Eradicator

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Name: Eradicator Year: 1996 Publisher: Accolade Developer: Accolade Platform: PC Genre: 3D Shooter Total rating: 73.7% - rated 21 times rate now: please log in to rate Submitter: Res Added: Mar 18 2005 Warez status: Warez (Unverified)

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Author: Grobut Date: Feb 21 2006 - 22:33 Score: 65 points

Introduction:

Eradicator is one of those odd shooters that doesn’t seem to be able to make up its own mind, on one hand its a fairly straight forward shoot'em up, on the other, its very puzzle-solving oriented, and was obviously ment to be an "action-puzzle game", but it just lacks the fines in its puzzles to really pull it off.
The result is an odd gameplay feel, not quite one and not quite the other, but strangely enough, its not without its merits, its like "Strife" mixed with "Duke 3D", and whilst definitely not the most interesting shooter I’ve ever played, its not half bad either, infact it has a certain… something, but its hard to point out exactly what that is.

Also it is both a 1'st and 3'rd person shooter, you can freely switch between the two views, which often comes in handy as its mouse-aiming system is restricted to aiming 45 degree's up or down, making it difficult to time jumps or similar from the 1'st person view.

The story is, as one would expect, rather simple, the universe is in a bit of a pickle, society relies on a precious element known as "Mazrium", which is mined on 3 moons circling the planet Ioxia, which was once the home of a ruthless society that, untill defeated in a great war, sold Mazrium at outrageous prices to the other races.
But now Ioxia has sprung back to life, and a giant shield is preventing all mining of Mazrium, and the automated defenses make a conventional assault impossible, so here’s where you enter the picture, though a large assault team would never stand a chance, perhaps a single soldier could infiltrate the Citadel and shut it down, as the defences where not ment to withstand such an attack.

Not exactly high-grade literature, but hey, its got Doom beat, hehe.

Gameplay:

You start off picking one of three characters to play, each has their own traits, like speed versus streangth, but on the whole, it doesn’t really matter which one you ultimately choose as the differences are not very big, well, apart from their voices.
Each character will start off in their own map, or rather, infiltrate the Citadel from a different route, but come next map you will be following the same route through the Citadel, so largely, the character selection is cosmetically, but a welcome chance to replay the game again as somebody else.

The gameplay is simple enough, you have to fight your way to the exit of the level to go to the next, but locked doors and force fields hinder your progress, making up the puzzle element.

To its credit, these "puzzles" are more than just wading through endless waves of baddies to get to key-X to open Door-Y, usually you have to restore power to a door, shut off security systems by blowing up generators, or even remote-controlling robotic drones to bypass security and open a way forward.

Unfortunately, its largely more of the same, and gets repetitive very fast, and, whilst more entertaining than the average key grabbing in most shooters, the puzzles are not really puzzling enough to stand on their own (though they do get progressively harder as you advance), and the action elements are nothing special either, if you played Doom or Duke-3D, you'll know the drill.

The enemies are a bit on the bland side, they get the job done but they are nothing we haven't seen before, they are not the strong point of Eradicator.

The weapons, on the other hand, are more interesting, you get a nice selection of them, and there's some interesting one's in there, but I’ll let you discover that for yourselves.
On the whole they are fun to unleash havoc with, and look appropriate for the theme of the game.

Aswell there's the usual assortment of powerups, with a few gimmicks tossed in for good measure, such as the "l'il Buddy" drones that will hover around you and fire at what you fire at, an object usually seen in side scrolling space shooters..

Graphics and layout:

The graphics and level design remind me a lot of Duke-3D, especially the "Lunar Appocalypse" missions come to mind, and, strangely enough, some of the early Star Wars games as well, but of course, with a more puzzle oriented layout, it's executed quite well, good texturing and build, and most maps are interesting enough to look at, you can tell the effort was made, and that’s its not just slapped together as fast as possible, which plagued some of the early FPS games trying to capitalize on the FPS craze.

If you played any FPS game from Doom and onwards, you wont be surprised by the Menu's, HUD or features, its all quite standard, with the possible exception of its "Picture-in-picture" system, that pops up a second view port to let you see where rockets are traveling, or allow you to keep an eye on your character whilst you are remote controlling a drone, so you can see if a baddie has crept up on you whilst you are otherwise engaged, quite useful.

Conclusion:

So, is it worth the download? well, that depends on what you expect from the game, if you are looking for something new and fresh, you will most likely be disappointed, but if you are a fan of old-school shooters like Doom and Duke-3D, but have played them to death and want some new arena's to blast around in, Eradicator is just what the Doctor ordered.

The biggest downfall of Eradicator is that it's nothing we haven't seen and done before, it's not bad, not at all, it just doesn’t have it's own unique voice, and, whilst it has some entertaining gimmicks, they wont last you long.

But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, if you are looking for the classic shooter experience, look no further, here is bedrock!

All in all, Eradicator could have been one of the greats, had it just done a little more, and dared push the envelopes, the basic tennets are there, the execution just falls short of what it could have been, and that is a shame, as it is, it deserves a "good" rating, just not a "Great" one.

Still, it's not a bad way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon with a hangover!

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By Tond - Apr 13 2012 - 11:20 This is heaven

By DukeNukem2417 - Jun 06 2009 - 14:35 Does anyone know where I can get the level editor for this?

By Illyea - Jul 19 2008 - 07:49 I wish they included at least the default ambience track in this download. The CD had even more awesome game tracks... Or maybe I just can't play the music in winxp, not sure...

By Illyea - Mar 26 2008 - 06:20 This is one of the games of my childhood. I used to love this game until I got my hands on Doom, and then it was my second fav. Just something about Doom that was awesome... Anyway, this engine feels a lot like Duke Nukem 3D despite what he said. I was thinking back and could've sworn they actually used the build engine because of the similarities. I was never able to get the level editor working... Now I'm DLing it again heh...

By DarkCless - Mar 10 2008 - 17:19 runs in xp ? i doubt dosbox can handle this

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