PowerSlave (AKA
Exhumed in Europe) is a 1996
First-Person Shooter released for PC, PS1 and Saturn. It is set in Egyptian ruins and makes the player fighting alone against plenty of demons and undead, making it a kind of
Doom or
Duke Nukem 3 D in Egypt.
The story occurs in the end of the XXth century and puts the player in the shoes of a
special forces soldier sent in Egypt (near Karnak) with a team to investigate weird rumors about monsters which appeared there and invaded the place. Their chopper crashes, and
he is the only survivor.For a more modern take on "old school FPS in Egypt", see
Serious Sam.
Not to be confused with the
Powerslave album made by
Iron Maiden (although the title track deals with Ancient Egypt too), nor the
Death Metal band of the same name.
This game shows examples of:
- Ancient Egypt
- And Then John Was a Zombie: The "Game Over" screen shows Anubis-monsters mummifying the hero.
- Bad Ass: The hero survived a crash and it doesn't prevent him from fighting monsters. And he sometimes shouts some taunts, too.
- Benevolent Architecture
- Block Puzzle: Sometimes.
- Censor Shadow: The Anubis enemy wears a short kilt, and in the PC version he falls over backward with his legs apart upon dying. (In the console versions, he is gibbed instead.)
- Check Point: Even in the PC version, the game saves only automatically, at specific points: the beginning of the levels and when you reach a golden scarab.
- Critical Existence Failure
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Not exactly, but close. Dying makes the player reappearing next to the last checkpoint, with full life, all your inventory from when you died, and the killed monsters don't respawn. On the other hand the ammo and power-ups you previously picked up don't respawn either and you lose one life.
- Determinator: The hero.
- Do Not Run with a Gun: The player can walk and shoot at the same time, but it is impossible for the monsters.
- Emergency Weapon: The machete, which doesn't use ammo and is usable underwater (opposite to the firearms).
- Enemy Rising Behind
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: The beginning of the game.
- Everybody Hates Hades: There's monsters looking like Anubis (this is their name in the manual). In Egyptian Mythology, Anubis is the protector of dead people, not an evil god.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Except rats.
- Excuse Plot
- Exploding Barrels
- Fake Difficulty: No real saves and a limited number of lives.
- First-Person Shooter
- Gorn
- Historical Domain Character: Ramses.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: One of the health Power-Up is a kind of berry-carrying plant.
- Ludicrous Gibs: All enemies explode into these when they die in the console versions. In the PC version, they have individual death animations, some of which involve gibs. (All enemies still explode when killed with grenades.)
- Market-Based Title: PowerSlave was known as Exhumed in Europe, and Seireki 1999: Pharaoh no Fukkatsu in Japan.
- Metroidvania: The Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions are possibly the earliest first-person example, predating Metroid Prime by several years.
- Multiple Endings: Depending on the version:
- In the console version, the hero either becomes an immortal, or mummified by the aliens.
- In the PC version, the hero gets stowaway in an alien spaceship, or accidentally destroys Earth.
- One-Man Army
- Poison Mushroom: The poison cups.
- Recycled In Space: This is Doom (for the plot) and Duke Nukem 3 D (for the Game Engine) in Egypt.
- Averted, engine-wise, for the console versions, which use Lobotomy Software's own Slavedriver engine. Ironically, the Sega Saturn port of Duke Nukem 3 D uses Slavedriver instead of Build (as does the Saturn version of Quake instead of its own engine), presumably because Slavedriver is a rare case of a 3D engine that can leverage the Saturn's complicated architecture to great effect.
- Standard FPS Guns: There are seven weapons. A machete, a .357 Magnum revolver, a M-60 machine gun, a flamethrower, some hand grenades and three magical Egyptian weapons (two with the PC version).
- Super Not Drowning Skills: The Hero can swim for a few dozen seconds underwater before seeing his health drained. He can make it last longer by catching big groups of air bubbles.
- Super Drowning Skills: In the console versions, he can only do this once he has the Sobek Mask. Before then, he can't hold his breath at all.
- The Undead: Mummies.
- Universal Ammunition: A variation in the console versions. Ammo pick-ups are all generic blue orbs and will refill the weapon you are currently holding when you walk over them, but each gun has its own ammunition pool.
- Video Game Lives: The player begins with three lives and can have at most five on the same time.
0 reviews