Prodeus is Doom 2016 without the glory kills nonsense. Kickstarted by a handful of ex-Raven Software and Irrational Games people, it's mechanically solid and has great music, but some baffling design decisions hamper its potential, namely overly spongy enemies, locking some of the best ugrades behind well-hidden secrets and, above all else, the fact that you essentially cannot die.
That's right, in every level except the arena that serves as a final boss, whenever your health reaches zero you instantly respawn out of a conveniently placed checkpoint, with full health and ammo and no penalty whatsoever beyond giving up some of your score, which serves no purpose beyond leaderboard placement.
When Prey did something less forgiving than that in 2006 people got incensed, when Bioshock did it one year later people dismissed it, and now that Prodeus does it nobody cares, despite the fact that it pretty much demolishes any semblance of challenge the game might present. All of the tension of combat is gone once you know you can just die and respawn and pick up where you left off, and it is, in fact, far more efficient to just die and respawn than it is to waste time and effort looking for health and ammo pickups. Usually the respawn points are in the same room as the big encounter that might kill you, so there really is no penalty to you losing.
How is combat then? It's good, as mentioned before it's Doom 2016 with the key difference that guns are designed to actually kill enemies, instead of putting them in a drowsy state for an unskippable Mortal Kombat fatality animation every few seconds. The gallery of monsters is precisely what you expect: zombie, shotgun zombie, fireball imp, chaingunner, chunky melee-oriented monster, kamikaze lost soul, flying blob that shoots fireballs, flying blob that vomits kaamikaze lost souls. It's Doom, except for how much of a damage sponge each enemy is. It takes two point blank shotgun shells or three headshots with the plasma rifle to down the most basic zombie and sometimes up to four for a shotgun zombie. This eats through your ammunition fast, especially considering the low max stocks (30 shells for your shotgun without a costly upgrade) and how high the fire rate is with certain weapons, especially the minigun, which can drain your ammo reserves in a matter of seconds. If there's something that both Doom and Serious Sam taught us is that economizing ammo is antithetical to the fun factor os a fast paced shooter like this and should never be a major concern. It is no surprise then that the most entertaining levels in Prodeus are those late games ones that contain ammo refill platforms, which removes the penny pinching needed to conserve your ammo and allows you to cut loose and have fun.
The arsenal is what you'd expect: pistol, shotgun with sniper alt fire, super shotgun, rocket launcher with grenade variant, plasma gun with the homing beacon alt fire from Resistance Fall of Man, railgun doubling as a tesla gun from Wolfenstein, plus a number of unlockable weapons you are unlikely to ever use, since they are locked behind the discovery of an ungodly amount of secrets around the levels, as are mobility upgrades such as double jump and airdash, as well as an ever so necessary bandolier to carry more ammunition. Both the plasma gun and super shotgun need to be unlocked, and you'll want to do so, as they are easily the best guns in the game, even though the way the latter was handled is bizarre to say the least: ever since Doom 2 introduced the super shotgun it's been a tradeoff between increased firepower vs double the consumption of ammo and slower reload, which didn't make the basic boomstick obsolete; here you have this quad barrel beast which can fire without delay, reloads faster and deals more damage per shot than the basic conterpart while firing the same amount of the same ammo (wrap your head around that one), plus it can discharge all barrels at once to deal massive damage to even the strurdiest of foes. There will be no reason to ever use the normal shotgun again, unless you need the precision alt fire, a role shared with multiple other guns.
Locking mobility upgrades behind secret hunting is a questionable choice, as many players might never find enough hidden tokens to afford them, thus missing out on the best the game has to offer in term of movement: when you're zipping around double jumping over acid pits and airdashing out of the way of incoming fire it's some of the finest moments a shooter can offer, too bad these are missable upgrades and as such the levels can't be designed with them in mind.
On the tecnical side, the game is less than stellar: while the game aims at a steady 60 frames even on consoles, performance is poor, with frequent and long load times, common frame drops around the 30fps mark and even occasional freezes lasting up several seconds, guaranteed to get you killed (don't worry though, remember: no consequence for dying...). The art style is bizarre to say the least: in the ocean of retro-themed shooters on the indie market, it is not uncommon to see intentionally low resolutions and low detail models and sprites, but Prodeus takes it to the next level by replacing all of the enemies with sprites that do not billboard like in most 1990s FPS, rather they can be viewered from sixteen different angles per level, meaning at eye level, from above and from below, which must heve been a massive amount to work to get working.
Unfortunately, for all that effort, the gimmick doesn't even look very good: stationary objects especially will jerk around unnaturallyas you strafe around them and I suspect this was not what the developers had intended for the visual effect. Not only that, but I can't think of a single 90s shooter that did this, so it doesn't even look authentic for what it pourports to mimic. Fortunately you can toggle an option which replaces all enemy sprites with polygonal models, which is an absolutely massive improvement, which sadly does not affect dropped weapons and item pickups.
There are around 30 levels in the base campaign, with a lot more content available for free in the workshop menu, thanks to a robust map editor. What comes with the base game is well designed, with very Quake-like multilayered fortresses and moon bases filled withs ecrets. It's great stuff, but easy to get lost in due to the flatness of the color scheme, usually a belend of brown and greys that ends up feeling doisorientating due to lack of signposting. Thankfully an 3D automap is present, which is composed of a low-poly version of the current level, which you can noclip through at will, to get your bearing that way.
In conclusion, Prodeus is a mixed bag: while the action is solid and frenetic, its acts of self-sabotage keep it from being a truly excellent shooter. Maybe if they reworked the difficulty to remove the instant respawns, increased damage output just a tad and optimized performance a bit more it could really be something special. Even so, it's a good retro shooter that is worth playing, especially if you were frustrated with the Doom reboots and wanted the same thing but without some of their most glaring flaws.
