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.
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.