Messiah
Appearantly, this game was hyped mostly for its rendering technologies. While I seem to have missed the whole hype completely, of the sparse info I did pick up on the game, what stuck was not the bits on the engine, but the gameplay ideas. The whole possession business seemed like a great idea to me, so it was with some anticipation I picked up this game.
The first thing that struck me was how much the start of the menu music sounded like Pain's End of the Line. The second thing was bugs. The game crashed, threw me out and was generally unpleasant for a while until we learned to get along (I turned off any fancy Voodoo2 features). Then, I was allowed to start playing seriously.
As most people probably know, Messiah sees you taking control of Bob, a chubby cherub sent out by God to help set things right in the world. Bob is pretty fast, agile and capable of limited flying. Most important, he can possess any other living being in the game for protection, healing and especially disguise. Jumping and possessing (and fighting, but that feels a bit secondary) can be said to be the key elements in Messiah.
Gameplay has a flavour of its own, thanks to the possession ability. When your host body dies, Bob jumps out through the back, ready to take over another one. As you may realize, this makes combat different from all other action games. Here, you don't have to worry too much if your current host is killed, you can often find a new one right away. Thus, combat sequences can be resolved by running in, firing away at anyone opposing you, and changing host as they die, ending up in control of a sole survivor. Oh, and I like those little bots that clean up after combat too. I'm not especially annoyed by the frequent platform-jumping sequences, I think they work pretty good and feel like an integral part of the game. They certainly feel more enjoyable and meaningful than some similar sequences in everyone's favourite Half-Life. Another thing the game does very well, similar to Half-Life, is making you feel like you're not following a decided path, but rather finding your own way. That's something I like a lot, but I think the game should have been even more open. I would have liked more freedom to move about and more alternative paths, even if it could have made the game easier to solve.
Graphics and sounds are good, even if the settings are standard dark future sci-fi props. The inhabitants look and sound good too, even if their lines become quite familiar with time. And the weapons, I like those too! The flamer is probably my favourite, just because of the nice animations when people run around burning ...
Messiah could really have been something in multiplayer. Imagine eight or sixteen cherubs let loose on an extensive cityscape level full of different hosts to possess, hosts which would still react as usual to your and eachother's presence. Imagine different kinds of team games, CTF anything, where you'd have to fight your opponents while trying to blend in as much as possible with the streetlife. Unfortunately, multiplayer Messiah isn't, doesn't exist, so perhaps dreaming about it is only increasing the pain. Couldn't someone at least make a Messiah-mod for UT or something?
In all, I think Messiah is a nice game with some cool ideas of its own. However, it falls short of being a masterpiece and doesn't leave any lasting impression, apart from the thought of what it could have been.
