ProDeus Review

ProDeus caught my eye when I saw it referred to as “The wettest FPS”. “James,” you cry, “surely that’s PowerWash Simulator?” Oh my sweet summer child, they mean wet with blood! Gallons of the stuff, give them all that they can drink and it will never be enough. Ahem, sorry, I lost myself for a second. Anyway it turned out to be on Gamepass, so I thought I’d check it out.

It’s touted as an old-school FPS that takes advantage of modern graphical technology, and it clearly has one old-school FPS in particular on its mind, but more on that in a minute. As you might imagine from a game with that description, its story is really just an excuse to shoot things. You are an unnamed person who crash lands in an alien dimension and is killed by a security system when it detects an “Organic”. Rebuilt as a cyborg killing machine called The Vessel, you decide to interrupt an on-going war between the forces of “Chaos” and “Prodeus” by jumping into the middle of it and slaughtering them all with heavy weaponry. It takes you through a variety of locales, most interestingly a huge acid processing plant, a space station and a sprint across a row of platforms on the surface of the ocean, often accompanied by pounding rain. Unfortunately this approach to plot means the game ends suddenly and anticlimactically with a text box. The Xbone version does still say it’s in Game Preview, but the game is out, and as far as I know that label no longer applies and the version I played is the full release. Still, as an excuse to travel across multiple alien dimensions shooting things into paste, it works well enough.

So I said it takes a lot of inspiration from one old-school shooter in particular, and that’s Doom. It has free aim, but has a similar impact, heft and splatter to its combat. It makes one major change in that it includes reload animations as an extra layer of challenge in that they need to be timed during combat lest you leave yourself vulnerable. The Doom influence is most clear in its enemy design, which has a lot of crossover; armed and unarmed zombies, pinkies, imps, cacodemons, pain elementals and lost souls; they’re all here. The last level even features what seemed a lot like three cyberdemons, and one of the minibosses reminded me of the Makyr from Doom Eternal. Personally I don’t have a problem with this, partly because the whole game is obviously an homage, but primarily because while they aren’t as interesting to look at, it’s clear at a glance what every enemy in the game is and, once you’ve fought them already, how to deal with them. The weapons mimic some of Doom’s, namely the shotgun, chaingun and plasma rifle, but ups the ante with alternate firing modes and a super shotgun with twice as many barrels as the iconic Doom version. The guns feel weighty and satisfying to use, particularly the shotgun (which is always important in an FPS) and the plasma rifle, which I quickly fell back on as a favourite. Also the pistol is surprisingly good; it’s capable of single shot and burst fire modes, lets you aim down the sights and does pretty decent damage, making it useful for up to medium range all the way to the end of the game. Most of the weapons are found over the course of the game, but some are kept locked up in a shop, bought with clumps of ore hidden throughout the levels. The game introduces basic metroidvania elements to that end once you buy the double jump and dash abilities, encouraging you to backtrack to old levels hunting for ore to unlock further weapons and upgrades.

There is a problem though, which is the smattering of challenge rooms tied into different weapons. Basically the intro to each one tells you that rushing to the end and shooting all the targets within a certain time limit will earn you some ore, but there’s no in-game timer, it’s unclear if “Targets” also includes the enemies placed in your way, and the ore at the end of each one seems to always be locked behind a transparent wall. I got to the end of a couple, tried again a few times trying to work out what I was missing, then just gave up. There is a rating system for each level; upon completion you choose from “Bad”, “Okay” and “Good”, but that’s the extent of it.

If you’re into first person shooters, particularly old school ones or ones where the emphasis is on the shooting above all else, definitely give this a look. It’s satisfying, well designed and fun, challenge rooms aside. Just a shame about the sudden brick wall of an ending halting what was otherwise exciting momentum.

By James Lambert
@jameslambert18

Deathloop Review

I really wanted to play Deathloop when it came out, but couldn’t because due to their rarity, the console it was exclusive to-the PS5-might as well not exist as far as I’m concerned. I held out hope that when it was eventually ported to Xbox, it might, MIGHT be on Xbone. It isn’t, but due to what I can only assume is some sort of eldritch miracle or Faustian bargain, it can be played on an Xbone or my laptop through cloud gaming and Gamepass. Suck it, the future: I finally got to play Deathloop. Between this and the Resi 4 remake being announced for PS4 it’s a good time to not own a next gen console.

