Pariah is a sci-fi first-person shooter from the team behind the Unreal franchise, Digital Extremes. The game focuses on a robust immersive storyline that weaves survival elements into the traditional run-and-gun style of first-person action games. According to the publisher, unsurprising will be the graphic marvel and fine-tuned gameplay of Pariah, a trademark gamers have come to expect from any Digital Extremes game. Not straying too far from their roots, Digital Extremes built Pariah with the latest version of the technologically powerful Unreal engine 2 by Epic Games.
I don't understand why people hated this game. I had a lot of fun with it on PC and on the Xbox. There should be mods for this game.
7 is the max I can give this game and I'm really being generous here. I'd settle on 6.5 but 7 maybe for the xbox version even though I haven't played it. The Windows version is esentially a port of the xbox game and even lacking some features. Which is really sad. this uses the same branch of the engine that UT Avaris(the project that turned into unreal championship 2) started using after ut2003 was done, which is where the developement of this started and I have reasons to believe (not confirmed unlike with uwarfare and devastation) that it used to be part of the unreal franchise until at least a year in developement or so. I believe it started as an expansion for the then in developement unreal warfare but james schmalz and co got sick of the brand and after splitting off for good with epic they turned it into something else something more original or so they thought. But it still uses the same ideas that warfare had. I heard people liken this game to unreal 2 while they don't realize that (sadly enough) the slow player speed and generic shooter stuff was incorporated from warfare when they switched to that engine from the ue1 days. Warfare was an important milestone and served as an idea/content resource kind of like star trek phase 2 however just as phase II as a game it sucked just as phase II probably sucked as a series and it was a positive thing it turned into gears of war.
In this game the Shroud are essentially just renamed Geist from early Unreal Warfare, there's no point going around this issue. Yes they turned into locust but that's way later. Before that they were like technology based Necris with hints of Strogg. I played the early 2003 demo of unreal warfare and the late 2004 early ue3 demo which was practically gears already.
I honestly only liked the early versions which never leaked in any form and were partly seen on the 2000 tech demo video and some 2001 stuff wasn't too bad either. The leaked demo has parts of the gdc 2002 presentation. And that already had a theme change and was honestly a bit too pretentious for my taste.
Then comes Pariah and takes a lot of those concepts and puts it into a strange "edgy gone wrong" game. When I first played the game I thought the way you survive the crash is a joke. It reminded me of Lost but even more unrealistic. Seriously, are you some kind of supersoldier to survive such a crash with everything burned around? Even Unreal wasn't so unbelievable.
So yes I remember actually drawing comparisons back then to the series Lost because of how ridiculously unrealistic it was. But an an Xbox game I think its okay and honestly the menus are the same but the xbox ones make sense with the controller and all and the pc ones lack something and there's too much letterboxing and the xbox version has coop...?
I remember making fun of the end where I joked about Star Wars to my friend. Because suddenly the necris..err the geist..I mean SHROUD turn into darth maul sith lord stuff. You can't make this up. I mean all due respect to DE for inventing Unreal and all that but c'mon guys this went a little bit weird. Yea I know Unreal ripped Alien, Predator and other stuff but well here it was done little less gracefuly.
The upgradable weapons are nice and is something that comes from original unreal where it was a little underdeveloped, as only one upgradable weapon was in the game in the end. This game also contains what is basically the bonesaw that was planned for unreal as a default melee weapon. The rest of the weaponry, the assault rifle is kinda like the one in warfare/gears but without the saw, which only came with gears anyway but the gatling guns for geist had planned circular blade extending beyond the barrels for some gory mixing...
okay well beyond that it also has some vehicles which were also a thing for warfare planned in similar manner and at least two of the vehicles do bear resemblance to what was developed.
It also has a grenadelauncher weapon which also was in warfare that could fire at least two types and a rocket, while here the upgrades give it a detonator part and all that.
The plasma gun, forgot what it was called now exactly, is kind of similar to the warfare pulsegun which had basically identical reloading similar to doom 3's plasma rifle. the "altfire" reminds of what was planned for warfare together with the projectiles being white/blueish as opposed to what was common with ut back then. The rest of the weapons don't bear that much resemblance but there are still some hints seen there.
But the plot of this game is bloody ridiculous. How many times does the game tell you "find karina". It should have been the title of the game. Find Karina. then the game kills you off at the very end and there was a sequel in developement that turned into multiplayer spinoff due to disappointing sales of Pariah. Spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff. Oh and Doom 2016 managed to somehow rip that one off. Bravo. total obscurity for that one.