Pariah

"Pariah - Good, but not good enough."

Introduction

Pariah is an FPS game, made by Digital Extremes. For all we know, it could be a joke game considering it plays so bad.

Gameplay

When you first play Pariah, you'll start to think that it's actually a good game, but of course, that thougt vanishes within 30 seconds as you witness the game's true horror that is gameplay.

The first thing I noticed when I popped in the game is that the framerate was horrible. Not just bad, horrible. It was a challenge to navigate through the menu. When you actually get in the game, it lessens up, but not much.

During the course of the game, you get your weapons. Usually, you'd think "cool!", but all they end up doing is become redundant and boring, and most of all, USELESS. The bulldog, your starting gun, looks like it should do extreme damage. It doesn't. You would need to upgrade it all 3 levels to make it bearable. A bit later in the game you come across the Frag Rifle, a shotgun-like gun. You'd think that it would do damage at point blank right?? Wrong. It takes 2-3 shots at point blank range to kill an enemy, and even when it's upgraded all the way it takes, you guessed it, 2-3 shots. Later on, you also get a plasma gun. Sounds like a nice weapon right? Well, you soon figure out it's less powerful than the bulldog.

The only useful weapons in the game are the grenade launcher, and the sniper. The grenade launcher is nice, because once you upgrade it once, you get a remote detonator for your grenades. If you upgrade it more, it's more deadly. The sniper is probably my favorite weapon, mainly because well, it's a sniper, and it's powerful. Nothing is nicer than blasting a guy in the head with an armor piercing bullet.

Another minor part of gameplay is the vehicles. They aren't really that bad, but they could be better. I'm not sure what they're called, but they have horrible physics. The cars barely bounce, even when flying off bumpy rocky hills.

Now let's move on to the enemy AI. It's TERRIBLE. All enemies do is stand there, then moe behind a rock slowly. It doesn't look bad at first, but if you get even remotely close to the enemy, he just stands there doing nothing but gunbutting you, which is more damaging than bullets. The most annoying part of their stupidity is that if they have a rocket launcher, and most enemies do, they'll shoot at you point blank, killing you instantly. It's downright annoying, because of the fact that they're so stupid, and you have to restart from a checkpoint because of it. Enemy AI is stupid even in cars, most of the time when an enemy is behind the wheel, they drive in a straight line forever, and end up either driving into a canyon or off a cliff.

Horrible, period.
2/10

Plot/Storyline

Set in the year 2520 A.D., you are Jack Mason, a doctor who has been sent on a mission to retrieve a patient in stasis, with a deadly disease. What should be a routine transfer goes terribly wrong when you're transport ship is shot down by Scavengers, the lowlives of the world. You are now a prison in the depths of Earth, and its many outcasts.

Pariah has, what seems to be a good plot, but is horribly played out. At the start of the game, it throws you into an environment after watching about 20 seconds worth of cutscenes. You have no idea what's going on whatsoever, and it stays that way. The game barely follows the plot, and you can barely notice it at all. Pretty much, you will be clueless as to what's going on the entire time you can play the game. This could have been easily implemented, as the story idea is good, but apparently the game designers are a bit dumb in the head.
3/10

Graphics

The graphics are almost as bad as the storyline. They are grainy, blocky, and almost any other word you can think of. This game doesn't show off the Xbox's capabilities at all, whereas nearly all other games do. Obviously Digital Extremes didn't spend much time on the game. The only thing I liked about the graphics were the ragdoll physics, which I like in every game. It could have been a lot better, but no, why put effort into a game?
5/10

Sound

The sound wasn't horrible, but it could have been better. While I didn't mind the backround music, some of it was repetative, and some downright annoying. Though another bit of it was alright, and fit the moment occasionally. Your guns sounded pretty realistic, and when an enemy shoots a rocket at you, it sounds really damned realistic.
7/10

Multiplayer/Xbox Live

Out of the entire game, I must say I liked multiplayer the best. Even with campaign mode being as bad as it is, it was a lot easier playing it with someone else, rather than ominously staring at the screen with boredom racking my brain. The only bad thing about multiplayer (offline), was that you couldn't have classic deathmatch. Only "practice" deathmatch, where there was no score. That kind of ruined it for me. What kind of game has practice deathmatch?
8/10

Xbox Live however, is a different story. While it takes a bit to get some players into a match, it is definitely fun playing over the 'net on Pariah. That makes up for a lot of the story mode, as people play more Xbox Live than story anyways.
10/10

Replayability

I never, ever, want to replay this game. The only reason I would is to play Xbox Live, which doesn't really count as replayability. I can honestly say this is one of the most boring games I've ever played.
2/10

Overall

Pariah is a game which could have been good, but didn't even come close. I hope to God they don't come out with a sequel.

Pariah's overall score is: 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/05