Prodeus Reviews
Prodeus is a top-notch old-school first-person shooter that takes what made the classics great and amplifies it with fitting modernizations.
An okay port of an amazing game
Support for fan-made levels can potentially expand your experience somewhat but the option to create your own is missing from this version. Performance on Switch isn't flawless but it is still very playable and looks great the whole time. While it struggles to find its own identity along the way, and comes off more as an elaborate mod or a fan game than a title of its own, Prodeus does still stand as an solid though unoriginal shooter.
Prodeus is a noble tribute to the original Doom with plenty of action, excellent stylized visuals, and great level design. However, the brief campaign grows repetitive as the mechanics don't evolve beyond the basics, and multiplayer is unfortunately empty.
All in all, it’s safe to say Prodeus is a great game on a good path. Despite having some pacing problems and questionable design choices, it’s clear that the developers have put much love and attention into every aspect of it. And if you finish the campaign and still yearn for more, there is always a huge array of creative community created maps and a powerful built-in level editor tool, supported by people who seem to truly care about the community.
Prodeus is self-consciously an old-school shooter, and it does a good job in replicating the frenetic, explosive gunplay and oppressive atmosphere of classic 90’s FPS titles like Doom and Quake. Sadly, beyond some interesting aesthetics, it doesn’t really stake out much of an identity of its own. The lack of any real story, worldbuilding or unique gameplay mechanics stops Prodeus short of being something really special. Still, if you’d like a game where you can switch off your brain and just exercise your trigger finger, Prodeus provides a great world to blast your way through.
Prodeus travels down well-worn territory but does so covered in substantially more red (and blue) goo. Its mix of modern effects and retro visuals coalesce well and give it enough of its own identity that’s bolstered by its buckets of blood.
I certainly can’t claim Prodeus is a bad game, it just left me thoroughly underwhelmed. Perhaps this encapsulates the underlying issue with the desire to create a game whose primary ambition is to recreate the feeling of playing older titles.
Bounding Box delivers an anachronistic high-wire act, and the perhaps the best shooter outright since Doom Eternal.