The Isle of Blackreef is locked in a time loop; as each day ends the sun rises on that very same day forever. None of the people trapped in the loop remember anything that happens; to them, it’s always the first day on which they’re setting everything up for their forthcoming eternal life. Eight people called Visionaries have been assembled as humanity’s best and brightest (ostensibly anyway), and a group of masked, painted goons are left with all the manual labour. You are Colt; an amnesiac who wakes up on the beach each morning hellbent on breaking the loop and setting everyone free. In order to do so he has to kill all eight Visionaries in one day, something made difficult by two things: firstly a protocol put in place that keeps his targets separate to avoid this very situation. Secondly, there’s the one person who actually does remember everything that happens in the loop: Julianna, the one person on Blackreef who poses a real challenge to Colt in a fight, and who loves murdering him at every opportunity. I won’t say anymore about the plot because it relies primarily on a series of reveals, but I will take the time to heap praise on Colt and Julianna. Colt is a rare example of a protagonist who constantly shit talks and cracks jokes in serious situations that’s actually really charming and smooth. He’s a combination of shrewd, tactical ruthlessness and being a big, dumb goof and I love him. Also he hates necks. Deathloop has the most thorough, brutal neckbreaks I’ve ever seen in anything. Julianna is playful, sassy and brutal; apparently Colt used to know who she is, and she’s desperately trying to make him remember or at the very least do something fresh for a change, and her chosen method is violent murder, which to her credit has apparently worked in the past. The back and forth between them is fantastic, and it spills into gameplay when she invades your game looking to take you out, but more on that later. The Visionaries don’t have a great deal going on; they’re targets first, characters second, but each one is entertaining, has a backstory and relationships with each other and Colt, not that he remembers.

After the prologue sets the scene and introduces the idea of herding your targets together to make your plan viable, it switches to an open approach. There are four areas of Blackreef and four time periods: morning, noon, afternoon and evening. The time of day affects the number and placement of enemies, traps, the presence or lack of a visionary and the general state of the environment. Obviously it gets dark in the evening, but once afternoon hits the isle becomes blanketed in thick snow, and as time goes on the locales become increasingly run down and dilapidated as the Eternalists (the faceless goons) start trashing the place knowing it’ll all be fixed by sunrise. The idea is to investigate each area looking for clues on what the Visionaries are up to and potential methods of getting them together, or otherwise kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible. It plays similarly to Arkane’s own Dishonored but with less of a focus on stealth. You can absolutely play through levels without being discovered; there’s an invisibility power, Dishonored’s Blink appears under a different name and there’s a silenced, one-handed SMG you can find really easily, but unlike its predecessor, Deathloop handles action more naturally in my opinion. Stealth feels like it’s there to give you an advantage; to pick off Eternalists, suddenly strike with extreme violence and then disappear when they turn up the heat, because Colt is surprisingly squishy and you can’t store healing items. Colt has three lives that are reset upon killing Julianna or leaving an area, which helps with the aforementioned squishiness. When the game starts you lose all your gear when the loop resets, but after the prologue you gain the ability to “Infuse” weapons, powers and upgrades with “Residuum”, a mysterious substance found in random objects scattered the maps, as well as dropped in large amounts by Visionaries and Julianna when they die. Anything you find placed in the levels will always be there, but enemies will drop randomised weapons and upgrades, or at least weapons with randomised perks. Any unused Residuum is lost upon exhausting Colt’s three lives or time looping, so you’re encouraged to repeatedly go after and kill the Visionaries to get different perks and upgrades to infuse and keep. Julianna can only invade on a map with a target present, and can be controlled either by the computer or a player; I completed the game with the former, and she barely puts up a challenge, unfortunately. After I beat it I dove back in with online mode switched on, and obviously the amount of challenge present varies but it feels more unpredictable, and like a fight between two skilled combatants rather than one skilled combatant and one slightly more dangerous regular enemy. She has access to every weapon, a range of perks and every power the Visionaries have, though she’s limited to the same loadout restrictions as Colt. Playing as her feels like the opposite side of the coin to Colt’s story; you’re encouraged to set traps and use her unique skill Masquerade, that lets her take the appearance of an enemy and have them look like her as a sort of living decoy. When I play Julianna I tend to stick around the map’s Visionary and act as a bodyguard and it’s a very different, though equally rewarding experience.

Deathloop is excellent; gameplay that feels like Dishonored but with more natural action and combat, an interesting presence well executed, two fantastic leads and online play I had a lot of fun with. Still amazed I managed to just play it on my laptop with minimal issue (though I’ve since switched to my xbone), and glad I finally got to play it at all. It was worth the wait and I’m looking forward to diving back in.

