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Pariah Review - PC

8th June 2005 by David Latham » Blog
8
Gameplay: 6 stars 6
Graphics: 8 stars 8
Audio: 7 stars 7
Multiplayer: 8 stars 8
Innovation: 8 stars 8
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Pariah has been a much awaited game for us here at GameBiz, promised to be a mesmerizing FPS that is comparative with Halo 2. It does have some pretty cool features, including nicely sized environments, plenty of vehicles, guns, and innovative healing. A map editor, multiplayer features, online features, and dynamic graphic capabilities, however Pariah has a certain feeling of being a rushed title and the quality of the game ultimately suffers because of this. Nevertheless, the game is out on the Xbox as well, and quality FPS’s are few and far between on the Xbox, but for the PC it seems it may be quite overwhelmed.

Gameplay

The first thing the average first-person-shooter fan will notice about Pariah is that it is incredibly similar to a lot of FPS’s that we’ve already played through and loved. Because of this, Pariah will never stand out as being a leading FPS game; however the online play may provide some enjoyment at least, as well as the map maker. Something very noticeable with Pariah is the A.I. They are incredibly stupid on an easy difficulty, and impossibly hard on a harder difficulty. What does this mean? It means on an easy difficulty, they usually don’t notice where you are if you run at them on the side, but if you run up from behind them, then all of a sudden they know where you are.

The bullets they shoot at you hurts you no matter how far away they shoot from, however your bullets you shoot at them from a distance barely make any difference. You don’t get a gun with a zoom until very far in to the game either, and the shut-gun weapon is practically useless unless you’re at point blank range, which is when the A.I. turns around and uses melee combat on you. On a harder difficulty though, the A.I. are more aware from every angle you approach them, and their bullets are deadly. So unless you have the patience of god himself, it’s doubtful you’ll be bothered fighting through the hardest difficulty in Pariah.

The environment is fairly interactive in Pariah. You come across parts where you can destroy the stone pillars surrounding you, and there are plenty of lifts and movable objects throughout the world of Pariah. There are on the other hand vehicles which move not really how you’d want them to. The vehicles almost feel like they’re attached to your mouse, and not in a good way. They barely slide at all, and when they flip over, it often becomes an effort to try to get it to spin back over.

The controls are fairly easy to learn, and are much better on the PC than on Xbox. The mouse provides a much more sufficient aiming system, and the number keys allow for faster changing of weapons, however the guns don’t seem to be all that powerful, and they just get annoying when trying to aim at the enemies. The main automatic weapon you use has far too (continued next page)
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