Tryzon?s Nostalgic Gaming Trips #31
Pariah (Xbox, 2005) (Also on PC)
In my last review I said that Gun had a pretentious title, and I stand by that judgement. Even so, Pariah trumps Gun by a good distance with its religious connotations and ambiguous true meaning. Gun seems tame by comparison. But what kind of madman would rate things based on the quality of their names? You?re here to see what I think of Pariah and figure out whether it?s worth investing in. Prepare to be disappointed.
Nah, not really. On with the show!
As often happens, we?ll start with some history. Pariah was like Republic Commando, in that I heard about it for years before finally acquiring the appropriate hardware. Unlike Republic Commando, I had little interest in Pariah and so didn?t look into it. Plus the critical reception was more lukewarm and the sales were nothing extraordinary, so there wasn?t much of a buzz going around. An Xbox-oriented FPS which nobody cared about did not get me envious in the same way that Armed and Dangerous did, and only upon at last getting an Xbox last year did I start some investigations. Now that an Xbox FPS was a viable option for me, I snapped up a bargain-priced copy of Pariah, took it home, glared at the empty spot in the box where a manual once resided, and then promptly put the game in my crystal machine and prepared myself for the unknown as I had done innumerable times previously.
The plot sees you as a medic of some sort in the near future charged with transporting a lady frozen in carbonite, who carries a virus within her. When your ship is blown out of the sky, the lass scarpers, you get infected by the virus and from there must track down the thoroughly confused woman before one or both of you are killed by brutal scavengers. There?s talk of some old enemy of humanity known as the Shroud, and at times the mystery surrounding what the Hell they actually are can be interesting, but in pretty much every other conceivable respect, Pariah?s story is at best bog-standard and at worst baffling, with a seemingly deliberate lack of explanation for pretty much everything, which is all the more reason why I wish that the manual hadn?t been lost in a black hole. But really, the pointless set-up isn?t a big loss, and as I?ve said in the past, a story can sometimes distract from the most important thing, namely gameplay. Don?t make me use the TimeSplitters example. Pariah might try to trick you into thinking it?s deep, but really it?s just an FPS in sheep?s clothing. I don?t mind that, but the pretence gets you in the wrong mood for what?s essentially a brainless blaster.
Your character?s status as a medical officer oddly doesn?t prevent him from being instantly familiar with heavy weaponry, and I took to calling him ?Doctor Death?. I could just imagine Bashir from Deep Space Nine going postal one day.
Anyhoo, play with the turning speed a bit and you?ll soon realise that shooting blokes is damned satisfying, and an auto-aim isn?t needed to get the right mix of accuracy, though one is available for cowards. Making things dead feels less flimsy than Halo, but less meaty than Urban Chaos: Riot Response.
Much of the bliss one feels while playing is due to the sweet selection of boomsticks available, a few of which I shall describe: the ?Bulldog? machine gun is your all-purpose Jack, okay at everything but not specialised for a single job. Point at something, unleash the beast and said something dies full of holes. Simple; the confusingly-named ?Frag Rifle? is actually a shotgun, and a mightily powerful one at that. For close-quarters combat there?s nothing better, and the eargasmic BOOMF sound it makes is just sensational. The best version is devastating when poking someone in the face, and it?s my favourite toy in the game, though the competition is considerable; lastly, the inevitable Sniper Rifle is pretty much as good as any other I?ve used, and delivers lead from preposterous distances into the skulls of unlucky sods, with each shot letting off what sounds awfully like a thunderclap. It feels like you?re Zeus, smiting those you deem unworthy of life. I may have dwelt too long on it, but rest assured that I love the long-range gun lots.
I see you there, laddy. Now hold still while I shoot your tailbone off.
The other weapons vary in practicality and splendid-ness, but I?ll leave them for you to find out the intricacies of yourself. Except for one, I should say; the Bonesaw is just what you?d imagine and could have been a vicious last resort, but is actually useless once you find the Frag Rifle, which doesn?t take long. Halo?s melee attack function is implemented better control-wise, genuinely helpful and more gratuitously pleasurable to employ. All in all, the Bonesaw is made of fail and should hang its head in shame, especially since every single other weapon has its place and earns its keep.
