I spent the first fifteen minutes of Prodeus trying to figure out how to play as the penguin or TwinBee, but I think something got lost in translation somewhere. Prodeus is a traditional-style FPS (or "boomer shooter" in today's parlance) and follows a similar evolutionary path of the 2016 Doom reboot, attempting to find a way to modernize 1993 Doom and its ilk for today's audience with a certain balance of old and new. While that reboot felt like a bold step towards an unknown future for other fast-paced, cover-deficient FPSes to build on Prodeus is very much keeping both feet in the past, leaving most of the modernization touches to the game's mix of state-of-the-art graphical flourishes combined with older style pixelated sprites for its enemies and objects (albeit ones that appear to be pre-rendered).

Prodeus also feels like the product of a dedicated team of Doom modders, as every facet of the game's presentation has a certain community-minded feel to it. This applies even to the single-player campaign, which has an unnamed soldier fighting both the forces of Chaos and of Prodeus (which I guess is going for Pro Deus, as in "for God" in Latin) that together have destroyed the world of man in the crossfire of their endless war. Each level of the campaign offers players a chance to vote on the map's quality, in much the same way they might for the community workshop maps that the player can also access via a built-in level editor and download tools. Doom 2016 had a similar feature—the SnapMap—but here the level editing feels more baked into the soul of the game, as a modern Doom take made both for and by the modding and level-building community. I imagine much of these UI quirks are a holdover from when the game was in early access and the devs were working on its campaign, allowing early adopters of the map editor to provide content for those patiently waiting for v1.0's release.

Despite very closely hewing to the Doom (1993) blueprint, including most of its weapons and enemies in slightly modified forms, the game does have a few modern concessions. There's a shop system where players can purchase weapons that don't normally appear in the campaign—most will be sitting around somewhere in a level, often in a secret location—and a few traversal upgrades like a dash and double-jump that makes the well-hidden currency items (ore fragments) easier to reach. Every map also has an auto-mapper tool: the game's auto-map is already available from the outset and fills in whatever the player can see, but the pick-up will instantly complete the rest of the map and reveal all the item locations for those looking to backtrack to resupply their dwindling stocks of ammo, health, and armor. The map tech is pretty slick, using very basic versions of the in-game textures to make it easier to track where you are (though the big "you are here" arrow helps too) and highlights all objects with color- and shape-coded icons. For instance, ammo appears as yellow cubes while guns appear as red octahedrons. (My one issue with this is that the ore fragment collectibles appear as orange cubes, which are hard to visually parse from the ammo's yellow. Perhaps a deliberate choice to make them harder to spot, since many are linked to a level's secrets tally, but an unnecessary bit of visual confusion all the same.) There's also an overworld map, which isn't something you typically see in an FPS: while the core level progression is linear, there's a bunch of optional levels off the beaten path including the shop (which also includes tutorials on how to use your weapons' alt-fire modes effectively) and some specific weapon-focused timed challenges that offer rewards for the expedient and likewise serve to demonstrate their related weapons' effectiveness when the chips are down. Beyond all that, though, we are talking some Doom-ass Doom here: it even has the same three* color-coded keys and the ever-more-damaged character portrait. (*It's actually four, my bad.)

Prodeus is absolutely what it presents itself to be, a clarity of purpose that is as often a detriment as it is a benefit. Moving through the levels fighting off the enemies warping in while finding the occasional hidden switch or high platform for concealed power-ups makes for an appealing loop, as does aiming for each map's 100% target—all monsters killed, all secrets found, and no dying in the process—thanks to some concise movement and shooting controls and an appealing selection of weapons that starts off with the aforementioned Doom ersatzes and continues to expand outwards to include SMGs, sniper rifles, and lava guns to name but three. Novel alternative gun modes such as the plasma rifle's tracker—if you hit an enemy in the crosshairs of the tracker, every subsequent shot will home in on them much like that one gun from The Fifth Element—or the rocket launcher's remote detonation gives them an added level of conditional utility beyond being something you might normally only switch to because your super shotgun's running on empty or you needed to take down a mid-boss monster in a hurry. The Quake-era concession of a jump button makes for some more engaging level design as you hop around platforms avoiding enemy fire, while the game's heavy metal music and angels vs. demons aesthetic really does sound and look every bit the Doom successor the actual id Software one was.

It's just, going back to that detriment remark, it doesn't feel like Prodeus is doing all that much new and that's more damning when you stack it against its official counterpart, which is mostly unavoidable in the current epoch of these boomer shooters; we're used to seeing a bunch of throwbacks filter through this Indie feature of ours (which I feel is endemic of the Indie market as a whole and not just my old man brain picking out stuff I recognize like I'm doing memory training exercises for the elderly) but many are looking to find a new angle on an old favorite, or at the very least resurrecting as-is a specific type of game that has long since vanished from our collective consciousness rather than one that has already been revived and is looking for new directions to be taken. Prodeus is just really good at what it does, and what it does is "be Doom"—if that's the chaotic, uncomplicated fun you're looking for in a shooter by all means give it a shot. And give those Not-Imps a few shots too; I'm getting tired of their ambushes and unerring accuracy.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)