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Late to the after-party; Pariah super quick impression

Brannon

Member
Meh, it's okay. The driving is horrid though, and the menu screen has internal loading issues. Weapons could have a little more 'oomph'.

The best thing I can say is that it's better than Run Like Hell. Yes. I will say that. Back to the annals of Blockbuster with ye!
 
It's decent enough in single player; multiplayer needs work, which is too bad, since I love the map editor feature.
 
Got it for free, it is trash, even more given the idiotic hype that got from some outlets.

Weapons are dumb, vehicles are simply bad, music is repetitive, textures are poor, IA can be pretty stupid and you better don't make me start with the art... It's like the singleplayer demo, but shorter and without graphical bugs. Also, multiplayer sucks male goats. Everything is boring, dull and done better by dozens of games, there is not a single exciting thing and the plot is so damn moronic it hurts.
 
Digital Extremes - Epic = Pariah. :p

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The real talent in the Epic/DE equation has always been on the Epic side. I'll be the first to admit that DE's got some talented level designers working for them, but when tasked to develop characters and gameplay from the ground up, you get stuff like Unreal Championship (the first one) and Pariah. Maybe they ought to stick to collaborations.
 
Slayven said:
ot a bad story. just undercooked and cliche ridden.

I think the story could be OK, it's the just the way it's told.
For instance
the revelation near the end that you are working for the 'Shroud' is undermined by the fact that you never really know who the Shroud are. They seem to be baddies, but it's never really stated why.
 
Dr Zhivago said:
I think the story could be OK, it's the just the way it's told.
For instance
the revelation near the end that you are working for the 'Shroud' is undermined by the fact that you never really know who the Shroud are. They seem to be baddies, but it's never really stated why.
I agree, they were pumped as badasses but you don't know a lick about them except their names.
and the end boss coming out of no where and the stuff about hsi daughter. the chick falling for him yet they spend only few minutes together through most of the game.
 
Actually the plot is bad because of its dumb premise and later it becomes a nuisance because you never know what the fuck is going on, and not because it is complicated, but because it is so badly explained. The last 1/3 of the game is pure nosense.

Stockton is quite bad, but the shroud are easily some of the worst baddies I've seen in years.
 
The visuals are awesome on the PC, but the weapons just feel like crap and completely ruin the game.
 
dark10x said:
The visuals are awesome on the PC
The game is meh looking even at 1280 with everything high. Textures range from decent to simply horrid, explosions are crappy, lightning is nothing special and some effects like bloom are badly used. Bad art also smears the screen with some of the most mediocre weapon, vehicle, character and building designs ever.

You, sir, have lost your graphic whore status.
 
Funky Papa said:
The game is meh looking even at 1280 with everything high. Textures range from decent to simply horrid, explosions are crappy, lightning is nothing special and some effects like bloom are badly used. Bad art also smears the screen with some of the most mediocre weapon, vehicle, character and building designs ever.

You, sir, have lost your graphic whore status.

It does look good, though, and it runs at a perfect 60 fps no matter what is happening. I DID play it on my TV at 720p, though, which actually tends to make games look a bit better I've found. My monitor just looks dull in comparison.

The water was ass, though.

I thought stuff like the initial canyon...

920044_20041216_screen005.jpg


...were beautiful.

920044_20040902_screen003.jpg

pariah-20050314011150370.jpg

pariah-20050314011216821.jpg
 
It only looks good in stills. When you get to see the average lightning, shitty fire and meh everything in movement it is quite underwhelming.

Also, you picked up some bad captures, they are either blurry (using the health pack) or way too far from the player, when things are closer you notice the shitty textures, the 2D stairs and everything that is wrong with the game.

pariah8mi.jpg


I also hate how the whole game is BROWN.
 
Also, you picked up some bad captures

No, I picked good captures that show off the big picture.

I did not play too terribly far in the game, though. However, I thought it looked quite good AND ran at a perfect framerate. That first crater area looks EXTREMELY nice, even in motion. I can forgive some things (such as textures) simply due to 1) the performance and 2) the fact that it was basically an XBOX port. If this game ran at anything OTHER than a rock solid 60 fps, I wouldn't give it much praise at all.

What's wrong with simple color schemes, though? Why must everything be bright and crazy? Most of my favorite looking games have very specific color schemes that they stick to. Pariah doesn't hold a candle to those games, of course, but the idea isn't a bad one.

Even the best looking games don't always look good, though...

914642_20041112_screen118.jpg
 
dark10x said:
No, I picked good captures that show off the big picture.

I did not play too terribly far in the game, though.
Here is your problem, the first part is the finest one. And that's not saying much.

dark10x said:
What's wrong with simple color schemes, though? Why must everything be bright and crazy?
Nothing wrong with simple color schemes, but Pariah uses them in a really, really bad way.
dark10x said:
Even the best looking games don't always look good, though...

914642_20041112_screen118.jpg
I wish Pariah looked that bad for most part. I really do.

Here are some random captures that are quite representative

920044_20050506_screen012.jpg

Notice the terrible ground texture and bad smoke. Also, most rocks look like ass when you get close to them, some of them have some short of HIDEOUS detail texturing while others have N64-like textures.

920044_20050506_screen005.jpg

Shit everything. From enviroment textures to weapons, everything is poorly done. Also the helmet vision is absolutely HIDEOUS, you have to see it in movement to appreciate it. The plasma gun is one of the best weapons, yet I avoid to touch it about it because of the shitty distortion effect ruins everything.

The train level was one of the early ones and also specially bad looking as most things were a shitty texture with terrible fixed lightning and some disgusting bump mapping. One of the later parts of the game where you
assault an airship on the move
is almost Quake 3 quality.
 
Damn, that does look like ass. I guess I spoke too soon, as I only played a small portion of the game. That last shot you posted truly is terrible. Yuck.

I suppose the high framerate and lack of hitches anywhere really made an impact in my memory. When I think of HL2, for example, I mostly remember the HDD access, framerate hitches, awful loading, etc. I know it looks amazing, but those things stick out. I am totally willing to give up goodies for performance, unless I know those goodies are there, in which case, I become torn and frustrated between going for good performance or full detail. Sadly, in HL2's case, it wasn't really related to settings...it was f*cking Steam.
 
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