Prodeus is what would have happened if Brutal Doom started development after Doom 2016 came out. If you can read that sentence and think "that sounds good", then you'll like it. If you, like me, think "oh no", then you're going to be in for the video game equivalent of a kid wearing their dad's clothes and pretending to be a grown-up. Prodeus has no identity of its own, because it wants more than anything to be Doom. It is not Doom.
Drawing parallels from one work to another is almost always the easiest way to discuss something new, and it's also lazy; it's rhetoric better suited for advertising than for critical analysis. With this in mind, it's impossible not to draw unfavorable comparisons to Doom. Enemies from Doom are lifted and placed directly into Prodeus down to their very silhouettes and attack patterns: Zombiemen are now called "Zombies", Imps are now called "Fiends", Pinkies are now called "Lungers", and Pain Elementals and Lost Souls are "Void Reapers" and "Skull Fish", respectively. They're virtually identical, with the exception that Prodeus's enemies are simultaneously less colorful, less memorable, and less easy to differentiate from one another at a glance. They're all some flavor of orange (or blue) and black, melting into both themselves and the boring backgrounds. It's nearly impossible to judge the game on its own merits, because it's mechanically just Doom but worse. The guns feel worse to use than Doom's. Your movement is more sluggish than Doom's. The levels are less interesting than Doom's. The enemies are never utilized in interesting combinations the way that they are in Doom. There's nothing here that isn't done better in either the original Doom or Doom 2016, leaving Prodeus in a murky, bland in-between. If Doom was hell, then Prodeus is limbo.
This might have the ugliest UI I've seen in a long time. There's a glowing helmet visor bordering the screen, framing the garish, neon-blue icons of health, and ammo, and a cut-out of the protagonist's face (because Doom did it, so we'll put it in). It's mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can turn these HUD elements completely off, but it leaves you lacking so much critical information that it all has to stay on. Tooltip pop-ups in what appear to be a default system font won't stop taking up an entire third of the screen with useless information; "You can rebind your weapons in the Options menu!" Thank you, Prodeus. "Kill the Slayer!" I was planning to, Prodeus. "EXIT!" Yes, that is where the end of the level is, Prodeus. All three of these messages show up back-to-back in the span of about two minutes in a single level. The game is absolutely terrified that if you get stuck for so much as a second that you won't love it anymore. It's like a dog with separation anxiety.
The greatest shock of the game still lies in the soundtrack. It's some of the most boring, plodding, repetitive electro-industrial music I've heard in any game. It aspires towards some sort of dynamic gameplay integration (because Doom did it, so we'll put it in), but it awkwardly fades between "brutal" synth-y riffs and ambient beeping, because the only thing it's keeping track of is how many enemies you're in an active fight with. I couldn't believe that this was Andrew Hulshult's work. It's so incredibly phoned-in and flavorless that I was convinced it was someone poorly imitating him; fitting, given how poor of an imitation Prodeus is.
Map design is an unquestionably strong point in Prodeus's favor. I've read that most of the level design work was dumped into the lap of a seasoned Doom WAD designer — at this point I have to imagine that you're getting tired of seeing the word "Doom" so much — and it shows. The maps are flawlessly put together. Everything loops back into itself neatly, providing clear paths back towards previously-locked keycard doors and towards the next monster room. What hurts them is the bland visual presentation. While Prodeus's graphics are technically impressive, with lots of very shiny lighting effects and dozens upon dozens of unique sprites for every possible angle you could look at them from, it's artistically boring. Everything is either some flavor of the most basic blue-orange color contrast you've ever seen or lifted wholesale from a Doom Eternal set piece. The game proudly boasts that everything here was made using the in-game level editor, but who cares? The Prodeus mapping scene is already on life support, and Doom WADs have been going strong for nearly thirty years. Who's going to bother learning how to map for a game like Prodeus when Doom II is free, comes with better documentation, offers stronger community support, and is ultimately just more fun to play?
Prodeus is painfully mediocre. It feels like a game invented to be played by an actor on a TV show. The four-hour long, piss-easy campaign takes a backseat to the wholly neglected level editor, leaving Prodeus feeling more like a tech demo than a finished game. After two entire years in early access, the state that it's in now is kind of sad. I can't bring myself to hate it, but it hasn't earned nearly enough pity for me to recommend it. Just play Doom.
