Exodus from the Earth, the latest first person shooter from publisher Strategy First, has a story idea I bet you haven't heard. In the near future, humanity's days are numbered due to an approaching disaster. With the survival of the Earth in question, the need for another life-sustaining planet is urgent. The military and big business clash, as both see the impending apocalypse as a means to seize control. And just when everything looks like it's going to hell in a Ziploc bag, a macho, wise-cracking special ops commando is called in to set things right. What? You mean you have heard that one before? Yeah, me too; like a thousand times. And when you've heard a story that many times, it's hard to get excited about it.
While exhibiting many of the traits of a well-designed FPS, Exodus from the Earth also shows symptoms of a terrible disease most often found in tiresome elderly relatives--monotonitis. Not only that, the game is so uneven that while playing it, my analysis inevitably became a game of "On one hand, on the other hand."
Worse yet, during the first third of the game I was convinced that the apathy of the writers had bled over to the art team and level designers. Weapons, environments and characters were all standard FPS fare. You have your pistol, shotgun, railgun, grenades; your henchmen, commandoes, jumpsuited workers cowering in fear; your corporate offices, air shafts, warehouses and utility tunnels; your dead enemies dropping health packs and ammo, and leaving important access cards lying randomly on storage room shelves.
On the other hand, in spite of the unambitious narrative and ho-hum starting gameplay, it's not all bad news. The game hits its stride after about the first third; in fact, I was surprised at the latter part's length and variety. Boss battles reflect the progression of the larger game; the first being a typically contrived and annoying multi-stage fight, the later ones being more complex confrontations that require cunning as well as fast reflexes. By game's end, you'll use equal parts wits and weaponry to fight your way to the extremely challenging final phase.
The difficulty of Exodus from the Earth ramps up logically; the first levels give you a feel for your weapons and the enemy AI, and on medium difficulty are just challenging enough. As you go along and environments become bigger and more complex, the game gets markedly harder and that could be a problem for some players. What's great is the development team knew that being shot from all sides panics some of us, so they made it possible for us to swap difficulty settings at any time. Jittery types be mindful; difficulty settings in this shooter consist mainly in the number of available health packs and ammo as opposed to fewer enemies or easier AI.
The unrealistically interactive environments are a headache in this game. In recent years, gamers want increasingly realistic worlds where everything's destructible and they can work through scenarios in a variety of ways. For performance reasons, games can't be like the real world but it helps when designers find believable ways to disguise the game's limitations. For instance, it makes sense if a bridge is blown out and you can't jump the gap. It doesn't make sense if a stack of cardboard boxes is impervious to a handful of grenades.
In addition to the chaotic, gun-centric parts of the game, you'll enjoy a good number of situational puzzles in a wide variety of interior and exterior locations that take actual thought to solve. And it's hard to get bored with the scenery because it's always changing. Good thing too, because even on the highest settings the graphics of the game are not spectacular. They're competently done but everything has the simplest of textures and effects.
On the other hand, the awful localization may be the biggest element of inadvertent entertainment value in the game. I found myself laughing out loud at the totally weird loading screen text. For your enjoyment, an excerpt: "To get me out from my vacation and tell about the end of the world - that's all about my boss. I last time saved the world one and a half year ago, and as far as I remember, I didn't do it quite well. The cheap microchip saved the world! And now this Crizby, the A.X., and the sun which is eager to burn us."
The only thing funnier than reading this kind of dialog is hearing it. The characters are fairly well acted (aside from some weird long pauses between lines) but are prone to the same absurd dialect. If nothing else pulls you through the game, wanting to know what kind of crazy dialog you'll hear next probably will.
After juggling the pros and cons of the game from one hand to the other, I find I'm still ambivalent about it. I depend on a game's fiction to make me finish it and Exodus from the Earth nearly scared me away upon install. I mean, let's face it; the sci-fi, end-of-the-world thing has been used almost as often as Michael Jackson's prosthetic nose, and just like that nose, every time it's applied, it just looks worse. With its solid game design undermined by a cliché story, mediocre graphics and poor localization, Exodus from the Earth is a study in failed potential. The last two-thirds of the game may contain some interesting ideas and good gameplay but many gamers may never see that, having been put off by the shabbily-handled beginning. Let's hope Parallax Art Studio has the opportunity after this to offer us a better title.
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