Pariah (video game)

Synopsis

The game omits key background information about its plot and universe, leaving much of the story without context. Thirty years after a war against an enemy called the Shroud, who are never fully explained, Earth contains a wasteland known as the Zone inhabited by Scavengers, descendants of prisoners released by the Shroud. Human civilization is controlled by the Alliance, which lives in off-world colonies according to the manual, though this is not shown in the game.

Jack Mason, an Alliance medic, is transporting a cryogenically frozen woman named Karina from the prison the Anvil to Alliance headquarters. His ship is shot down over the Zone by a surface-to-air missile, and Mason is accidentally infected with Karina's transgenic virus. She escapes as Scavengers arrive, and the pilot Stubbs is killed. Mason suspects the attack was unusual, as Scavengers were not known to possess such missiles.

At the end, the Shroud reappear as hairless humans with corpse-white skin and advanced technology, but whether they are aliens, terrorists, or mutants is never clarified.

Reception

Metacritic reports average reviews for both platforms. IGN found the PC version solid in most respects but noted dated gameplay and a bewildering, threadbare story. GameSpot criticized the gameplay, stating the game could not make firing a weapon interesting, partly due to poor weapon sounds. GameSpy mentioned bugs in the PC version. Nigel Kendall of The Times gave three stars out of five, saying the game was not the revitalization the FPS genre needed. Ryan Huschka of Detroit Free Press gave the Xbox version two stars out of four, calling it too flawed to compete with major Xbox shooters. Jason Hill of The Sydney Morning Herald gave two-and-a-half stars out of five, stating the game fails to excite or innovate.