Paranautical Activity is a classic styled FPS game that also mixes elements of ‘roguelike’ dungeons, as the mazes, rooms, and enemy placements are randomly generated each time you play.  You’ll shoot down all manner of spooky enemies including devils, flying shadowy sea turtle things, giant spiders, and much more.  It’s available to download on most current gen game systems, but reviewed on PS Vita here.

When you start the game, you have a choice to begin with a main weapon, or have one randomly selected for you.  Then you try to progress through as many floors as you can with one life.  Once you run out of hearts, you have to start over again from the beginning.  This is difficult since everything is randomly generated.  Defeated enemies will sometimes drop coins that you can use to buy items in shops sometimes, but these are randomly generated, too, so you never know when you’ll come across one.

It plays like a classic FPS and the controls are pretty simple enough.  Move and aim with the left and right analog sticks, and shoot and jump with the shoulder buttons.  You can lob bombs and activate other power-ups with the face bottoms.  The graphics have a pixelated look to them, so they kind of resemble other first person games like Minecraft or other classic FPS titles.  You can earn in-game accolades and even unlock hardcore and endless modes, but the game is so hard that I wasn’t able to get those.  That’s really the only problem with this game is the high difficulty level.  FPS veterans and pros only for this one!

Kid Factor:

Paranautical Activity is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Violence, Blood, Language, and Use of Alcohol.  While you do shoot and stab all manner of enemies with guns and melee weapons like bloody meat hooks, since everything is pretty blocky, the violence isn’t that graphic.  I didn’t really notice too much bad language or alcohol usage.  But because of the high difficulty level, it’s best for teens and older gamers anyway.

Tags: Game Reviews