TeAM YYePG

REVIEWS
ONE OF PARIAH’S BIGGEST SELLING POINTS
was supposed to be its solid, story-driven singleplayer
game. Instead, at best, it’s a poor man’s
Half-Life featuring a plot so convoluted, it makes
you appreciate the finer points of storytelling in
games such as Psychotoxic, which we awarded a
whopping 1.5 stars last month.
The A.I. doesn’t fare much better. Enemies (of
which there are few variants) seem clueless. After
we sniped one guard at a distance, other nearby
troops completely ignored their fallen comrade.
“Hey, you know what happened to Burt?”
“Dunno. I was just talking to him a minute ago,
and now he’s sleeping...saaaaaay...what’s that red
stuff coming out of his head?” These are the guys
we’re supposed to be worried about? The
promised “emergent A.I.” has yet to emerge.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
While the weapons themselves are your standard
assault rifle/shotgun/rocket launcher fare, the ability
to mod your weaponry is a welcome change.
Finding hidden weapon energy cores throughout
70 > COMPUTER GAMING WORLD
Whee! Explosions are fun! See that
cool, shimmery explosion effect?
Get used to it—it’s everywhere.
There’s something
timeless about a shotgun
blast to the face.
PARIAH
We repeat: Think twice before naming your game
PUBLISHER: Hip Interactive DEVELOPER: Digital Extremes GENRE: Shooter ESRB RATING: M REQUIRED:
Pentium III, 256MB RAM, 3GB install, 64MB videocard, and a whole lot of patience RECOMMENDED: None
MULTIPLAYER: LAN, Internet (2-32 players)
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the game will allow you to add a heat-seeking
ability to sniper shots and a target-locking ability
to rockets, for example.
And the graphics look nice, eking out that last
bit of life from the Unreal Engine 2. In fact, Digital
Extremes created a nifty shimmer effect that’s
thoroughly abused and overused in Pariah.
Explosions shimmer, energy shields shimmer...if
you want to wow us with effects, you’ve got to
mix it up a little. And if the audio guys didn’t
exactly fall asleep on the job, they came close—
the weapons could sound much more potent.
The primary bright spot in this otherwise
unpolished title is multiplayer. Your standardissue
deathmatch, CTF, and assaultlike siege
modes are represented, but the real strength
here lies in the mapmaker. All it takes is one
look online to see that the most frequently
played maps are all user made.
Honestly, it looks like Digital Extremes spent its
entire time perfecting the proprietary map editor
(which works fantastically) instead of making the
game fun. Six more months of dev time and a
MY FIRST
MAPMAKER
THE ONLY REASON
TO BUY PARIAH
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Take a good look at the interface—it
looks like something out of a tycoon game.
From here, you can do everything. Try
raising or lowering the landmass by clicking
on the appropriate icon.
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You can do the same with vehicles,
buildings, and game objects. Set them up
wherever you think they will make things
interesting. But to keep you from overdoing
it, an object limiter is built in. This
safeguard keeps you from creating a map
that could grind your PC to a halt.
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Want to see how your map turned out?
Jump straight into the action.
complete rewrite of the script could’ve made this
a good game. Some free advice to Pariah’s publisher,
Hip Interactive: Drop the price and repackage
this as an awesome introduction to mapmaking
with a couple of decent sample levels.
/ Darren Gladstone
Lots of potential;
lots of disappointment.
VERDICT