Getting some mediocre reviews. Anyone pick this up? Lackluster halo clone?
IGN gave it at 7.8. It must SUCK.
It’s out in the UK. I’m really quite enjoying it.
Any quirks, niggles or shortcomings it might possess are dwarfed as usual by the stupid checkpoint system.
There are single & multi player demos…
The single player campaign is about as flat and generic as anything I’ve ever played (reminds me a lot of Ravens recent shooters). The multiplayer and simplified map editor somewhat make up for it though.
I wouldn’t run right out and buy this at its current price knowing what I do about the game now. Wait for the price to drop (should happen fairly quickly).
Bummer, both this and Area 51 were 2 games I was really looking foward to but they both turned out to be duds.
No save anywhere? Pass.
While it’s true that there’s nothing radically new in the SP… I can’t think of a shooter where there has been. They’re all still Quake clones.
I guess BiA and friends bring squads, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m enjoying Pariah more than say D3 or HL2 because it’s varied (so far) and there tends to be a fair amount going on, which wasn’t generally true of those others.
What I 'd actually like to see (or one of the things I’d like to see) is a non-linear mission structure, where I could choose whether I was going to do the recon mission, or the assault, or the assasination, or the mercy mission, or secure the supply route, or whatever, and play the later missions with force distributions dependent on the outcomes… It’s a shame that because every FPS is about shooting monsters in corridors, they also all keep the over-arching structure of the very first attempt at that genre.
I have no problem with gameplay thats been done before. As long as the things remain fun I’ll happily dole out the cash for the title but Pariah is just…meh.
Its the gaming equivilent of a grey 1995 Ford Escort with blackwalled tires, cloth seats and no radio or AC.
its two slices of sunbeam bread and a single slice of American cheese and nothing else.
its bad analogies on a Saturday evening…
I don’t think that’s quite true. If you’re interested in an open SP SF shooter, then there’s really just Halo (+Chrome?) that I can think of… so this would be worth it on that basis.
However, the checkpoint system has so far (day 1 of playing) twice forced me into wrist-slashing repetition of particularly irritating sections, so I’m not currently say I’d recommend it.
Short review: Phenonemally bland, with one of the more laughable plots in a decent-budgeted game I’ve seen in recent times.
KG
Is everyone else playing different games to me? What were the decently plotted releases that I missed? Last one I remember was Grim Fandango :(
I don’t expect much from my videogame plots, but do like some basic coherency and clarity.
I think the constrast between the extremely derrivative shooting of the main game and the fairly obtuse flow of the plot harms it more here than it would in a slower paced, more cerebral game. It would be rubbish in a European point-and-click game, but it’d probably be marginally less rubbish.
(Alternative fun game: Count the number of times the girl runs away or the vehicle you’re in crashes, as the sole way the plot progresses)
Also: The shotgun is rubbish.
KG
Is there a single player PC demo? If so, where?
F-. FPS’s must get the shotgun right, just like fantasy RPG’s must get the fireball spell animation right.
Also: The shotgun is rubbish.
Judgment has been passed.
And the criteria rightly chosen.
Wow… can’t wait to read the post-mortem on this one. Haven’t seen a AAA game so universally panned since… geez, I can’t remember a AAA game getting such negative reviews before. I really expected to get a competent shooter that didn’t advance the genre but was worth $30-40 a few weeks after release ala painkiller etc, instead it turns out to be total dogshit. Pariah indeed.
But is it Daikatana-bad?
Daikatana was hardly a AAA game. Everybody expected it to suck, and it did.
Maybe it’s Unreal 2 bad?
To be fair to Pariah, it’s utterly mediocre rather than outright rubbish. In terms of recent AAA games, Enter The Matrix, Driver 3 and the last Tomb Raider are all considerably worse than it.
KG
Unreal 2 is what kept on coming to mind when playing it. It’s very much Unreal 2.5, with elements from Halo tacked on.
KG