The year Quake was at its prime,
1997, Beyond Belief and Prodigy SE were perhaps
the biggest releases of the year. After just
playing through Beyond Belief the same day,
I was expecting Prodigy to be even better. It
loaded up and the start map looked great. I
then spawned into the first level to find a
very nice medieval/wizard type map. Unfortunately,
shells and nails weren't in high supply, so
I learnt early on that the GL and RL are the
weapons of choice. The rest of the levels went
along fine. There were many traps and ambushes,
and quite a few unique setups where you would
be stuck in a room with nowhere left to run.
The levels looked fantastic. There were many
setpieces such as a huge tower, or a beautifully
detailed entrance to a building. Each of the
levels all had a different style, all of which
was done very nicely. Not only that, but the
layouts were great. You find yourself crisscrossing
through areas back and forth opening new doors
and finding new monsters.
Unfortunately, PSE is not perfect.
There were a few times when I was stuck and
did not know what to do next. Such as the first
level where to access a lift you need to find
a tiny button hidden in the shadows on top of
the roof. Also, the third level doesn't even
work! You end up getting a texture collision.
This is easy enough to fix, and Dario knew about
it, but instead I was forced to load the last
level from the console. And finally, one more
big problem - though it is good to be able to
pick which of the four (or five if you find
the secret) levels you want to access, this
means there is no big final battle.
Otherwise, a fantastic pack
of levels that are quite a bit better than Dario's
future work on Half-Life.
