PO'ed

PO'ed was always, to me, a game that I heard about, maybe saw an advert in a game magazine, but never cared about enough to actually rent or buy. Oh how I wish I could have kept that record going! I recently purchased this one in the hope of getting some more life out of my 3DO; a purchase that I'm beginning to feel was not in my best interest. Taking the obvious graphical limitations into consideration, PO'ed is still a mess, and not that "room for improvement" type of mess, but full fledged "see me after class" kind of mess!

What's to know before playing PO'ed? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You have to save your ship from the invading red monster-things and walking ass creatures. And what graphic walking ass creatures they are! The hook? You're the ships cook! Whatever. I understand FPS games were all the rage in the mid-90's, what with the immense success of games like Doom, and Wolfenstein, and especially Duke Nukem 3D, but I don't think the world is ready even now for the cook's side of the FPS story.

From a technical standpoint this game still reeks. Your movement is slow, unless you use the speed boost, then it can be much too fast. You will miss walking up platforms because your moving too damn fast! This game would make you believe play testing didn't exist yet! The enemies are also too fast, and you will suffer a multitude of cheap hits as a result. Your culinary killing machine seems doomed to fail right out of the gate, too, as you are armed with only a frying pan for much too long. When enemies armed to the teeth start coming out of everywhere in later levels you still only have a butcher knife.

PO'ed did have a few things going for it way back in 1995, though. By pressing select and C you will see a 3D map of your location, which was really quite impressive for its time. Your cook also has a few moves up his apron. Aside from running and jumping, he can perform a back flip. This move NEVER helps you during actual gameplay, but it's kind of fun to execute when you've tired of the actual game.

With so many problems, it's no wonder I hadn't heard much about this game when it came out. There were so many better games to play; I wish I had kept it that way.