Prodeus

Boom and bust

There have been many occasions where I start a game that’s available on Xbox Game Pass but then fail to get back to it; usually due to a lack of time rather than interest; and I inevitably rue my lack of urgency when a title I wanted to play leaves the service. I was determined not to let the same fate befall Prodeus and managed to complete the retro first-person shooter before it had the opportunity to slip through my itchy trigger fingers.

I first dipped into Prodeus in 2022 and was instantly enamoured by its unapologetically faithful homage to nineties-era first-person shooters. Similar to many other boomer shooters, often affectionately (or unaffectionately depending on who you ask) referred to as DOOM clones, Prodeus is basically the spawn of DOOM and Quake if id Software had access to modern-day technology three decades ago. Prodeus stays true to the genre’s roots and focuses on over-the-top, bloody, fast-paced action whilst making the most of modern lighting and rendering techniques.

Just like most boomer shooters, Prodeus knows its audience and is made for and advertised to those of us who have grown weary of modern-day shooters that seem to eschew entertainment in service of realism and po-faced narratives. Even DOOM Eternal failed to capitalise on what made DOOM 2016 so special; overburdening the follow-up with perfunctory mechanics and skill trees (I’m still bitter if you couldn’t tell). Prodeus on the other hand gets straight to the action. It takes an excruciating twenty or so seconds before you’re handed your first weapon and then the game just rolls on from there. No hand-holding, no excessive tutorialisation, no story (that’s worth paying attention to anyway), no cutscenes, no filler, no fuss.  

Prodeus has around twenty campaign levels (with a few time trials thrown in between), each taking around 15-30 minutes each, probably longer if you feel inclined to find all the secrets in each level, which will give you access to additional weapons and movement abilities. Levels are what you’d expect if you’ve ever played DOOM or Quake with you zipping through arenas, close-quarter corridors and towering facilities finding keycards to open previously locked passages while mowing down hordes of enemies and turning them into a red pixelated mist. The game inexplicably gives you the option to aim down your sights (safe to say I shot from the hip throughout the entire game) but shooting feels satisfying for the most part, although I wish there was a bit more weight and punch to some of the weapons; namely the shotguns.

Whilst Prodeus starts off on a high note, it fails to improve from there; in fact I’d argue my enjoyment had a downward trajectory the further I progressed through the game. There’s not enough diversity in the appearance of the levels nor the enemy types; the level design becomes busier and less intelligible the further you go; and, worst of all, the difficulty becomes increasingly wayward. I played the first two thirds of the game on Hard difficulty and even then the challenge was mostly lacking but by the time I reached the final third, playing on normal was sometimes a struggle in itself. There doesn’t appear to be any intelligent scaling or balancing to the difficulty such as better enemy pathing, awareness or AI. Instead enemies just inflict more damage and become insanely efficient sharpshooters. All of these issues are mitigated by a host of (gratefully included) accessibility options and generous checkpointing but by this point Prodeus had already been relegated to the pile of ‘just another boomer shooter’ and I had already resigned to the fact that nothing in Prodeus would ever come close to the heart-racing thrills I experienced playing DOOM (2016).  

So yes, whilst few games make killing 2D sprites in 3D environments look this good, dynamic lighting and pixel shaders aren’t everything and if you’re looking for more depth from your boomer shooter, maybe look elsewhere. If you’ve had even one eye on the PC gaming space these last few years, you’ll know there’s been a resurgence of boomer shooters and it won’t take you long to find one. They all blur together in my head and I honestly couldn’t tell you where one ends and the next begins. Is Prodeus different from the rest? Not at all but really that’s no bad thing - it’s an entertaining, albeit mindless diversion for times when all you want to do is disengage your brain and shoot shambling enemies with a Big F*cking Gun.

Other musings: 

• Kinda miffed that the same day Prodeus left Game Pass was the same day this wicked-looking DLC was announced. They could have at least waited a week…    

• Instead of making an ill-advised decision of purchasing Prodeus just to play the DLC, I could always just play the Quake II remaster that was recently dropped on Game Pass. 

• Speaking of Quake, here’s a cool little piece about a 1997 all-women Quake tournament. Stevie "Killcreek" Case was part of it whose interesting rise to fame I first read about in the excellent Masters of Doom.

• Which reminds me…I would very much like to get round to reading John Romero’s autobiography Doom Guy, which I pre-ordered last year, forgot about, and is now collecting dust on my bookshelf. There aren’t enough hours in the day.