Nightdive Studios revealed a truly unique April Fool’s Day prank yesterday.
In a tweet, the studio announced their next 3D shooter remaster is of the forgotten 3DO release, PO’ed. If some people thought the joke was that this announcement was a hoax, the joke is on them. Here’s the Steam page.
So what even is PO’ed? Released in 1995 on the 3DO, and then the following year on the PlayStation, this one isn’t quite the classic that the games that inspired it, Doom and Marathon, were, but at least it has an interesting idea behind it.
Yet again, you’re a human stuck in an alien world, killing everything that moves and finding a way back home. But this time, you’re a chef, and not the Steven Seagal kind.
As a chef, you can go running around with things like a butcher knife or a frying pan, aside from all the requisite guns you may have come to expect from shooters of this vintage. On top of that, there is a jetpack, that gives the chef an unmatched feeling of verticality.
As you may imagine, PO’ed was a divisive game for its day, but not because the developers, the oddly named Any Channel, were not trying. Most reviewers dinged it for not really living up to the games that inspired it, but certainly, there is a lot of creativity at play behind this title.
Not to say that Doom and Marathon didn’t have their funny moments, but some gamers did feel that PO’ed did a good job of balancing out the comedy into the game design. If anything, PO’ed would probably be better remembered today if Duke Nukem 3D hadn’t come along and did the comedy FPS thing much more successfully.
Still, this is a great choice for Nightdive Studios, as it demonstrates that they properly recognize that the middling and less successful shooters of the decade were just as important to the history of shooters and video games as the successful ones are. Consider this the video game equivalent of Criterion Collection releasing Armageddon (or Pink Flamingos, or Tiny Furniture, whichever one you want to diss goes here).
In any case, PO’ed doesn’t have a release date or a price for now, but from what we’ve seen they certainly put the effort in to make it as good as it can be. It will certainly be interesting if they pull what they’ve done for many previous releases, and do a proper remake of this game, making it live up to its potential.
You can enjoy the official PO’ed trailer below.