That's right, in every level except the arena that serves as a final boss, whenever your health reaches zero you instantly respawn out of a conveniently placed checkpoint, with full health and ammo and no penalty whatsoever beyond giving up some of your score, which serves no purpose beyond leaderboard placement.
When Prey did something less forgiving than that in 2006 people got incensed, when Bioshock did it one year later people dismissed it, and now that Prodeus does it nobody cares, despite the fact that it pretty much demolishes any semblance of challenge the game might present. All of the tension of combat is gone once you know you can just die and respawn and pick up where you left off, and it is, in fact, far more efficient to just die and respawn than it is to waste time and effort looking for health and ammo pickups. Usually the respawn points are in the same room as the big encounter that might kill you, so there really is no penalty to you losing.
How is combat then? It's good, as mentioned before it's Doom 2016 with the key difference that guns are designed to actually kill enemies, instead of putting them in a drowsy state for an unskippable Mortal Kombat fatality animation every few seconds. The gallery of monsters is precisely what you expect: zombie, shotgun zombie, fireball imp, chaingunner, chunky melee-oriented monster, kamikaze lost soul, flying blob that shoots fireballs, flying blob that vomits kaamikaze lost souls. It's Doom, except for how much of a damage sponge each enemy is. It takes two point blank shotgun shells or three headshots with the plasma rifle to down the most basic zombie and sometimes up to four for a shotgun zombie. This eats through your ammunition fast, especially considering the low max stocks (30 shells for your shotgun without a costly upgrade) and how high the fire rate is with certain weapons, especially the minigun, which can drain your ammo reserves in a matter of seconds. If there's something that both Doom and Serious Sam taught us is that economizing ammo is antithetical to the fun factor os a fast paced shooter like this and should never be a major concern. It is no surprise then that the most entertaining levels in Prodeus are those late games ones that contain ammo refill platforms, which removes the penny pinching needed to conserve your ammo and allows you to cut loose and have fun.
The arsenal is what you'd expect: pistol, shotgun with sniper alt fire, super shotgun, rocket launcher with grenade variant, plasma gun with the homing beacon alt fire from Resistance Fall of Man, railgun doubling as a tesla gun from Wolfenstein, plus a number of unlockable weapons you are unlikely to ever use, since they are locked behind the discovery of an ungodly amount of secrets around the levels, as are mobility upgrades such as double jump and airdash, as well as an ever so necessary bandolier to carry more ammunition. Both the plasma gun and super shotgun need to be unlocked, and you'll want to do so, as they are easily the best guns in the game, even though the way the latter was handled is bizarre to say the least: ever since Doom 2 introduced the super shotgun it's been a tradeoff between increased firepower vs double the consumption of ammo and slower reload, which didn't make the basic boomstick obsolete; here you have this quad barrel beast which can fire without delay, reloads faster and deals more damage per shot than the basic conterpart while firing the same amount of the same ammo (wrap your head around that one), plus it can discharge all barrels at once to deal massive damage to even the strurdiest of foes. There will be no reason to ever use the normal shotgun again, unless you need the precision alt fire, a role shared with multiple other guns.
Locking mobility upgrades behind secret hunting is a questionable choice, as many players might never find enough hidden tokens to afford them, thus missing out on the best the game has to offer in term of movement: when you're zipping around double jumping over acid pits and airdashing out of the way of incoming fire it's some of the finest moments a shooter can offer, too bad these are missable upgrades and as such the levels can't be designed with them in mind.
On the tecnical side, the game is less than stellar: while the game aims at a steady 60 frames even on consoles, performance is poor, with frequent and long load times, common frame drops around the 30fps mark and even occasional freezes lasting up several seconds, guaranteed to get you killed (don't worry though, remember: no consequence for dying...). The art style is bizarre to say the least: in the ocean of retro-themed shooters on the indie market, it is not uncommon to see intentionally low resolutions and low detail models and sprites, but Prodeus takes it to the next level by replacing all of the enemies with sprites that do not billboard like in most 1990s FPS, rather they can be viewered from sixteen different angles per level, meaning at eye level, from above and from below, which must heve been a massive amount to work to get working.
Unfortunately, for all that effort, the gimmick doesn't even look very good: stationary objects especially will jerk around unnaturallyas you strafe around them and I suspect this was not what the developers had intended for the visual effect. Not only that, but I can't think of a single 90s shooter that did this, so it doesn't even look authentic for what it pourports to mimic. Fortunately you can toggle an option which replaces all enemy sprites with polygonal models, which is an absolutely massive improvement, which sadly does not affect dropped weapons and item pickups.
There are around 30 levels in the base campaign, with a lot more content available for free in the workshop menu, thanks to a robust map editor. What comes with the base game is well designed, with very Quake-like multilayered fortresses and moon bases filled withs ecrets. It's great stuff, but easy to get lost in due to the flatness of the color scheme, usually a belend of brown and greys that ends up feeling doisorientating due to lack of signposting. Thankfully an 3D automap is present, which is composed of a low-poly version of the current level, which you can noclip through at will, to get your bearing that way.
In conclusion, Prodeus is a mixed bag: while the action is solid and frenetic, its acts of self-sabotage keep it from being a truly excellent shooter. Maybe if they reworked the difficulty to remove the instant respawns, increased damage output just a tad and optimized performance a bit more it could really be something special. Even so, it's a good retro shooter that is worth playing, especially if you were frustrated with the Doom reboots and wanted the same thing but without some of their most glaring flaws.