98 reviews liked by Eggus


I'm fuming. First BoundingBox mutilated what made secrets a compelling level design technique in the first place by changing most of them from powerups that aid in your completion of a level into a collectible shop currency. Then they have the audacity to start locking these currency locations behind powerups stuck in the ingame shop. What makes this extra fucking obnoxious is that Prodeus is so mind numbingly easy that only scoreplay has a hope of being compelling. Scoreplay that you cannot effectively engage with until you've 100%ed the game because there are no leaderboard categories and these powerups and unlockable weapons provide players with new advantages. The utter incompetence of design on display here is genuinely fucking infuriating. There's not even any ingame communication to aid the player in figuring out how the actual scoring system even WORKS. It's the laziest possible implementation I've seen in a long time.
So now I'm paranoid about wasting my time in a level searching for ore that I might just not be capable of collecting without the double jump. This doesn't compel me to explore thoroughly, I'm just going to look up a 100% guide because this is fucking stupid. No part of the experience is enhanced by having a shop system. Even the shop is badly designed. Rather than a quick to access menu it's a physical time wasting fluff "level" that requires a loading screen. Every level suffers from a unity loading screen. Even restarting them.

The entire production is riddled with cripplingly idiotic decisions. Community maps are locked behind a third-party account. Unlike in any of the actually well designed id shooters that Prodeus is unimaginatively aping.
Nexus Points are Vita Chambers and Vita Chambers were never good. There's no in level saving systems because the devs genuinely couldn't figure out how to implement one into Unity. I'm serious. That's their excuse. There's supposed to be an update "soon" that finally implements saving.
Nexus Points mean that there is absolutely no middle ground between "this game is mindless and uninteresting garbage" and "merely barely okay on max difficulty if you always full restart after death". Speaking of difficulty. It's the lazy boring method of tweaking enemy HP and Damage values by percentages. It's the same low enemy counts regardless. I think maybe they also get more accurate? But I can't be bothered to test because Very Hard was already too much of a snooze so I lack a solid point of reference. The devs claim that they designed Prodeus around "medium". l o l

What's most frustrating is that every part of Prodeus that isn't unique to Prodeus can be some occasionally fine Doom action. It looks good. The guns are fine. The music is pretty good. The levels are "okay".
But every single design decision that deviates away from the source material of Doom only serves to make the game worse. Even the map system is bad. Having an agonizingly slow scroll speed.

Prodeus will never be better than "just fine", and even then only under extreme self imposed challenge.
- - -
Now that the "Prodean" enemies are being introduced more regularly there's been an extreme difficulty spike, however when it comes to dying in a split-second from the trickier encounters near the end of a long level I just wish I could have a normal checkpoint for my first run.
- - -
Yeah the deeper I get into the campaign the angrier I get. The nexus points are a serious problem and it's absurd the devs left early access with them implemented even though they're the most common complaint levied against the design. Dying in a split second near the end of 20 minute mission is awful, but continuing from a nexus point feels cheap. I detest every single defender of Prodeus who claims that any of this is fine because it's a "score attack game" meanwhile the devs have carelessly slapped every single difficulty onto the same leaderboard and effectively declared that you aren't allowed to play the "real" Prodeus until you find all of the worthless macguffins. Every single time I begin to enjoy a level it's ruined by my hyperfixation on just how irredeemably awful the overarching design is. I'm torn on refunding it because I can see that it does eventually become fun.
I just realized precisely why I hate this. Prodeus is the Euroshmup of FPS games. It fails to understand score design. Implements a worthless shop mechanic, and in the spirit of giving the player a health bar just makes the player immortal. Dying is such a measly score penalty that you can often see people who didn't pull off a deathless run on the max difficulty placing in the top 50 spots. Fucking unforgiveable, and I wish to reiterate, there is NO ingame indication of how well you're doing scorewise until after you finish a level, and I only believe that headshots contribute to score because a random forum post claimed they did.
This entire game needs an overhaul.
- - -
I gave up on performing deathless Ultra Hard clears after the prodean enemies became common occurances. The "elite" units among them can be just mean on Ultra Hard. Which is especially frustrating given the average length of the lategame missions.
The penultimate mission was really good though (no prodeans). Now if only the rest of the game was also good. The game still feels unfinished. Not all of the weapons were properly implemented. You never acquire anything for the second and third energy weapon slots.

I cannot stand this game. I hate that the enemies are so bulletspongy and that they can kill you just so damn fast. The entire game is hard as shit and then the final boss is a complete joke. Why did FPS devs in the early 2000s think quicksaving and loading over and over was a fun way to handle encounter design? jesus christ.

