Praesidium (PC) Review

 

If you ever wondered how it feels like to play a speedrunning Captain America in the future, than look no further than Praesidium. Praesidium is a platformer game in third person perspective, that heavily relies on speedrunning as the aim of the game.

The most exciting element of the game is its portable Shield, which functions a lot like the shield from Captain America. You can throw it to eliminate enemy robots, which can temporarily stun you with their attacks (which costs valuable time), or to destroy obstacles in the way. The really cool ability of the shield however is that you can also throw it at a certain point and make it to a jump pad, which gives you an extra bounce towards the next platform. The shield can also get called back to a player from any point of the level within a second. I am honestly impressed how well they implemented this cool shield feature. Even a lot of bigger studios haven't provided us with something like this.

Unfortunately the game has only 3 shorter levels and a tutorial. That is disappointingly little content, since the gameplay is actually rather entertaining. You can beat all these levels within 10-15 mins at your first try, but they heavily rely on repeated playthroughs to improve your times and unlock medals. There are multiple alternative routes and hidden areas, which provide opportunities to potentially save precious seconds. So there is at least some good replay value in Praesidium.

The Scifi scenario is pretty cool and the levels certainly fit the scenario and create a nice vibe. If you however look around closely, you will discover, that there aren't too many visuals details. It is enough to support the atmosphere and won't distract you while rushing through the levels, but you can clearly see that this was not done by a big studio. 

What did annoy me is, that your character will sometimes not grab on to ledges, even though he should be able to do so. Other times you will see wrong animations and so on. Nothing groundbreaking, but you can definitely notice these flaws.

Controls work okay, but it is disappointing that you can't customize them or the visual settings. Only the sound volume can be changed slightly in the options. Main menu and ingame soundtracks are pretty decent and fit the mood of the game well.

 

Pro:

+ Movement and platforming are decent

+ Shield ability works great

+ Alternative routes and secret areas provide replay value

+ Scifi atmosphere and fitting soundtrack

 

Contra:

- Only 3 shorter levels

- Character sometimes doesn't grab ledges

- Not enough visual details (plus no visual/controls customization)

 

Result:

Praesidium succeeds in delivering a short Scifi Speedrunning game. The futuristic atmosphere in the game is pretty nice (supported by the good soundtrack) and the shield ability works great. The game is just too short and still has some rough edges.

 

6.5/10