Drawing parallels from one work to another is almost always the easiest way to discuss something new, and it's also lazy; it's rhetoric better suited for advertising than for critical analysis. With this in mind, it's impossible not to draw unfavorable comparisons to Doom. Enemies from Doom are lifted and placed directly into Prodeus down to their very silhouettes and attack patterns: Zombiemen are now called "Zombies", Imps are now called "Fiends", Pinkies are now called "Lungers", and Pain Elementals and Lost Souls are "Void Reapers" and "Skull Fish", respectively. They're virtually identical, with the exception that Prodeus's enemies are simultaneously less colorful, less memorable, and less easy to differentiate from one another at a glance. They're all some flavor of orange (or blue) and black, melting into both themselves and the boring backgrounds. It's nearly impossible to judge the game on its own merits, because it's mechanically just Doom but worse. The guns feel worse to use than Doom's. Your movement is more sluggish than Doom's. The levels are less interesting than Doom's. The enemies are never utilized in interesting combinations the way that they are in Doom. There's nothing here that isn't done better in either the original Doom or Doom 2016, leaving Prodeus in a murky, bland in-between. If Doom was hell, then Prodeus is limbo.
This might have the ugliest UI I've seen in a long time. There's a glowing helmet visor bordering the screen, framing the garish, neon-blue icons of health, and ammo, and a cut-out of the protagonist's face (because Doom did it, so we'll put it in). It's mitigated somewhat by the fact that you can turn these HUD elements completely off, but it leaves you lacking so much critical information that it all has to stay on. Tooltip pop-ups in what appear to be a default system font won't stop taking up an entire third of the screen with useless information; "You can rebind your weapons in the Options menu!" Thank you, Prodeus. "Kill the Slayer!" I was planning to, Prodeus. "EXIT!" Yes, that is where the end of the level is, Prodeus. All three of these messages show up back-to-back in the span of about two minutes in a single level. The game is absolutely terrified that if you get stuck for so much as a second that you won't love it anymore. It's like a dog with separation anxiety.
The greatest shock of the game still lies in the soundtrack. It's some of the most boring, plodding, repetitive electro-industrial music I've heard in any game. It aspires towards some sort of dynamic gameplay integration (because Doom did it, so we'll put it in), but it awkwardly fades between "brutal" synth-y riffs and ambient beeping, because the only thing it's keeping track of is how many enemies you're in an active fight with. I couldn't believe that this was Andrew Hulshult's work. It's so incredibly phoned-in and flavorless that I was convinced it was someone poorly imitating him; fitting, given how poor of an imitation Prodeus is.
Map design is an unquestionably strong point in Prodeus's favor. I've read that most of the level design work was dumped into the lap of a seasoned Doom WAD designer — at this point I have to imagine that you're getting tired of seeing the word "Doom" so much — and it shows. The maps are flawlessly put together. Everything loops back into itself neatly, providing clear paths back towards previously-locked keycard doors and towards the next monster room. What hurts them is the bland visual presentation. While Prodeus's graphics are technically impressive, with lots of very shiny lighting effects and dozens upon dozens of unique sprites for every possible angle you could look at them from, it's artistically boring. Everything is either some flavor of the most basic blue-orange color contrast you've ever seen or lifted wholesale from a Doom Eternal set piece. The game proudly boasts that everything here was made using the in-game level editor, but who cares? The Prodeus mapping scene is already on life support, and Doom WADs have been going strong for nearly thirty years. Who's going to bother learning how to map for a game like Prodeus when Doom II is free, comes with better documentation, offers stronger community support, and is ultimately just more fun to play?
Prodeus is painfully mediocre. It feels like a game invented to be played by an actor on a TV show. The four-hour long, piss-easy campaign takes a backseat to the wholly neglected level editor, leaving Prodeus feeling more like a tech demo than a finished game. After two entire years in early access, the state that it's in now is kind of sad. I can't bring myself to hate it, but it hasn't earned nearly enough pity for me to recommend it. Just play Doom.