#humblechoice — Public Fediverse posts

November 11, 2023 - Day 315 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 334

Game: Prodeus

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 24, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 11, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 28m

Prodeus is a post-modern retro FPS, and is number 5 in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

Some time in 1994, a 20yo sat down in front of a friend's PC, as the friend said "You have to see this!" and fired up a new game his dad had downloaded.

I was stunned. The same computer we'd played Captain Keen & Wolfenstein 3D was showing a true 3D environment first-person shooter (even IF the mobs were bitmaps).

But it wasn't just the visuals. It was the sound. The cheap speakers plugged into the SoundBlaster were emitting snarls and growls, that felt like they were just about to burst in and kill us, and all of my hairs stood on end.

I'd never experienced anything like it. I was watching him play Doom.

I've lost count of the number of FPS's I've played since. Tens of thousands of digital opponents have been blasted into pixels in all kinds of environments, and it's rare now to get a chill playing a FPS.

Yet firing up Doom (or Doom 2), and hearing those snarls & growls can still give me chills, and in spite of having them installed, I don't play them.

When I played Doom Eternal for the first time, it felt like they'd captured the spirit of Doom, with all the advances of modern tech. It was fun, but it didn't feel like that moment in 1994.

Prodeus has all the little Doom-like touches; armor shards & health bottles, exploding barrels, secrets stashed here and there, but with added up & down mouse camera movement.

However, that could still describe countless boomer shooters; the difference is that Prodeus has somehow managed to capture the *atmosphere* of Doom, in a way that I can't remember experiencing in a very long time.

I felt like I was playing a true spiritual successor to Doom, and that's tough to pull off.

But technology is not the only thing that's changed in the last almost-30 years. I've lived through some real-life horror. The mix of adrenaline and fear, that rush that I got from playing Doom in 1994, it hits differently now.

Reaching the end of the first level, seeing that Doom-like end-screen didn't give me a rush of excitement, just a sense of relief. My jaw and my shoulders are tight and sore. My body reacts in a different way.

This was a hard review to write. It's taken me almost three times as long to write as I spent playing.

These reviews are primarily about my feelings towards a game, and whether I want to play it again, and Prodeus is difficult.

As a game, it deserves an "excellent", but as I game that I'll play again? I don't know. As I wrote earlier, I have Doom and Doom II installed on Steam (and Doom 3). I have less than two hours playtime across all three games.

Prodeus' 1.29Gb install can stay on my SSD, because it's:

4: Good

#Prodeus #FPS #Retro #BoomerShooter #HumbleChoice #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay