Pariah on vista

Karina isn't your scantily-clad female with big boobs. Jack isn't the typical asskicker guy. He's balding a little; he's got no background in weaponry. Even though they've crash-landed and have to fight for survival in the forest, he finds it difficult to trust her. Of course, we could talk about the story all day, but it doesn't tell you much about gameplay.

From what we've seen, think Halo - especially in the use of vehicles - and possibly Far Cry, as Pariah is set 80 per cent outdoors. There's also a strong nod to Half-Life in the way the story elements are integrated, with minimal use of cut-scenes and a strong sense of pace. Standard run-and-gun sections are interspersed with short on-rails shooting sequences and free- roaming vehicular jaunts.

We've got single, two-man and four-man varieties - six in total, though we may add more. As you'd expect from the creator of Unreal Tournament, Pariah also boasts a full multiplayer component.

It seemed slightly skewed towards an Xbox audience when we played it, but nonetheless offers a few interesting features. For a start, there are two new multiplayer game types: Siege and Front Line Assault. Siege sees you and your mates trying to protect a base from an onslaught of Al opponents, while FLA is a team-based game centred on capturing control points - similar to Advance And Secure in Joint Ops.

Classic modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and CTF are also in the mix, but with a new gameplay device to help keep things fresh. Says James: We wanted to have all the familiarity there but with a different spin, so we've introduced upgradeable weapons. All the standard FPS weapons are used - the shotgun, the rocket launcher and so on - that's what people are used to. However, we didn't just want to do the same thing over again.

So, all the weapons in both single- and multiplayer are upgradeable through two or three levels, using pick-ups known as Weapon Energy Cores or WECs - left behind when you kill an enemy see Tweak Your Tool', opposite. Using a popup menu, you can choose to upgrade your weapon, increase your dash time a standard sprint function , top up your health or boost your shield: Though we may change the health in favour of increased ammo capacity," muses James.

The idea is, you have to think strategically about what to spend your upgrades on: whether it's a more powerful rocket launcher, a silencer for your sidearm or a stronger shield. What this gives us in the multiplayer games is the ability to grow into the role you want to play, says James.

Instead of picking a class at the start of a game, like medic or engineer, you work on developing the tools you need for it as you're playing. If you want to be a medic, you focus on upgrading your healing tool - the final upgrade of which allows you to resurrect your team-mates.

The first two levels are more functional, says James. So the grenade launcher upgrades to a poison grenade, the sniper rifle gets a heat-vision scope. So you get things that make your weapons more functional, without necessarily being more deadly. It may sound cumbersome, but the process happens quickly in multiplayer matches - a matter of seconds or minutes, though WECs are significantly harder to come by in the solo campaign. It really adds a different flavour to the multiplayer game, grins James.

We wanted to get away from people running routes through the game, knowing the timing of when pick-ups were going to spawn. Now you have to confront enemy and kill them before you get a pick-up.

It's a far more strategic way of handling things. While this may well be true, we suspect that these features will ultimately be far more interesting in the single-player game, where you have more than a split-second to think about how to distribute your WECs.

Indeed, we can't help but think that Pariah's multiplayer game is a bit too console-oriented to have much of an impact on the PC - we'll wait and see. In the meantime, Pariah's true power remains a mystery. With so much emphasis on things that must remain secret to preserve the experience the plot , or that must be experienced at length to be fully appreciated the emotional aspect of the storyline , it's nigh-on impossible for us to truly assess the game.

Despite that rather large caveat, one thing we can say for sure is: if Digital Extremes gets it right. Pariah could be a revelation.

The first-person shooter genre is full of outdated conventions dating back to the early days of the form - warehouses full of crates, mysteriously roomy air con ducts, chainsaws in space stations and of course, the good ol' exploding barrel. The latter items feature quite heavily in Pariah, but rather than making excuses, the lads at Digital Extremes have decided to have a bit of fun with them.

So we've got these barrels full of fuel, and of course you can tip them over, you can blow them up and it's all physics-based; but you can also shoot them and poke a hole in the side. Then, if you push one over, you can roll it around wherever you want, leaving a path of fuel behind. And when you shoot the fuel, this huge wall of flames shoots up. Seeing a rudimentary version of this trick in action, we can't help thinking of old Looney Tunes episodes. Exactly," laughs James. But it's got so many cool gameplay uses.

You can create a path of flames, set traps, cut off pursuers and funnel enemies where you want them. It's the ultimate barrel experience. Jack Mason has been given yet another milk run. Assigned to escort a virus-infected prisoner between prisons in the not-so-distant future, Mason finds himself with yet another boring assignment at the twilight of his once illustrious career.

However, after his transport plane is struck by a well-fired SAM missile, Jack and his now awakened Typhoid Mary find themselves confused, lost, and behind enemy lines.

Pariah , the futuristic first-person shooter from Groove Games, seems to have all of the elements of the more successful adventure-based shooters out there, such as Doom 3 , Unreal Tournament , Halo , and Half-Life. But how does it stack up against these heavyweights in the FPS world?

Let's look at the good first: For graphics, Pariah uses a modified Havok engine, which has been very successful with Unreal Tournament, among others. This makes for crisp skins, 'rag doll'? Performance-wise, the Pariah is in a league of its own. It excels in the Sports class, more than the likes of the Elegy RH8 , Neo , and Jugular , and would be competitive in the Supers class.

Despite being powered by what seems to be a large displacement inline-4 engine, it has supercar-levels of engine power, giving it unusually high top speed and acceleration. Its sheer power output also brings about a lot of wheelspin off the line and around corners, requiring a bit more throttle control than most sports cars.

Handling is decent, although traction loss is often experienced when going over bumps. It also has a tendency to have minor body roll due to its light weight.

Overall, these traits make the Pariah the recommended choice for Sports class races with more straight sections and smoother roads. More technical tracks may call for better handling and cornering ability, in which case the Itali GTO or Comet SR would be a better choice.

On especially tight tracks, quickly-accelerating cars like the Imorgon or Neon could outpace the Pariah. The engine sound is a higher-revving version of the Specter 's engine sound. The only land vehicles with higher top speeds are the BF when doing a wheelie, or those with boost functions i. As mentioned above, the car uses a twin-cam 4-cylinder engine with an air filter on the intake, coupled to a 5-speed gearbox and powering the rear wheels.

Its engine sound is very similar to the one used in cars like the Coquette and the Jester , albeit edited with the engine sound used in cars like the Comet and the Tailgater , barely heard on higher engine revolutions. Rear quarter view. GTA Wiki Explore. The Games. The Vehicles. Community Noticeboard About Staff Promotion.

Media Trivia Talk page rules Blocking. Explore Wikis Community Central. Sherman View Profile View Posts. So i bought a disk copy of pariah today, no it is not pirated or copied before anyone asks. Showing 1 - 15 of 26 comments. Try navigating through the disc contents from Computer; then looking for the main "Install" or "Setup". Sometimes the OS will simply block the auto-run, and thus the product appears to no longer work properly.

Originally posted by Bad-Motha :. Do you have any anti-virus suite running? And you shouldn't need any "compatability modes" Just "run as admin" With online searches of that game; No issues finding info for that game related to; Game History; Patch Updates; Config Tweaks Not finding anything to indicate possibles issues related to Win7; aside from a few things related to game crashing.

Quite normal to see such info though. Wish I could be more help to u.