Epidemic

If you google "epidemic psx review" you'll get a couple of 1/2 star reviews citing this game as the worst of the worst. In reality and historic context, it's not that bad.

Epidemic is the definition of "corridor shooter". You never venture outside. The environments consist of sewers and labyrinthine offices. Most of the 7 missions are key hunts. There are maybe five puzzles in the whole game and three of them are on the last level. The maps aren't huge and you can only save between missions. Even with that handicap the game is not hard as you're given plenty of ammo and never really encounter more than one or two enemies at a time and you're almost never caught off guard due to a beeping that gets more frequent as you get closer to enemies. Most levels end with a boss but they're just exercises in strafing and unloading your precious missiles.

There's a good deal of unnecessary exploration involved as there's a lot of rooms with no purpose other than providing health or ammo or being a trap for enemies to not ambush you at because your beeping radar lets you know what's behind the door before you open it. I spent about three hours total on the entire game and that was exploring just about every nook and cranny in it so if you know where you're going, I imagine the game would only last an hour at best.

The enemies are somewhat varied. They're all blocky 3D and come in a variety of shapes, some bipedal walkers, most float around, and there's a couple of stationary turrets. They're all rock stupid and follow some set patrol pattern around the level so they're easy to sneak up on. The bosses are just as unimaginative. Most are stationary robots that aren't a whole lot different from your standard enemies except that they have a lot more hit points and shoot a lot more.

You get a cutscene between every mission, before you enter the mission, before a boss, and after a boss and nearly all of them are god awful. The voice overs are okay without too much over acting but the renders of people are hideous. The boss destruction cutscenes are just the boss exploding for far too long. They're ridiculously forgettable and unfortunately unskippable.

Probably the best part of the game are the controls. They're standard PSX FPS fare, d-pad for forward/backward and turning, shoulders to strafe, face buttons for weapons and action. The movement is responsive and accurate enough and you're helped along by a little slightly inaccurate autoaiming. This just proves that even the worst FPS can be tolerable as long as it controls well, and that is one thing Epidemic does right.

If you're an FPS fan and you find this in a bargain bin, I can safely say it'll entertain you for maybe three hours. It's not Halo, it's not even Disruptor, but it's no worse than any other PSX FPS.