Never particularly been a fan of the 'tactical' cover shooter systems old games like this use. Focusing on crouching down behind cover to keep your weapon's hilarious gamble of a spread tight, moving slowly to get accurate shots on enemies that don't have remotely decent pathing to feel satisfying. Weapons do each have their own system of accuracy that keeps them viable but things don't really feel good to do unless you're mowing enemies down in bursts (provided the spread is kind to you).

Level design utilizes some of its strengths to make dickish ambushes on you and I was moderately impressed with how much it stayed true to its aesthetic. Highlights including crypt traps and closing the doors on you, and bonus points for slowly opening doors that keep you stuck in the encounter.

All that being said, wasn't particularly engaged and I probably wouldn't have even touched this game were it not for the game club that chose this for the month. Certainly could do with worse!

Don't really have a good chance to try the multiplayer but I've heard good things there. Can't say I'm interested but there's plenty there.

Finished this on the hardest difficulty.

Let me get the positives out of the way first.

Level design and pacing is top notch and keeps you engaged. As an action shooter fps, there's always danger at every corner, and the game in a certain manner acclimates you to efficiently dealing with enemies of numerous kinds. The game offers you different type of guns that you get as you progress on. My favorite is the thermal sniper that effectively kills an human enemy with one shot, but the downside is that the weapon has limited ammo and there's no replacement for it for the game. Since this is a shooter that came from the early 2000s, alongside the old Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games, health and ammo are picked up throughout the levels. On harder difficulties, you'll probably need to do a bit of item management since you get only a limited amount of these pick-ups, and you can't afford to freely shoot your guns out.

Okay. Now. For the negatives (derogatory).

Who said this was the fucking peak of Wolfenstein? Whatever I said earlier is horrendously mauled to absolute death by how this plays out. Bulletsponge enemies are one of this game's worst fucking sins. The amount of times this game forces you to save/load because the enemies are also insufferable hitscan machines, especially those damn Tyrant ass ripoffs, that shoot your health down in mere nanoseconds. This brutal system forces you to play conservatively and strips the games of any ounce of fun to be had. Also, most of the games guns shoot so unsatisfyingly dumb, awkward, and at most times they seem to glitch and not hit their target. The sniper rifle is one example of this, since I have used it enough times to know it doesn't hit the target 7 times out of 10.

What made the devs think that loading the game with more than one of those Tyrant brutes was a good idea? They are easily the hardest obstacle you'll face in this game due to their sheer bullshittery aimlocking at you, and you will find yourself circling around pillars and hoping your measly ass minigun can finish them off.

Grenades don't throw well in this game and Blazkowicz just tosses them halfheartedly, as if this WWII is just a fucking bowling game. This renders the grenades ABSOLUTELY useless and you should not bother using them, because one thing that also nullifies their function is the fact that enemies will just avoid them whenever you throw them.

Stealth in this game is also useless and it's just a trite accessory to add to this game's espionage nature. You could be five hundred kilometers away, hidden by a thick fog, and somehow a Nazi with just an MP40 from that distance will start shooting at you and all his bullets will hit yours sorry little ass.

I did not care for the story. The writing is decent, and the plot at most is nonexistent. The ending is abrupt and completes the tasteless flavor of "you win" in your mouth.

The Paderborn level is what I wished this whole game should've been, since a dazzling amount of untapped potential in atmosphere, stealth, storytelling, and action is in that one level, and that one level is the only good memory I will keep of this game. Listening to Fur Elise while I aim my Sten at the back of an unsuspecting German officer is the apogee of immersion this game has ever had, and I am somewhat bitter they didn't realize the magic beneath all the jank they made.


Bailed during the first all-stealth level. Bad stealth is bad.

A surprisingly po-faced take on the over-the-top franchise. Return is clearly influenced by Goldeneye in tone and approach, yet is far simpler (and dumber) in level layout and mission design; it defaults to the classic “find-the-key” objectives of the original, and when it doesn't, it features the dreaded pass/fail stealth segments that no one likes to play. The gun play and feedback are passable, but overall this title fails to be memorable.

First act is really good, it goes downhill from there tho. Worst offender is that you don't get to kill uncle Adolf

It looked like a better game than Driver 3 back then, but replaying it now, I can confirm that it's a worse game.

The driving physics is simplified and more unfun by default. The cars are hideous for some weird reason when they looked fine before, and the missions themselves, most of them, are a bore. The shooting and character animations are awful and the worst part of the game.


I expected little and I was still underwhelmed

Just imagine, it's 2006. There is NFS: Carbon, FlatOut 2, Test Drive Unlimited and GTA: Vice City Stories on the GameStop shelf. But you buy this new Driver game just because you're curious. At the moment you boot up this N64 game, the world falls apart on you...