Pariah

"Pariah reaches new heights in mediocrity"

Digital Extremes has contributed to some of the fastest and most frenetic shooters known to man. Games like Unreal Tournament have benefitted from the smooth designs of industry talents such as Juan Pancho Eekels and James Schmalz. The actions of Digital Extremes and Epic to create the game of the year of 1999 and an impressive sequel five years later in Unreal Tournament 2004 has led me to expect a lot from this title.

Sadly, Pariah's only strong point is its excellence in mediocrity, a field in which it goes above and beyond the competition at being merely average. Pariah is more formulaic and less inspired than the highly formulaic, incredibly uninspired Unreal 2, another Unreal Warfare-powered foray into the depths of average. Unreal 2 was largely considered a 7/10 game, while Pariah is firmly rooted in its ancestral lands of 6/10. What accounts for this discrepancy?

While Unreal 2 was a boring game with creative, powerful weapons, Pariah is a boring game with boring weapons. A comparison can be drawn between the respective grenade-launchers of each game. Pariah's grenade launcher is at the forefront of its arsenal. Like all of Pariah's weapons, it can be upgraded through the usage of small pink boxes called "weapon cores" Each upgrade you purchase for a weapon gives it a power increase or a useful, often gimmicky ability such as a remote detonator or an electromagnetic grenade that draws small pieces of metal off the ground and onto the grenade, sending a few pieces of shrapnel flying as it detonates. As cool as this sounds, it's really not all that cool to fire one off, as shrapnel grenades are fairly mundane in the FPS world. It's amusing to see all the debris attach itself to the grenade as it flies through the air, but the shrapnel does little in the way of actually increasing the power of the weapon. Unreal 2's grenade launcher, on the other hand, featured six different types of grenades that one could select as part of their loadout. Napalm roasted small insectoids, EMP trashed shields and robots, and the useless smoke grenade could be then hit with a flash grenade to send clouds of smoke all around the room, winning 2003's 1337 Particle Effect of the Year award.

The Pariah arsenal is just basic, Halo-ish weapons. You normally run at a slow, Halo-ish speed, but you can speed up with a sprint that blurs your vision. I don't know about you, but my vision doesn't blur when I run. It's like having a plasma cannon attached to a car in a realistic Formula 1 game. The effect may look awesome, but it's out of place and seems unrealistic. In another nod to Halo, you can restore your health with a little tool that's kind of like the Master Chief restoring his shield.

Unlike Halo PC, thankfully, Pariah runs at an acceptable, if slightly pokey framerate. The Unreal Warfare engine isn't the system hog that the Doom 3 or Source engine is, but Pariah doesn't achieve quite as smooth a framerate as Unreal Tournament 2004 despite not looking much better. The system requirements are about the norm for today's games. One, provided they are equipped with at least a decent gaming PC, should have no problem playing a smooth Pariah.

Something else that hinders the weapons is the lousy sound. Enemies have the same, basic, voiceclips that accompany the thirty-on-one firefight with Team Thirty hopelessly outgunned. Weapons emit weak pops as if the silencer industry is a powerful lobbying group to the government in the futuristic world of Pariah. Voice acting is uninspired as if to fit with the gameplay, level design, weapons, vehicles, enemies, music, and designers.

Pariah has made a noble effort in getting more people into the map-making industry via including one of the of the most user-friendly map making tools in the industry. This could be a real selling point for the game if the game was worth playing in the first place. You can make the battlefield of your dreams, but you'll have to be content with being bored on it.

Pariah had potential, but it was hopelessly squandered with a real lack of any innovation. That's the real condemning factor for the game: all it brings to the table is an underused weapon upgrade system. Pariah is less of a game than C&C Renegade. Granted, Renegade had poor graphics, AI, level design, and single-player, but I could at least feel the developers tried to make an engaging experience. Pariah is like a mayonnaise sandwich: no depth and bland.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/07/05