What's Good About Prodeus

I’m not going to lie, this was originally about Slime Rancher 2. But then I remembered that Prodeus came out Early Access, so I scrapped that in favour of playing and talking about Prodeus again. And it’s not that Slime Rancher 2 is bad or anything, it’s fine. It’s good. But I am also not that big on farming games so that would have been an exercise in annoyance. So we’re looking at the opening of the full release of Prodeus.

The first thing that jumped out at me is that my campaign progress was wiped to coincide with their 1.0 release. Normally, I would be miffed about this, but I’m not this time. This is mainly because Prodeus introduces several changes to both the game’s overall structure and even changes to the levels themselves. The reason I bring this up is that a common criticism of early access as a method of development is that outside of the introduction of new systems and more content, the game in development is more or less feature-complete. And I can see that, which is why some of the games I think fit the early access mold the best are roguelikes; games that can completely overhaul a good chunk of their mechanics between the beginning and the end of early access. I‘m seeing it with Darkest Dungeon 2, which recently revamped all of its meta-progression systems in its most recent update this week; we also saw it with Hades, which iterated on it’s mechanics, introduced new weapons and boon types (with a good chunk of them being community suggestions to boot!), and most important to that game, we saw more and more of its narrative be introduced and fleshed out. This is the case of what’s happened with Prodeus, as the game has introduced a few mechanics that I’m going into right now that change the way the game works.

The biggest of these is the weapon shops. Prodeus, with the release of 1.0, has introduced the inclusion of levels on the world map that allows for the purchasing and testing of weapons. The first of these is the Quad Barrel Shotgun and the Plasma Rifle that were in the Early Access build. While I was initially against this, I've come around to it because it can allow for some interesting sequence breaking for the acquisition of new weapons earlier. And with the way the levels have been set up, you can still get these weapons in the intended order if you want to experience the power curve as it was designed originally. It’s not bad, it’s different and I kind of like that. What I don’t like so far is the Ore currency. These were introduced as a means of incentive-izing using the weapon shop as a reward for secret hunting. And while that does work in its favour, I’m not a fan of it personally because I’m bad at hunting secrets. This shouldn’t matter in the long run because the weapons can still be found, I just think this is worth mentioning.

And speaking of weapons, while there are still the ones mentioned in the early access build, there are several new ones: the Auto Shotgun, which is exactly what it sounds like, a Chaos Caster that fires out orbs of magma-like energy, a Swarm Launcher that fires clusters of micro missiles and has an alt-fire that would be right at home in Macross, a beefed up plasma launcher that has what can only be described as “Fuck You” sized projectiles that can be oriented in vertical and horizontal lines like the plasma cutter in Dead Space, and what looks like a demonically possessed hand cannon that can chunk holes into fuckers. I love it. And this is on top of there being new upgrades like a double jump, dash and bandolier for increased ammo capacity, these can also be bought, but in upgraded forms. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that the game actually changed up the designs of a lot of the earlier levels to accommodate for the new secrets that were added with the full release. I like the changes because it gives me a new experience with these levels with different layouts and enemy placements keeping me on my toes for the most part.

But the question lies: Is Prodeus still a go-of fucking course it is, do I even need to go in-depth? I mean, I am. But only because I want to. The game still feels like the same rad first-person shooter that was there in the early access build when I first played it last summer. And if you read that piece (and why haven't you? It’s rad), then you would know that I fucking LOVED Prodeus. So much so that I said that when it releases fully, it’s automatically added to the Game of the  Year list in the year it comes out. Which it is for 2022. It’s still the same fast-but-heavy feeling FPS game that I initially fell in love with last year, but with some extra stuff added on. And an observation I made that seems to have really caught on is that it’s the wettest shooter ever. And I mean that in the sense that there’s just blood everywhere after you fight stuff. The key examples of this are when Prodeus introduces the Pistol, Minigun and Super Shotgun and gives you a bunch of low-level zombies to just mow through to feel powerful. It’s the best. And this also goes for the soundtrack, still done by Metal Maestro and Purveyor of fine Waste Receptacles Andrew Hulshult. It still provides the perfect sound to Prodeus, which is to say, industrial as fuck, but there’s more of it. And it’s great.

Having now played the full game, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Prodeus is one of the best games of 2022 AND the best Single Player First Person Shooter since Doom Eternal. It’s practically tied with Elden Ring for my favourite game of the year. And you have to be really special to do that these days.