
character models were very nicely done, especially characters' faces.
The faces were some of the most realistic I have seen on current gen
consoles, full of emotion and personality. There were a couple of
times that the faces suddenly lost the particular emotions they were
supposed to be showing, which was rather odd, but it didn't happen
frequently.
Vehicle
models had a large amount of detail and design. From the way they
moved around the terrain, to the way the on board weapons would fire,
each vehicle had its own unique qualities.
The Bogie, in particular,
had a very interesting firing animation. After the rockets fired, the
launcher would flip upside down, load the new rockets and then flip
back into place.
All
of the cutscenes in the game were rather short, adding to my
frustration concerning the lack of a real plot. The cutscenes were
all done in real time, but since the graphics were so nice already,
they were a pleasure to watch, even though they were as short as they
were. The only problem with the cutscenes being real time was the
fact that the flashes to and from cutscenes were sometimes
interrupted by a glitch, showing the regular gameplay view of Mason
pointing his gun. This glitch severely interrupted the flow of
gameplay to cutscene and vice versa.
Sound
While
most of the games I've reviewed to date have had great sound, voice
and music, I found there were some serious discrepancies in Pariah.
On a good note, many of the sounds in the game were properly placed,
as were the voices, however there were quite a few sound effects, in
particular, that made me want to cringe. Weapons and voices were well
very well done, some sound effects and music were very out of place.
There were not many different types of terrain that Mason would walk
over in the game, mostly dirt, rock and metal. For some reason
though, there were times that I would have Mason walking on a metal
walkway and his footsteps sounded like he was walking on dirt. Some
times the exact opposite would happen.
The
music in the game was not without its problems either. When the music
was playing, it fit very well with the tension at that point in the
level. That is, of course, if the music was playing at all. While the
game wasn't very long in the first place, I must have played half, or
at least one third, without any musical accompaniment. The voice
acting certainly made up for quite a bit of what was lacking, for
sounds that were missing or otherwise improperly placed. Each actor
did a great job of portraying their character, even with so little
backstory to run off of. That takes a lot of skill.
As
usual, I'm making sure to note that this game is Dolby Digital
capable, but since the Xbox is still not hooked up to a surround
sound system, I can't say how it sounds.
Conclusion
Pariah
makes for a great first person shooter, if you don't mind the fact
that it's short, a little glitchy and has some sound problems.
Overall, it's a good game that just has some problems that the
developer simply didn't take the time to deal with. There are other
extra features I didn't have the time or ability to test out, such as
the multiplayer, Xbox Live online play and 480p HD output. The
multiplayer mode will certainly add some hours to the amount of
gameplay time available for the game, but the single player
definitely could have used some more work.
Gameplay:
8.5
Environment
and Graphics: 9
Sound:
7.5
Story:
6
Fun:
7.5
Verdict:
Rent It or Buy It Used/Low Price
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