By James Lambert
@jameslambert18

Tekken: Bloodline Review

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this on here, but I love Tekken. It’s one of the first game series I ever really got into; I started with 2, I remember renting 3 and thinking it was incredible, and Tekken Tag was my first PS2 game. I even really liked 4, and I’ve never missed an entry since I first started. Although I prefer certain other fighting game series, Tekken will always have a special place in my heart. Tekken Bloodline is a Netflix original anime that covers the events of Tekken 3, which is a good starting point for an adaptation.

Bloodline keeps things brief and swift, which works to both its credit and detriment. The set up is good: Jun Kazama has moved out to the middle of the woods so that her son Jin will experience good before getting embroiled in the evil side of his heritage. She’s killed by the mysterious being “Ogre”, but not before she directs him to his grandad Heihachi Mishima, who trains him in the more aggressive, anger-fuelled Mishima-style karate to fight and defeat Ogre. In order to draw Ogre out, because he’s apparently drawn to fighting spirit, Heihachi announces the third King of Iron Fist tournament, and Jin enters. Then the anime just breezes through an entire roster of fighters, with the majority of the fights taking place off screen, which is a weird choice for a fighting game adaptation. Jin is school friends with Ling Xiaoyu and his relationship with Hwaorang is a friendly rivalry rather than Hwaorang hating Jin and wanting to beat the shit out of him. Paul and King are given some prominence and Nina has a brief role in the plot, but the likes of Yoshimitsu, Lei Wulong and Steve Fox (who’s here too early) are given quick cameos as their fights are quickly resolved off-screen. Given a great deal of prominence, weirdly, is the also here-too-early Leroy Smith, who’s here to air a personal grievance with Heihachi and receive both a broken leg and concerned sympathy from Jin to highlight Jin’s internal struggle between his Mum telling him to not give into his anger and his Grandad telling him to do the opposite. A later episode has Julia Chang in a similar scene that shows off Heihachi being a villain to her in a personal way, so I feel like Leroy could have been replaced with someone who was actually in Tekken 3. Eddy maybe? That would have been cool. Leroy’s beef isn’t even with Heihachi specifically in the game, just the Mishima Zaibatsu, so it could have easily been someone else. I thought Miguel might have worked, just switch the object of his vengeance from Jin to Heihachi. Anyway, that’s the biggest problem with this adaptation; it’s a game about a fighting tournament and most of said tournament goes unseen. There’s a funny moment where, when asked what’s different about this new Tekken Tournament, the weirdly old looking Paul says “Well for starters, I just had to fight a karate-practicing grizzly bear, and now I’m about to fight a jaguar man!”. Ignoring the fact that the original iterations of King and Kuma appeared in previous games, as does Paul, it would have been nice to see the battle between man and karate bear. The anime thinks just making a few references is enough, but it ends up feeling empty as a result. There’s also a weird plot point where King is ominously declared to be “Not who he says” because the King from previous tournaments was killed by Ogre, and this one has superhuman durability and a glowing green eye… Turns out there’s nothing weird going on; he’s King II from the games, and he’s just really, really tough for some reason. The story is rushed and empty, but it does end on a note that I actually really enjoyed. Move on to the next paragraph if you don’t want it spoilt. So, Jin fights True Ogre and taps into the devil gene, and Heihachi channels his arcade mode ending from the game and guns his grandson down. In his mind, Jin forlornly apologises to his beloved mother and gives into his anger; becoming Devil Jin, beating his grandfather to a pulp and flying off into the night, yelling in anguish as the moon turns blood red. No post-credits scene, no cameo from Kazuya, no set up for a potential second season, just a tragic conclusion to the ongoing plot about the battle for Jin Kazama’s soul.

Animation wise, I think I might have figured out why there are so few fights. Now, when a fight does occur, it looks rather good; characters use their moves from the game and have accurate hit sparks when their hits connect or are blocked. However, whenever they aren’t fighting characters move as little as they can get away with, and when they do have to move around their walk and run cycles are janky and awkward. I don’t know, maybe the lack of fights is a budgetary issue. It’s a shame if that’s the case, because as I said before; having an adaptation of a fighting game that skips so many fights is a poor adaptation. What’s here is good, but there needs to be more of it. Also everyone has this weird angular shadow over their faces, with light above and below it. I saw people call it out when the trailer first hit but I thought it wouldn’t bother me. It doesn’t *bother* me per se, but it is strange.

