Pandemonium!
PlayStation
Nostalgia Factor:
I first heard about Pandemonium! back in the June 1996 edition of GamePro magazine. I read the preview for the game and thought wow, this looks pretty cool. For whatever reason, however, I never got the opportunity to actually play the game. Still, I remembered the name Pandemonium! for years and years afterwards and I swore to myself I’d play it someday if I ever got the chance. Fast forward to the year 2013. I was browsing through the PS1 classics library on the PlayStation Store when I noticed that Pandemonium! was on sale for just a couple dollars. Remembering how I was interested in the game over 15 years ago, I purchased Pandemonium! and quickly sat down to give it a try.
I wasn’t impressed. In fact, my opinion of the game was so low I didn’t even bother to finish it, which is rare for a completionist like me. Once I start a game, I usually don’t pick up anything else until I’ve finished it. A couple years later I sat down and tried to give Pandemonium! another go. The same thing happened. I only played a handful of levels before turning the game off unimpressed. A few years later the same thing happened again. That’s three attempts to get into Pandemonium! and three failures.
Well, here in the year 2021 I finally put my foot down and told myself that I’m going to play and finish Pandemonium! dang it, whether I liked it or not. The fourth time was the charm, in a way. I finished the game, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. Read on for my full thoughts.
Story:
This game’s story is just flat out strange. Nikki and Fargus, two good-for-nothing practical jokers, are hanging out one night when they decide to start playing around with some magical spells. One of their spells conjures a gigantic monster, which falls from the sky and crushes a nearby town. Nikki and Fargus set out on a quest to recover a wishing spell that they can use to wish the town back to good health. Thus begins your journey through 18 stages of platform-y goodness. Or should I say, badness?
Gameplay:
The game gives you the choice of which character you’d like to play as before each level. For the most part, these characters control the same. You run, you jump, you collect things, and you pick up spells that allow you to fire projectiles at your enemies. There are some very distinct differences, however. Fargus is able to use a special spin attack, similar to what you’d see in a Crash Bandicoot game. It even sounds exactly the same! When controlling Nikki, you are allowed to double jump – something Fargus can not do. There’s definitely a bit of a trade off here. You have to find the character that best fits the way you play the game, and try to stick with it. At first I thought I couldn’t survive without Fargus and his spin attack, but I quickly realized that Nikki’s double jump opened things up and made the game so much easier. After maybe the third or fourth level of the game I never picked Fargus again.
Gameplay itself is just very generic and uninspired. This is a by-the-numbers 2D sidecroller, although the game’s window dressing tries to make you think this is a 3D title. It’s not. Oh, your determined game path may take some twists and turns along the way, the camera will zoom in and out to try and trick you, but don’t let it fool you. This is a 2D title all the way.
Each of the 18 stages has a designated beginning and end point. The very basic gist of each stage is to make it to the end of the stage, which allows you to move on to the next one. How you get to the end of each stage is part of the “fun” of the game. There are many different branching paths to take. Some may lead to items and power ups before merging you back onto the main path, but others are completely different altogether. Ambitious gamers or people with too much time on their hands may find some enjoyment in checking out these branching paths and exploring each stage to its fullest. You know what, back in 1996 this might not have been a bad idea. You’ve got a PlayStation. You’ve only got three or four games for the system. Why not get your money’s worth out of Pandemonium!? But here in the year 2021 when I have literally thousands of other games to play at my fingertips, I am not going to waste too much time on this game, especially considering I didn’t like it very much.
I’ve mentioned a few times now how I didn’t really enjoy my time with the game. Why, you may ask? Simple. It’s just not fun. Look at classic 16-bit platformers like Vectorman or Super Mario World. You can pick those games up and immediately have a good time with them, regardless of your age or what era of gaming you come from. They are timeless games that are accessible because they are unique and fun. When you start playing Pandemonium!, you don’t get any of those unique or fun vibes. The controls are stiff. The jumping is awkward. Even though the levels are bright and colorful and seemingly full of life, the stage design seems uninspired. You are constantly getting cheap-shotted by enemies who come out of nowhere on the edge of the screen. There are lots of “running” sections where your character moves too fast for the screen, not allowing you enough time to avoid the enemies on your path or jump over any obstacles that may appear.
The game just doesn’t seem fair. You’re going to find yourself dying, and you’re going to find yourself dying A LOT. I’ve said this many times on this blog, but it holds so true I am going to say it again: I don’t mind when a game is challenging. In fact, I encourage it. But I only encourage it as long as the game itself is being fair in its difficulty level. I want the reason I died to be because I am the one who messed up, not because something unavoidable and cheap happened in the game that caused me to die. And therein lies my main problem with Pandemonium! The game is cheap.
And not only is the game cheap, it’s boring, lazy, and uninspired in its gameplay. It does nothing I haven’t seen dozens of times before, and done better in almost every instance. The only thing Pandemonium! has going for it is its graphics, which admittedly were probably phenomenal for the year they came out. Let’s move on to that topic, I suppose.
Graphics:
Pandemonium! may not look like much by today’s standards, but an old school gamer like me can certainly appreciate the envelope it pushed back in 1996. Everything is rendered in full 3D. The characters, the enemies, the stages. Everywhere you look, things are bright and colorful. The visual effects are very nice. The camera zooms in and out as you walk down winding paths. A lot of the artwork that make up the stage backgrounds are just flat out gorgeous. Putting myself in the shoes of someone playing a game like this for the first time 25 years ago, I’m certain I would have been blown away by Pandemonium! I’m not blown away today by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a large appreciation for what this game set out to do. If you can ignore the jagged edges and the pixelization, this is actually a very charming looking game.
Thus ends all the nice things I have to say about it.
Sound:
I should just scrap the sound category on my reviews, because it seems like 90% of the time this category is completely useless. If a game’s musical score or sound effects don’t jump out at me, I don’t remember them. I’ve lost count of how many reviews I’ve written where I’ve inserted the generic comment “I don’t remember this game’s music at all, so it must not have been that bad or it would have stood out and I would have remembered it.” That’s what happened with Pandemonium! I don’t remember a single one of this game’s musical tracks. In fact, the only thing I remember about this game’s sound is how Fargus’s spin attack sounds just like Crash Bandicoot’s. That’s it.
I guess this game’s music and sound effects must not have been that bad, or they probably would have stood out and I would have remembered.
:)
Overall:
It’s no secret I didn’t like this game, so I won’t drag this out too much longer. I want to make something clear, though. This game isn’t a complete failure.
There are things to like about Pandemonium! The two different characters, the unique game world, the bright and shiny graphics, the multiple branching paths, all the collectibles to pick up. Just because I wasn’t too fond of this game doesn’t mean that Pandemonium! doesn’t have fans out there. And I can’t even say I blame them for liking this game. It does some things right. I really WANTED to like Pandemonium! but too many things about it just didn’t click properly with me.
After finishing up with this game, I can see why I kept giving up on it every other time I tried to play it. It just doesn’t have that “it” factor for me. Like I said before, I found the gameplay to be completely lazy, uninspired, and at times unfair. I think it’s safe to say I will never be returning to Pandemonium! again. Its sequel, however, I am oddly curious to check out. While I’m in no rush to play it immediately, don’t be surprised if you see a review for that game pop up sometime in the future.
Final Score:
D
If you liked my review of this game, check out some of my other game reviews:
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