I gave Prodeus a little spin for about an hour one afternoon this past month of April and found it t be kind of comparable to riding a train somewhere for the first time. At first you're extremely excited, you get in line, you purchase your ticket, you think of all the exciting things you will see on the train, the sights, the sounds, then you board the actual train, sit down, put yourI gave Prodeus a little spin for about an hour one afternoon this past month of April and found it t be kind of comparable to riding a train somewhere for the first time. At first you're extremely excited, you get in line, you purchase your ticket, you think of all the exciting things you will see on the train, the sights, the sounds, then you board the actual train, sit down, put your luggage up, and soon realize you have made quite a dreadful mistake. You soon learn that you are now trapped on this train going to the destination you have selected. Excitement soon gives way to boredom as you find yourself restlessly sitting in your seat, or standing up, only to pace for a bit to sample the amenities onboard, only to once again be dismayed every time you look at the time on your wrist watch.
Antiquated locomotives analogies aside, why does Prodeus give way to disappointment after merely an hour of actual gameplay? Their is one loop, and though it is smooth as butter, it becomes predictable. It soon grows spiteful of its own simplicity, but lacks the complex ideas necessary to liven up its stale progression. Walk into room, kill things, hit switch, things teleport into room, things appear behind door, walk into room, kill things, and you can repeat this until the levels start adding gallons of hit-scanning enemies who literally teleport miles away from you. I suppose that's for the extra challenge of distinguishing what tiny pixel monster you should shoot at first in the distance, so at least its training you to squint constantly just incase you need to brush up on those particular ocular skills. Visually the game is actually kind of a mixed bag. Being on the Unity engine their are loads of little interesting effects, options and you can surely tailor the visuals to your liking, but you will always be robbed of sight completely when you are surrounded by exploding animated gore effects, flashing lights from your muzzle flashes burning brighter than your suburban street on Christmas eve, and to top it all off the audio is a bit too much at times.
Doom 2016 solved all these problems years ago, which is kind of ironic. Poor pacing was solved by challenging AI from enemies, combining good level design with a mixture of monsters in a room to encourage the player to pull out different weapons to solve that particular rooms configuration of enemies. It also had loads of verticality, versatility, great weapon alternative fire modes, a really good weapon loadout, looked clean, and sounded fantastic. So where does that leave Prodeus? I suppose in the dust, as Doom Eternal came out merely a year or two ago, and was leagues better than the 2016 Doom reboot. Prodeus suffers from indie syndrome. Its a terrible disease that makes any indie developer believe that all you have to do to make a good game is stuff Quake, Doom, a soundtrack done by Andrew Hulshult, and pixel-esque graphics into a title to make it good. In reality, making games is much more complicated.
The problem with Prodeus is not it in its action, it has plenty of action. It has poor pacing, it has poor enemy placement, it lacks enemy variety, it has a lot of secret areas that aren't really that interesting to find, it has loads of enemies spawn into rooms like its emulating more of the mistakes from Doom 3's general level design ideas than anything else. It all kind of blurs and blends together stylistically into this rather bland experience. It just burns out too quickly like a roman candle that fizzles out like a dud firework rather than the satisfying explosion it should be. Once levels started randomly spawning in stuff that wasn't agreeing with my shotguns range, I switched to the pistol, which makes it too easy, because the AI is terrible. You can easily duck behind walls, because enemies are stupid. They don't chase you, they're not aggressive, and they are typically hit-scanners. This is lazy and not fun to play. It becomes more obsessed about mimicking all of the beats from Doom 2016 and ignores trying to be its own thing instead.
So I guess I'd only recommend it if you're bored with Brutal Doom, Doom 2016, Doom Eternal, the original Doom, Dusk, Quake, Quake 2, and just about literally anything else made in the last 25 to 30 years because the formula is basically identical.… Expand
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