So that’s Tekken Bloodline; a decent approximation of Tekken 3 with some good fights and a surprisingly good ending, but a sparse, empty feeling due to said fights being few in number. Worth a look if you’re a fan of Tekken, but otherwise there’s not a lot here to recommend.

By James Lambert
@jameslambert18

Cult of the Lamb Review

Feels strange being on this side of a cult in a videogame. Same amount of excrement as there was in Eden’s Gate though. Right then, let’s get into it.

Cult of the Lamb is a sort of farming sim/roguelike hybrid in which you, the titular lamb, are saved from ritualistic sacrifice by an eldritch being in exchange for entering into its service. “The One Who Waits” is currently chained in place, and requires the lamb to start a cult in their name and use the ensuing power to slay four equally eldritch bishops of “The old faith” and break the chains they guard. That’s largely it for the story; it’s really just there to frame the gameplay, but the tone and presentation are rock solid. The dungeons through which you crawl are populated by mysterious, ominous beings who speak of a world once filled with gods who are no long dead. The bishops clearly have a history with your benefactor, particularly the fourth one in your path, whom the others fear to bother with this whole “killing you” business. The plot and its conclusion are dictated almost entirely by how you play the game, in a way that felt nicely organic to me.

Your time is split evenly between maintaining your cult’s premises and members, and tearing through dungeons slaughtering heretics. Upkeeping your cult is itself split into key components; firstly, keeping your followers fed and healthy by cooking food, building beds and cleaning up large amounts of shite and vomit. Secondly, harvesting their faith in you to unlock permanent upgrades for runs and new structures to let you plant crops, mine raw materials and things like that. Thirdly, giving sermons (for more permanent unlocks) and engaging in a variety of rituals, all of which are chosen from sets of two and let you broadly choose either a benevolent or iron-fisted approach to running your cult. This is where the gameplay organically dictating the flow of the plot comes in. The One Who Waits stresses that your cultists are expendable and there to be used to your advantage the way one would use any other resource. As the game went on and I built more structures, kept my flock fed and healthy, and buried them as they died of old age, I noticed I was choosing all the more benevolent rituals, and that I had grown attached to my congregation. Not massively, you understand, they’re all pretty bland and lacking in personality, but they were mine, and I looked after them. Also I named them after various AEW roster members, which helped. Maintaining your cult is surprisingly satisfying, and having you be in the service of an actual, existent eldritch god is a neat spin on games like this.

The other half of the gameplay is the roguelike, which takes cues from The Binding of Isaac in terms of everything but the combat, which is reminiscent of Hades. The layout of the map and the rooms feels like Isaac, the health system is the same, as do enemy attack patterns, but Lamb eschews ranged combat in favour of melee weapons complimented by one ranged special attack. You don’t find much in the way of modifiers for weapons and attacks; just speed and damage increases, and harvesting faith from your followers unlocks new types of the same set of melee weapons with different passive effects, like poison and critical hit chance. Each dungeon offers different routes through it; some rooms are combat gauntlets but others are filled with food, resources or new followers to rescue. Dying takes away a percentage of what you found and makes your flock’s faith in you take a hit, and these penalties can be remedied by a TOWW totem appearing in a dungeon, and unlocking the ability to cut your losses and bug out of the dungeon rather than dying. Completing a run successfully boosts your congregation’s faith, as does fulfilling their requests, building new structures and burying dead bodies, though the fastest way to do it is with the aformentioned rituals. I restarted early on because my faith kept falling faster than I could raise it, but I hit my stride early on in my second playthrough and from that point never struggled; there’s a fishing minigame you unlock near the end of the first bishop’s dungeon which combined with how cheap and easy farming is means you effectively have unlimited food. I had more cauliflower and fish than I knew what to do with, and on the rare occasion anyone got the hump and started talking shit about me, I just put them in the stocks and preached my gospel at them until they calmed down. You can also build cleaning and healing stations that mean your followers clean up their own waste and get rest when they’re sick, and you can set up farming stations to have them sow, water and harvest crops; all of this can be done while you’re away in dungeons. This adds to the charm your cult has; as it grows and you set things up it starts to feel like it’s own little community.

Cult of the Lamb is a fun mix of slaughtering non-believers in a variety of themed dungeons and starting a community in the middle of the woods with a bunch of stupid arseholes to either die or prove a very important point. The combat is simple but fun, and maintaining your cult is surprisingly engaging and satisfying. A neat premise well executed.

By James Lambert
@jameslambert18