Eradicator (1996)

Platform Played: PC

Publisher: Accolade

Developer: Accolade (1996)/ Retrosim (2015)

Purchased Through: Steam via dirt cheap Sale Price: sale lasts until the 17th.

Background: I had not played this game until this year. Did I like this game. Yes and No. The largest mistake the developers made was releasing this game in a time when 2nd generation FPSs came on the scene: a la Quake. Eradicator has an interesting sci-fi story and landscape. The weapons are certainly interesting. The levels are far from linear too. There’s twenty-five of them set in an alien fortress on a foreign planet. Did I go through all twenty-five. NO!

Why? I’ll get to that later. This is a game worth playing if you have the patience to revisit a classic. I did not have too much patience as this is simply not on the top of my list. The game has one big pro though. One parting topic is this:

Character Selection & First Person/Third Person Hybrid: Like the fighting game Streets of Rage and other similar titles in the fighting genre you can chose your character. Eradicator is to my knowledge the first in the first person shooter genre to allow character selection for single player. These characters are diverse: one is a tribalistic warrior, another is an engineer, and lastly you can play a mercenary. I chose the mercenary as I have a soft spot for mercenaries having been a private investigator. This character’s unique weapon is a crossbow that shoots circular saw blades. This has the potential to be brilliant! Unfortunately her weapon is not enough to make this game remain interesting for me.

This game is like Bungie’s Marathon and Star Wars Dark Forces II Jedi Knight you can switch between the FPS view and the Third Person view. I mentioned these games due to them being the first to my knowledge to allow for such an option. Did I switch views? No. You know by now that I don’t like Third-Person games. FPS is my favorite genre. Why would I change views when I have an FPS option.

The Problem: I was on a level where I had to engage in the interesting but repeteive action of destroying the conduits that power the security forcefields. I had destroyed one. I skipped one I needed to destroy. Between skipping and destroying one I tripped the force field. This action triggered the security doors behind the forcefield to sealed. Instead of having the mission ending with a failure prompt or providing the player with an alternative ‘plan B’ route the level merely became unsolvable. I would have had to redo the level and start from scratch. I’m not a fan of doing that and I’m not a fan of wasting time. I stopped playing after this.

Final Analysis: This is a game that is not one I’d revisit anytime soon. Would I recommend it? Not really. This is interesting, but not a must play. Try Quake or Quake II or Duke Nukem 3D.  Or if you want an FPS that is innovative, original, and both a throwback and a new classic try The AMC TC.