I've been getting my fix of late 1990s first person shooters over the past few years, beating Marathon:Durandal and Quake for example, but when I saw that Powerslave Exhumed was available I had to get it, as the original Powerslave was one of my "unfinished business" games, which are games that I played in the past but never beat.
I had purchased the Sega Saturn version of Powerslave in late 1996 as it beat the Playstation version to market for some reason. My purchase of the Sega Saturn at release in May of 1995 had proven to be a mistake once Sony released the Playstation later that year. By late 1996 Sony had clearly already vanquished the Saturn by having games like Wipeout, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider out, so I felt that I needed to boost my Saturn library, and Powerslave sounded cool.
I cannot remember where I was stuck, but it might have been on the first boss, Set. So I downloaded Powerslave Exhumed, a modern port for consoles and PC created by Night Dive Studios that retains the graphics and gameplay of the original. Since the original was so good, that is a plus.
It's a first person shooter, sure, but also a first person platformer at times, getting both gameplay aspects right. The other awesome aspect of this game is it's "Metroidvania" style of progression, created well before that was a word, meaning that the player opens up areas as they go and those areas will require repeated visits once the player acquires new items. Some areas, for examples, have multiple exits with one of them on a high ledge, meaning the player needs to acquire a certain artifact to make the jump.
Powerslave was an Iron Maiden album before it was a game, with a cool ancient Egyptian theme, and the game Powerslave recreates that theme in each level. The levels are large and varied in theme, each with the standard 1990s keys and doors that must be acquired and used during each visit to that level. So the backtracking one does is not that easy, as each key needs to be reacquired and each door reopened, every time one goes through the level.
It's not frustrating, though, as the level design is absolutely awesome, making levels fun to revisit. The weapons keep coming throughout one's playthrough, and once acquired, they remain in one's inventory forever. Starting with a sword (great for underwater fish fights), the player gets a pistol, a large machine gun, a grenade, and then some interesting magical weapons like a snake staff, a fireball ring, and a lightning bolt spell before it's all done.
Ammo drops from fallen enemies are generic, meaning that whatever weapon one is holding will get the ammo refilled. So if the player is low on machine gun ammo but was using the pistol to kill enemies and some ammo drops, the player must switch to the machine gun before picking up the ammo.
There are a few boss fights, and they are memorable and challenging, but there’s no health meters on these guys, so just keep shooting and moving. While Set gave me some trouble again (I almost gave up there again), I got the final boss on my first try.
The wave of first person shooters following Doom were often creative in their attempts to stand out in the crowd, but the under appreciated Powerslave had more going on in it than I realized back in late 1996. I’m glad the folks at Night Dive Studios released Powerslave Exhumed so I could wrap up that bit of unfinished business.
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