Collectable green floppy disk-looking things let you upgrade most of your arsenal, with three improvements possible for each. The results are both hugely helpful and cool, such as taking the already handy Sniper Rifle and giving it thermal vision. There aren?t enough floppies to max everything out, though, so you must focus on the most crucial tools of obliteration. Frag Rifle all the way.
Weapon selection is a simple thing, but even the almighty TimeSplitters 2 doesn?t get it exactly right and neither does Pariah. The latter game relies on a spindly wheel of selection, in the style of Ratchet & Clank. This would be perfect, except it doesn?t pause the game. With so many occasions in which you?re constantly being hurt, this oversight got on my nerves but never truly detracted from the better things. Besides, you?ll only change weapons when the Frag Rifle runs dry.
Health bars are fast going out of fashion ever since Master Chief marched on stage, undeservedly so. Pariah mixes both regenerating and non-regenerating life using a very similar system to what Resistance: Fall of Man would employ; separate chunks of life can recharge when not taking damage, but depleting one will cause the next to take over as the currently used one. Lose all your chunks and you die. The thing that Pariah handles differently is regaining lost health. A gadget called the ?Healing Tool? can be whipped out at a button press, and will restore one chunk per unit of ammo available for it, though the process takes a few seconds and occasional reloading is required. The mechanic as a whole works supremely well and adds a layer of strategy, since trying to heal at a bad time leaves you exposed. Chunks can disappear swiftly, so don?t get complacent.
The Healing Tool injects massive doses of Bacta right into your bloodstream, healing any wounds and curing your diabetes. Probably.
Your opponents are mostly nothing but a sea of nameless, faceless goons lining up for a serving of steaming hot death, and are even less interesting than your own character, but they certainly die well thanks to those joyous Havok physics we love so much from Destroy All Humans! Ragdoll corpses either keel over in defeat or get sent soaring by a well-placed kaboom, providing incentive to continue killing stuff. What the enemy lacks in brains, they make up for in sheer numbers and determination. So while they may sometimes walk onto landmines and less frequently just stand still until you put them out of their misery, they?re around every corner and equipped with laser-guided zooming eyeballs that, once locked onto you, will land most shots straight on your backside. The least fortunate grunts specialise in flamethrowers, which is less good for them than you might assume because they can be easily set on fire themselves, running about in a panic before blowing up and killing everything nearby. This is an extremely nice touch, and I want to have its babies. Explosive barrels and poisonous containers also mean that even the accursed shield-carrying guys can be taken down with some use of the environment.
There?s just one kind of enemy whom I loathe. Let me just say that whoever it was on the development team who put in the enemy buggies that are able to zoom in out of nowhere and kill you instantly deserves to meet a similar fate; I got my fill of suicidal jeeps in Mercenaries, thank you very much.
Fairly unusually, much of Pariah is set outside, but the level design is still generally sound. It funnels you from one shootout to the next, and I have no problem with this approach whatsoever. There?s absolutely nothing wrong with linearity, and it?s much better than letting you get lost as so often happened to me in more ambitious games, principally Half-Life, which I swear is one part adventure, two parts maze. Checkpoints are frequent, which is good for the game because otherwise I would have had to forcefully remove its innards in a fit of rage. Checkpoints and I have a history of falling-outs.
Pariah and vehicles don?t really get on, and this is likely the game?s biggest failing. You see, there are two sections in which you must drive something about. One is passable, the other is not. The controls are awkward and your fellow drivers can easily outmanoeuvre you, so this attempt at stealing Halo?s Warthog and Scorpion bits messes it up impressively well. Even Future Perfect does it better, and I hate Future Perfect?s Haloified elements; they?re just not ?Splitters, damn it!
Gah! Vehicle segment! Kill it!
Less pitiful than the driving is a single on-rails shooting part, and one scene on a train where you have to hop in and out of a turret to attack dropships and troops. These parts are much more fun, better put together and were good ideas, unlike those other sections that we don?t talk about. Branching off a bit, for whatever reason I?ve always liked train levels. Maybe it began with Future Perfect? Pariah?s try is a game highlight, though I must admit that Uncharted 2?s is probably superior, annoying boss fight at the end and all. Then again, does Uncharted have the Frag Rifle? No. No, it doesn?t.
