  For your information...that ain't a gun-mounted flashlight. |
Pariah is the latest sci-fi FPS offering from Canadian developers Digital Extremes. Combining their skills from the Unreal franchise with the Havok physics engine, a solid soundtrack and an immersive storyline yields a thoroughly enjoyable game.
Set in a futuristic Earth where the Military Alliance Security forces run a series of large prison facilities, you find yourself playing the role of Dr. Jack Mason, a medic with the Transgeninc Control Commission, who through a series of demotions from an otherwise promising career, finds himself babysitting the transport of a cyrocasket and its cargo. The cyrocasket contains Karina, the victim of a mysterious transgenic virus who is to be transported to an off-planet medical facility. Being shot down while on this run-of-the-mill mission kick-starts your adventure through a mixture of environments ranging from a lush forest to an industrial factories to a futuristic spacecraft where you attempt to save yourself, your patient and the world.
Pariah introduces a novel weapons system in which each weapon can be upgraded up to three times by collecting and installing Weapon Energy Cores (WECs) scattered throughout the game. These upgrades permanently increase your weapons performance and power by adding additional abilities such as increasing the rate of fire in the assault rifle, providing a very useful remote detonator to the grenade launcher, or adding a thermal vision scope to the sniper rifle amongst other things.
In addition to the novel weapons system is an interesting way of dealing with damage. You start out with four bars of health and when damaged you will lose a portion of one bar. If you can rest for a moment, without taking more damage, your bar of health will regenerate on its own. However, if you take more damage you will need to use your healing tool which, like the weapons in the game, can also be upgraded up to three times by installing WECs. The higher upgrade levels of the healing tool will also increase the amount of damage you can withstand.
There are four vehicles which will need to be used as you progress through the game. Each provides a different combination of agility, armour and offensive capability.
Online play is included and you will find yourself battling through many of the environments you went through in the single player mode as you battle against people either on a local network or over the Internet. The standard modes available are deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, as well as two new formats: front line assault and siege.
In front line assault, two teams battle to try and capture and retain a series of control points in an effort to destroy their opponent’s base and score points. As each control point is captured, the "front line" moves forward to the next control point. In siege, teams take turns defending and attacking a fortified position in order to see who can capture it the most often.
An interesting aspect introduced by Pariah in its multiplayer version is the concept of weapon loadouts. You can carry two weapons which you can change at any time but will not take effect until the next time you spawn at your base.
Overall the game is enjoyable, although apart from the upgradeable weapons system and weapon loadouts in the multiplayer, it is not groundbreaking. If you are a fan of the sci-fi action first person shooter, you will likely enjoy Pariah.
Minimum Hardware Requirements
CPU: Intel Pentium 3 or AMD equivalent
OS: Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP (95/NT not supported)
Memory: 256mb
Disk Space: 3gb
Video: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible 64mb hardware accelerated video card
Audio: Windows compatible sound system
CD-ROM: Quad Speed CD-ROM drive
Controls: Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP compatible mouse and keyboard
Internet: TCP/IP and LAN play are supported. 56k modem is the minimum
requirement.
