The classic FPS revival continues. And by now the market is so saturated, it’s hard to care about most of these titles, especially since so many of them end up being mediocre. Prodeus was announced when people still paid attention, however, and after a Kickstarter campaign and several years in Early Access it’s finally out. And while it’s most certainly not mediocre, it is a very simple take on the genre. The one focused almost purely on fast paced action and style. Thankfully, it does it really well.
Prodeus is an incredibly fast classic FPS with a unique visual style, that is somewhat reminiscent of the well known Brutal Doom mod, but with lots of curious effects on top of it. Every shot with every weapon has over the top feeling of impact, enemies explode in blood and gibs, everything is very loud and your hand is almost never not pressing a directional button. Andrew Hulshult is providing the soundtrack and as usual for his work it’s really good. Every weapon has some sort of secondary fire function and for most of the game you will find most of weapons useful and will switch between them according to the situation. Enemies are extremely similar in behavior and attacks to the ones you’d find in Doom II, so if you’re familiar with that classic, the game will click with you very quickly.
The exploration is somewhat present, as are additional blockers like keycards and other things that you have to do first before the way to your goal will open. But in general the game is extremely linear and if you’re supposed to revisit the early part of the level later, the game will open a new shortcut for you to get there, while the way back might be permanently locked unless you replay the level. So, some of the secrets can be missed if you just pass a point of no return in the level. Secrets often contain special “ore”, that you will find in the levels and the point of this resource is to use it in a shop to buy new weapons and abilities, like a double jump or a dash. Which is a curious approach, but at the same time feels artificial, as some secrets are seemingly impossible to get without some of the upgrades, so even if you’re thorough you will need to revisit levels again if you want to get everything.
There’s a map between levels, where the main character walks between levels and new levels are locked until you finish the next one or sometimes until you get a required amount of special runes. This limitation is a bit strange, since you will get all runes as part of the campaign and this doesn’t provide you with some alternate paths or much of a choice. Feels like an idea that was supposed to provide more optional things at some point, but ended up being redundant. As are some weapons. All of them are fun in one way or another, but as far as usefulness goes, some of them, including the ones that you must buy, are pretty pointless and are outclassed by other weapons in the same ammo category.
My biggest gripe with Prodeus, though, is that while it is entertaining purely because of how well the basics work, it never really surprises you. It’s as straightforward as classic FPS titles get and even when it adds some sort of theme or a gimmick to a level, it doesn’t really make it stand out. A huge chunk of the latter half of the game also makes most weapons somewhat pointless as the enemies you’re fighting get way too much health, but you get infinite ammo resupply to freely use the most powerful guns. In fact, that whole second half of the game feels like the developers just ran out of ideas and needed to finish the game, which, I suppose, fits well with the classic FPS, where the first episode was often the best one.
So, I can’t say I found Prodeus amazing or inspiring and it’s hardly on the same level as, say, DUSK. But at the same time, this is a really well made classic FPS with fantastic feeling basic mechanics and well put together levels. So while you might never be surprised by anything, you will most certainly stay entertained start to finish. Which is good enough for a title like this.