Ok, in all honesty I could write a 5-page review of this game to pick it apart piece by piece, throwing out little details about how I got stuck in a graphics glitch, or noticed another character running in place. But I'm going to save the long reviews for good games -- games I thoroughly enjoyed. To be honest, since Pariah wasn't one of those, I'll make it short and sweet and pull it off quickly like a band aid.

First off, we can throw this game in with the likes of Killzone or Project Snowblind as an attempt to create an original first person shooter by throwing in a deep storyline and plot that makes us question our very existence (sarcasm). In an overcrowded first person shooter market, you must keep the player excited, not bored. You must tell a story, and not make me run in 800 different directions to accomplish one simple goal. If we learned anything from Halo, it was that there is about 30-50 seconds of a first person shooter that are fun, and Halo was able to keep the game play flowing, along with the story and recreate that 30-50 seconds without boring us to death. And all the games above have failed in this regard.

The story line is simple, you are Dr. Jack Mason and you are escorting a patient over war torn territory. The armed escort doesn't arrive and, of course, you crash land and survive with only one other person and the missing patient. The training is extremely short, and tells you how to move and jump, and use medical supplies, but that is it. Mason ends up getting splattered with the infectious patient's blood, and starts tracking her and fighting through swarms of criminals. The cinematics start out OK and it seems promising but then they just stop. For the first 20 minutes of the game, you have movies with explanations and then, all of a sudden, you are turning on machines and searching for items and you have no clue or explanation why or what the hell you are trying to accomplish. It is almost like they started the game with cinematic inserts and never finished them.

The very first thing I noticed about the game was that the menu is sluggish. It skips and is extremely choppy going from option to option; this is because of the background I suppose, but still doesn't give a great first impression to a player.

The control is actually pretty good. The weapons are great and the upgrade feature is fantastic. The weapons get more powerful based on the energy cores you collect. The only problem with this feature is that, in multiplayer, you never really upgrade the gun because the menus to do so are a little clunky, and you can't run and upgrade, so you have to hide somewhere. We all know what hiding means in online play. If you don't keep moving, you die. The other thing I liked was the intuitive use of the buttons; the white button brought your health device up quickly, the left trigger brought up your energy knife for melee (energy knife, original), which comes in handy often. Vehicles, however, are difficult to operate, which made it easy to over steer and lose control.

The AI is surprisingly good. NPCs would hide behind anything in front of them or circle around rocks like you would see in multiplayer. They also ranged from extremely aggressive to passive, which is a nice change in a first person shooter. Even though they are the same guys, they attack a little differently and sometimes use strange tactics like firing a grenade launcher at you from a foot away.

Most games like to give you an original feel for each situation; Halo and Republic Commando offer many witty comments from the enemy and teammates. One of the reasons I quit playing Pariah was because of their attempt at this. First off, the enemies had basically 3 things they would say as you were hunting them down, and 80% of the time they would say "Die fast or die slow. Your choice, Doc." This drove me insane. It was the most annoying thing ever. There was nothing witty or funny about it, and I was not entertained, I was ready to pull my hair out. The other thing was the oddly placed swearing. This didn't compliment the already shoddy voiceovers. It seemed as if they were overdoing the F-bombs and the Mother F's. It just seemed weird, not like a soldier under fire or a huge explosion that would be followed by a Holy S%^&, just random, out of place swearing.

I wasn't that impressed with the multiplayer. It was just ok. I had fun playing it. If anything, buy or rent the game for that. But it is your standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and so on. Extremely slow load times and gigantic boards sometimes take their toll, but it wasn't too bad. The bad thing about the multiplayer is that there's no split-screen play. There's a multiplayer bot practice session that is worthless. They should have put that energy into split-screen. I don't imagine anyone will be buying this mediocre game and bringing their Xbox to my pad to play 2 player death match with a couple of bots. Those who said it would take Halo off the map in multiplayer were smoking something. They do have a map editor, but it isn't original or as easy to move around as some other games, but it is extra content and you can share them online.

For everything else you need to know, look to any of the other first person shooters with bad stories, slow load times and stupid little side missions around each turn and you have Pariah.