Pariah was released in 2005 for the original Xbox. At this point in time a lot of developers were working on Xbox 360 hardware and Microsoft were already turning lukewarm towards its first console in anticipation of the 360's release. However, I wasn't: I bought my Xbox in December 2004 and bought Pariah probably sometime around 2006 or 2007. I didn't think of getting a 360 until 2009.
Pariah used a modified version of the Unreal Engine, present in about 99.99% of first person shooters at the time. Wikipedia's entry for the game says that the reviews were "mixed". Hmmm.
Metacritic's critic score is 70% and user score is 75%. One review even goes so far as to say it was the next best thing to Halo on the Xbox.
I seem to recall playing a preview of Pariah from an Official Xbox Magazine cover disc. I booted it up for five minutes, noted the bad texture of some of the plants on the ground, and had something else to do so stopped playing. I had forgotten this by the time I came around to buying Pariah (second hand, cheap) so did not know what to expect.
Pariah is a first person shooter set in the year 2520 and is the story of Jack Mason who is a medic (although seems to have extensive combat experience). Earth is in the after-effects of a war with "The Shroud" with much of the planet a wasteland called "The Zone" where only crazed ex-convicts live (so far, so Judge Dredd). It is not revealed who The Shroud are - aliens? - but Earth is now under the control of the Alliance government, which is based in offworld colonies which are never seen throughout the whole game.
Mason is transporting a prisoner named Karina to the Alliance HQ by some sort of aeroplane when they are attacked and shot down in The Zone. It turns out that Karina is infected with a virus which Mason contracts. This virus has unique abilities and can cause the infected person to release energy blasts, inflicting huge damage. The ex-convicts, called Scavengers, attack and try to capture Karina, but Mason fights them off. He then contacts his bosses in the Alliance who then turn up and capture Karina. Mason goes to rescue her, has a showdown with the boss of the Alliance, who is also infected with the virus, defeats him and then frees Karina.
It turns out the Karina is a biological weapon, designed by The Shroud and hence why she is captured by the Alliance. After Mason frees her, I really thought the game would end, as Karina talks of spending time alone with Mason. But instead the game does an alarming about-face and reveals that Mason has been working for The Shroud all the time. The Shroud have the ability to bring the dead back to life and Mason wants his long-dead daughter brought back. I can still remember the horrific cutscene where this is all revealed and Mason betrays Karina by handing her over to The Shroud. However, The Shroud do not fulfil their part of the bargain, and Mason storms in to free Karina, using some new found powers. He eventually reaches her, but the cutscene which serves as the end of the game reveals that Mason, despite having fought his way through to reach her, suddenly feels that there is no way out. He shoots himself, and Karina, so heartbroken, releases an energy blast so powerful it destoys the whole Shroud base.
The strange thing about this game is that I remember so little about the story. Having watched a few videos on youtube, I can remember the levels, but most of the story above is from the entry on wikipedia. I had no idea what was going on most of the time. I have a strong feeling that Pariah was rushed to release it before Microsoft stopped selling original Xboxes - certainly there are enormous holes in the plot which need to be filled in with guess work. I had no idea that Mason had a daughter until the game revealed it before the final level.
As a shooter, the game works reasonably well - the Unreal Engine is a good engine, and there is nothing really in Pariah that is broken. Men with guns run at you, and you shoot them. Most reviews pointed to the healing system as interesting, but really it is very similar to Halo's regeneration, with health gradually being restored after time. The only difference is that the health bar is divided into segments; once a segment is depleted, it can only be restored with a health pack.
Generally, for an Xbox game, it was functional with its graphics. Nothing amazing, but nothing that made me laugh. There are a lot of browns and greys, but then it is a mid 2000s fps. But the game as a whole felt very odd to me: each level could almost have been from a different game, and with the lack of exposition I could have been playing five different demos stuck together. Some would say that is a good thing: certainly critics of Halo CE lament it's corridors as they all look the same. But I just felt very disjointed playing this game. As I hope will become clear during my reviews, I play games for the story as well as enjoyment, and one of the critical elements for me is a believable world, particularly in any game with a continuing storyline. However, Pariah never really bothered to create any kind of plot nor world, and the sudden jump between levels - now you're fighting this group, then this other group, now possibly aliens - left me feeling I was merely playing the game to shoot ragdoll men.
The final level is the oddest of all. As far as I can tell, The Shroud are not revealed until then, and the look of them changes the whole thing from being a military fps to a space marine fps. The weapons are all different at this point, and I swear that the game handled differently too. The Shroud characters are like nothing seen in the game up to that point - hairless skin people with incredible technology. It almost felt like the developers were saying, 'Hey, look, we can do interior corridor shooting, exterior shooting with grass, human shooting, alien shooting, whatever you want.' To me, it wasn't a coherent game - just a collection of different levels.
However, what irritated me the most was that damn ending. Having devoted perhaps 7 or 8 hours to the game, the ending was an insult. Mason, after a long fight with The Shroud, reaches Karina and attempts to free her. Karina asks him to kill her as she knows she cannot be freed from the machine that she is attached to. A mechanical noise is heard approaching and Mason seems to quickly decide that he can't beat The Shroud soldiers now converging on his position, so he kills himself. Karina blows everyone else up in her grief. And that's the end of the game.
I could not believe it - I just had beaten The Shroud - why could I not go and beat them some more? Having thought about it, perhaps Mason was not in the best psychological state - he came to the realisation that he would not be getting his daughter back after all. So maybe, maybe, he was in deep grief himself. However, the game seemed to be placing emphasis on the fact that Mason would not be able to defeat the soldiers approaching him, which I found insulting. The game is set up as a challenge and I had beaten that challenge and was looking forward to the ending, but the game seemed to be saying that I could never beat it. As the ending of a movie or book I could accept this, but in an interactive video game this seemed to be a real cop-out ending.
It's strange. I finished the game, so must have enjoyed playing it somewhat, but all I can remember is that ending, shooting myself with my own gun. For me, it ruined the game. It felt rushed and while certain aspects of the game were competent, the game as a whole felt too much like a demo; which oddly is how I was introduced to the game in the first place.
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