Even upon first release, Pariah wasn’t an overly intensive, hardware reliant game and would run happily on any mid-high spec PC. Nowadays it should be well within range of most PCs.
Pariah’s system requirements are:
- Intel Pentium IV 1.4ghz (or AMD Athlon XP equivalent);
- Windows 98SE/2000/XP (95/NT not supported);
- 256 MB System RAM;
- 32 MB GeForce 3 or better 100% DirectX 8.x compatible 3D graphics cards;
- 100% DirectX 8.x compatible Sound Card Quad Speed
- (4X) CD-ROM drive;
- 2GB free disk space
In the UK, Pariah has been rated 16+ by PEGI, due to the levels of profanity used in the game, especially during cutscenes.
In addition to the standard single player campaign, Pariah also features a multiplayer option, which offers all the standard fare typically associated with other FPS games including deathmatch, team deathmatch, and captures the flag. However, the offering is in general rather weak and you’ll be pushed to find many servers hosting Pariah.
There is also a mapmaker function which allows you to design your own custom maps for multiplayer use. The mapmaker is pretty easy to use and is replete with features but unless you’re keen on playing Pariah on a local area network, or hosting your own Pariah server online, there’s nothing much in the mapmaker to really make it worthwhile.
The sum of Pariah's parts is enough to earn it a tentative 'thumbs up', but it could have and should have been better than it ultimately is. Unfortunately for Pariah, it also has perhaps lived up to its moniker too much and suffered from having been released around the same time as many of the top-end shooters, such as Half-Life 2 and Halo ,meaning it was always going to be an uphill struggle for the game to get noticed.
However, while being a solid enough first-person shooter, the game’s numerous flaws haven’t helped Pariah rise to the higher echelons of the genre and Digital Extremes have perhaps tried too hard to make Pariah into another Halo, rather than simply concentrate on it being Pariah, and a worthwhile game in its own right.
The often confusing storyline isn’t helped by the numerous cutscenes which pepper the game but fail to sufficiently pad out the story, while some weak level design and weaker weapons struggle to hold Pariah’s head above water in a crowded FPS market.
Players will get some enjoyment from Pariah, but it will be short-lived and the game is unlikely to feature long on most people’s PCs after completion.