Though the story is forgettable and regrettable, Pariah?s presentation is good enough to immerse oneself in. I already mentioned that some of the sound effects are divine, and they?re good enough to warrant the full headphones treatment. I speak from first-hand experience. The music drifts between average to quite good and occasionally hovers near the excellent mark; it?s a mix of Halo-sounding (surprise, surprise) pounding rhythms and some stuff that sounds a little like God of War, both of which are damn good things to copy, if one must copy something. It?s not a patch on TimeSplitters, but precious little is.
Still talking presentation, some of the scenes are quite epic, including that train mission and another chapter where you have to shoot down missiles being fired by a nearby ship before abandoning your scuppered vessel to board the opposing one and kick the crew overboard. It?s got some style, see?
Other than the cars, the biggest blemish on this game?s face would be the uncommon but undeniable technical hitches. Less pressing is the odd dropped frame during heavy shooting, as it?s nothing major. More worrying is the knowledge that I found a problematic bug which leaves you stuck crouching. Reloading a checkpoint didn?t help and I?m still not sure how it happened in the first place. At least it went away minutes later, with as little warning as it had come. Spooky, but a mark against the game.
A quick search reveals that I have mentioned Halo no fewer than five times in this review before that one just there, and seemingly always while either suggesting or outright saying that Pariah ?borrowed? some ideas from said legendary series. Fair enough, everyone does it, but some discipline is still called for. Labelling Pariah a Halo clone is harsh, but if that?s what it is, then it does the job far more competently and subtly than Unreal II: The Awakening, which is a decent but hugely blatant copycat, and it only highlights this fact by being totally unlike every other Unreal title made previously.
In terms of shooting and general gameplay style, the similarities between Doctor Death?s game and Master Chief?s are minimal, for the reasons I outlined way up above. It?s just the odd little detail and nicked mechanic that give the games any resemblance, along with the whole idea of near-future space marines. The two really have nothing substantial that makes them similar, but it?s hard to deny that Pariah would have been a different game had Halo never existed.
Cry some more! HAHAHAHAHA!
The more I played Pariah, the more its little niggling flaws ceased to bother me, and I got to a point where I was revelling in the thrill of the kill. At one point I actually said to myself during a particularly tense exchange of hot shrapnel, ?come on then, who wants some?? No joke; I was having a pleasant enough experience to say something daft like that. The game is simply great fun and unexpectedly engrossing once it finds its feet, and I like it more than a bit. True, the plot goes nowhere (I have never been more confused by an ending cinematic in my life), there?s hardly an original bone in its body and it?s just too short, but when you?re tearing into an unfortunate passer-by so that he may join his comrades on the cold, hard floor of the speeding locomotive, you?ll be too preoccupied by the awesomeness to give a smeg. Pariah is positive proof that innovation need not be present to make a great game, though it helps.
Besides, it gets even better with a mate by your side. Load up a story level and press start on a second controller to begin the co-op mode, strangely hard to find though it is. Games with no cleverness to ?em are made to be played as a duo, and it?s this option that will give Pariah most longevity, which is made more apparent when you consider that you should play it with every single person you know. Two Doctor Deaths can team up to create an unstoppable force of destruction! Yes!
I can recommend this wonderfully shallow title to anyone who doesn?t mind a shooter which would likely have trouble with apostrophes if it somehow became a living creature. I?m not sure what I mean by that, either. It now sits comfortably beside Halo and a few others as one of my favourite Xbox games to date, and I?ve played a few. People who insist that their games come with intelligent foreshadowing and believable characterisation should steer well clear, since Pariah will bring those types nothing but pain. For everyone else, it?s a delectable treat, if not a genre-defining classic. What is, other than TimeSplitters 2? But only Pariah comes packaged with the Frag Rifle?
I proposed to the Frag Rifle at one point. Now we live together in a Cottage in the Highlands. Sometimes Sean Connery stops by for tea.
P.S. Supposedly Pariah is 360-compatible, though I can?t confirm this personally. If it?s true, then everybody can get in on the happiness!
P.P.S. Why is it that so many Xbox games don?t let you set crouching to toggle? This isn?t an irritant unique to Pariah by any means, though it does commit the same crime. For a system whose standard controller has only two shoulder buttons, the common insistence on holding down the left stick to crouch and then keep holding it down while moving around is maddening. Mostly early games are to blame, but Pariah came out in 2005 and hadn?t learnt its lesson by then. Sigh.
