Prodeus

Com toda certeza absoluta o Prodeus é um dos filhos ou talvez até mesmo um sucessor espiritual de Doom, ele consegue ser um jogo com um estilo retrô e um jogo mais moderno ao mesmo tempo, eu recomendo muitíssimo pra quem gosta de Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake e de jogos de tiro de tiozão (Boomer Shooter).

I really wanted to like Prodeus, but, in the end, I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed. The main problem I have with Prodeus is it's feels very derivative, which says a lot, especially in the boomer shooter genre, that's basically built on the attempts to return to the past. While the changes to the formula game introduces are more of a miss than a hit most of the time. The story is practically non-existent. There are blurbs before each mission about what is supposed to happen in-between, but the game still feels like a loose connection of maps stringed together. There a couple of cool transitions at the end of the campaign, but that's it. The most I could understand is that the main enemies of the game are forces of Chaos and fighting against them are forces of the Order known as titular Prodeus. Our unfortunate marine somehow becomes the vessel of Prodeus and beats Chaos back and out of their dimension, but I don't really get why forces of Prodeus are still attacking him. Om top of that the game really ends on a very interesting point, but ends up teasing with a cliffhanger instead. I get minimalistic approach with the stories and that boomer shooters don't really put a lot of thought into them, but sometimes strong lore or character can elevate the game above it's peers, and, unfortunately, I don't think Prodeus gets a point on this one. The presentation of Prodeus is interesting, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was playing one of those Doom mods, that are trying to shove newer game into the original. The games style really reminded me Doom 3 especially, with it's industrial space station design, while later levels in different dimensions reminded me of Quake. The interesting thing is done to the weapon, item and enemy sprites. In fact they are not sprites at all, but 3D models that are put through the filter that makes them look like sprites. There is a option in settings menu that allows to switch enemy sprites into 3D models, and they are not very good. I ended up leaving them as those pseudo sprites, but it wasn't that much of an improvement either. The "sprites" are way too pixelated and look smudgy, instead of being sharp and crispy, like there is a lot of post-processing going on. The soundtrack is not bad, but definitely sounds like generic metal that most of the time and fades into the background. The biggest positive I can give the game's presentation is the gore. The enemies have location damage and always explode into blood and gibs, making combat feel satisfying and crunchy. Speaking of combat, I think it's heavily carried by the aformentioned gore. It's fun painting all of the levels with monsters blood, but outside of that I feel like the game wouldn't be able to satisfy me outside of that. The game by default gives limited selection of weapons, with pistol, pump shotgun, akimbo sub-machine guns, minigun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher and a railgun of sorts. There are 5 different ammo types and each weapon class feeds from one of them. Additional weapons should be quired from the games shop, that can be accessed in the game map between missions. Here's the thing, unless you are an avid secret hunter or don't mind backtracking through old levels, you won't see some of the more powerful weapons oif the game. It's mostly fine, you can go through the game without them with no issue, but even a basic plasma gun is locked in the shop and the game very generously gives out plasma ammo. On top of that, the weapon balance feels really weird. The only bullet type weapon I used frequently was the basic pistol, which is actually really good and killing trash mobs and fairly accurate even on long ranges. Minigun is way too slow with it's spin-up and shooting it slows you down to a crawl, while submachines guns have way too much recoil on the akimbo shooting and chew through ammo way too fast, making them less effective than using other options. Also side-tangent, but they also really pissed me off with the fact that you can shoot from one submachine gun, but you somehow empty the clip from both of them and have to reload both of them everytime? That just seems lazy. Speaking of reloading, you have to reload most weapons in the game, I can't really figure out why it was made that way. The game is pretty fast, and in the later levels there can be lots of enemies on the screen, so why making the reloading in the first place? There is also sprint in the game. I instantly enabled "Always sprint" option in the settings, so I don't even know how slow the player moves without it, but what is the point of having sprint in the first place? There is no downside running on max speed all the time. The reason modern shooters adapted sprint function is in service of realism and adherence to modern military tactics, you have to move quickly from cover to cover, but can't use your weapon and limited stamina makes it that you have to think when and how to sprint. Here sprint is infinite and you can shoot while sprinting, again, what's the point? And on top of that you have the game's checkpoint system. During levels you will encounter so called Nexus points. During the tutorial the game clearly shows the character's reconstruction on one of those. At first I thought that was just diegetic explanation of the checkpoint system, kind of like Soulslike bonfires and it's analogues. Except Nexus points literally just respawn you instantly in the last location, while all of the enemies you kill stay dead. There is literally zero punishment for poor gameplay, if you died, no worries, you can respawn in the same arena in a slightly different position. In the late 2000- early 2010s, there was an attempt to cash-in on nostalgia by bringing back some of the old-school arcade style FPS. We didn't have the "boomer shooter" moniker that we have now, but those games heavily marketed themselves as "return to the old-school hardcore FPS", and had stupid quotes like "real men don't use cover". Basically equivalent of those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ truck commercials. But when ypu played those games, the gameplay was barely different from other games of the time. You still ahd sprinting, reloading, sometimes even regenerating health just like COD and Halo, and the levels were extremely linear, with no real reason for exploration. Bulletstorm, Duke Nukem Forever, Serious Sam 3, some other crappy slop for boomers. Prodeus reminded me bad parts of those games with it's design. On top of that, it really doesn't have anything unique going for it. Which is shame, because developers seem like they enjoyed working on this game and put a lot work into the community support with official mapping tools and ability to browse and play fan-made maps. i hope future games will be an improvement on all of the good parts that Prodeus has, while improving the bad parts. But Prodeus left somewhat dissapointed.