I love Xbox Game Pass, though I would be lying if I said I took good advantage of it. Typically it is just a handful of games I play and stick with from the service. Last week I decided to check out some of the games that were soon to be leaving the service, the first one I tried, retro FPS shooter Prodeus, turned out to be fantastic. The game left the service the day before I could finish it, so I happily stumped up the fourteen pounds to be able to own this and carry on playing.
My synopsis may not be completely correct as the story here is very slight, but this is what I pieced together. Basically, the game takes place in the far future on the surface of a huge asteroid where humans have built several facilities. The asteroid comes under assault from demonic creatures from a chaos dimension, so as a soldier, you have taken it upon yourself to repel the threat. Matters are made more difficult with the arrival of a second group of invaders, these, the Prodeus, are from a dimension of order, and see the creatures of chaos as their natural enemy, but also have no love for humans.
I was very impressed with the look and feel of Prodeus. It has a retro look to the game that most heavily brought to mind original Doom. The majority of enemy types in the game are basically reskinned Doom enemies, with demons who throw fireballs, zombified soldiers, hulking beasts who attack with teeth and claw, and floating fleshy blobs who shoot out screaming demons to hurt you. So far so Doom, and if the game had stuck with just aping that I would have been more than happy. Later into the game the second side of enemies appear, these are mainly similar to the chaos monsters, albeit electric blue rather than magma coloured. Taking on a bit of Halo, these two sides attack each other on sight, so leads to moments of fun three way combat situations.
You have all the weapons you would expect, from shotguns to a minigun, grenade launcher and sniper. They all perform well and most have secondary functions to use, but there wasn't anything very surprising. Combat is fast paced and a lot of fun, enemies usually exploding in a mass of red or blue blood that covers the area around them, and makes it hard to see anything other than splashing blood. In a concession to modern sensibilities there are many checkpoints around the levels, meaning if you die you respawn there without anything resetting. The only exception is the final level that sees you pitted against hordes of monsters in a smallish arena
It is split roughly into three parts, with the first part, set on the asteroid the most Doom like. Finding key cards, hitting switches, and exploring various industrial and scientific areas was a hell of a lot of fun. The second part is where this begins to try and carve out its own identity, with circles which auto generate ammo for your many guns, and levels that morph around you. Then the third is a mishmash of areas that feature some highlights, but also some of the more bland locations.
It might look retro, but it makes use of modern technologies to really make the game world a blast to play through. The frame rate never drops, it features lovely lighting effects, and I really liked the way the levels change around you. One level sees you hitting switches to constantly raise the level of toxic waste that platforms are floating on top of, another level sees you draining areas of sand to reveal new areas, yet another sees you taking a shuttle up to a space station. My favourite was a trippy descent downwards through alternate electric blue and magma orange arenas. Eventually you will visit levels both on the asteroid, in the chaos dimension, and in the order dimension. It isn't an even split sadly, with the chaos levels only being a couple. To get around you have a dull looking map screen to traverse, I would have preferred this not to be in the game as it was very basic and not much fun to use. There are shops dotted in between levels every now and again, currency hidden in levels can be used to buy both new weapons (such as a quadruple shotgun and plasma rifle) as well as abilities to help you manoeuvre the levels, such as a double jump and an air dash.
I would have preferred more of a story, you get vague level descriptions but not much else. It leads up to a pretty pathetic ending that consists of just two sentences of text before putting you back out on the map screen, not even showing you end credits. I get that story wasn't the focus, but even original Doom had more of one than this did. Regardless, I had a real blast with Prodeus, sublime gameplay, enemy packed well designed levels, as well as a fantastic soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult, combined to make something that felt special.
SCORE:
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