Gloomwood, the Thief spiritual forebear, dares to stray away from Looking Glass’ specific vision of steampunk, and it’s doing great on Early Access so far. Something other than hellspawn on a space station, is what I’m getting at.īecause surely the appeal of Prodeus isn’t inexorably bound to looking like Doom. Taking all the technical wizardry that turns boring old Unity into some breathtaking hybrid of disparate eras, all the knack it has for pacing and gunplay, and applying it to a new place. I’d love to see this developer build its own canon. Whereas Dusk, the holy grail of the retro game, feels like the ubiquitous ‘90s shooter that never was, full of its own peculiarities that could have featured in any game at the time, but happened not to, Prodeus isn’t about similar sharp cultural observations. Where it sits in the wider canon of retro shooters – ‘boomer shooters’ as some like to call them – depends on where you draw the line between inspiration and imitation. It wants you to feel like you’re playing Doom on nightmare and breezing it. Enjoyment is placed absolutely at the fore, in front, even, of challenge. It’s hardly ‘Would you kindly…’ from the aforementioned Bioshock, but in the moment it feels both enormously big and extremely clever.Īnd that’s the tone that prevails though Prodeus’ campaign. The rest of that level is simply tight corridors stuffed with improbable numbers of foes for you to turn to jam with your new toy. The first time Prodeus gives you a minigun, you claw it out of the hands of a new enemy with a silhouette like a Big Daddy, and the entire room opens up into an enormous shooting gallery. (A trope taken to its logical conclusion by Strafe ’s infamous commercial). I had quite subconsciously adopted the exact posture of the kids in those ‘90s gaming adverts, the ones almost literally blown away by the sheer intensity of the action onscreen. The first time I played it, I noticed that I was actually arching my back in my chair, like powerlifters do before a bench press. (Image credit: Bounding Box Software Inc.)īoy, is it intense.
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