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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's taken a lot of flak, but it's a goodun!, 21 May 2005
A lot of magazine reviews have given this game a proper beating. I was sceptical and held off buying it, but am now glad I did. I'm a big fan of first person shooters, particularly stuff likeHalf Life, HL2, Doom 3 (Although not Halo). So given the reviews, I didn't really have all that much hope for Pariah...Firstly, many reviews have criticised the storyline - frequently a weakness in the FPS world. But goes on in Pariah doesn't seem all that complex - you're a doctor escorting a cryogenically frozen virus victim across a post apocalyptic earth, when there's an attack, and you're left to track down, gain the trust of, and escape with the virus victim after everyone else turns against you. A sinister plot then unfolds... In sci-fi film terms, it's pretty solid, standard stuff - nicely interesting, engaging and keeps you thinking about what's going on. The characters are suitably appropriate - the virus victim girl (Karina) reminds me of Agatha from Minority Report... Onto the all important stuff now - 1. Graphics - it looks nice. The explosions are satisfying enough, and some of the ambient effects (mist and fog in particular) look great. It's varied and interesting enough, and doesn't repeat too often. I particularly like the train level - it's very Time Crisis... 2. Gameplay - it uses the same control system that HL, Doom3 and all the FPS use these days, although some of the extra controls take a bit of getting used to - you don't run, but you do "dash" by holding F, which is fair enough, and there are two keys to switch to either a hand-to-hand or healing item, which is pretty handy. The levels are pitched right in the difficulty stakes, no frustrating levels - which is good, because it uses a checkpoint based save system (unlike Half Life, and like Halo and Second Sight) although the save points are at nicely regular intervals. Again, to pick up on a critic's point - apparently some people found it repetitive. I don't think taking out three dropships and battling the dropped occupants of another three, whilst dodging canonfire from the ship itself counts as repetitive, particularly given the geography of the level where you do it. There was another point made about driving a tank firing mortars to hunt down jetbikes - apparently one critic found it impossible to time the mortars to hit the speedy bikes. It's not that hard, and if you do find it hard, you can ram and run over the bikes!! 3. Weapons - The much-lauded weapons upgrade system works really well - by gaining little green pods, you can add certain features to your weapons, such as larger clips, heat seeking, lower recoil, faster delivery (although these add-ons are fixed to three successive levels, individual to the weapon), which basically means you can make the weapons you use most more powerful, and tailor the game to your style of approach. The weapons are sufficiently powerful for the enemies and sound fine. There aren't enough of them (only six guns) but they are all decent enough, and with upgrade thing keeps you happy enough. The enemies are mostly human types (with a few hovering robots etc thrown in as well) - either smartly outfitted prison guards, or escaped prisoners making good with whatever they can find. I found the AI pretty good - they will occasionally use cover, they move pretty fast and come in groups. Sometimes they'll do stupid stuff, like using rocket launchers in close quarters, but really, when is this not the case? Some of the vehicles are a tad hard to steer, although this is made up for by the variety in styles, and I was pleasantly surprised close to the start by having to be a gunner in a buggy being driven by someone else! A refreshingly original twist on Halo's "well, you're always going to have to drive it" approach. That said, you don't get to fly... I've rambled on for quite long enough, but by and large it's a goodun and well worth playing. It definitely doesn't merit the criticisms that it has received so far, although it's certainly not as strong as Half Life 2, but it has more storyline and intrique than Doom3's slugfest (although fewer scares and the graphics aren't as impressive). Well worth a good look!
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