Devastation - The power of nostalgia
Hello there, fellow Wombatants! Michael here, and welcome to another childhood game of mine! Today, we're talking about...
It's a relatively little known 2003 first person shooter made by Digitalo Studios, who haven't made any other games, it seems. It was also published in different regions by three different companies, none of which exist, anymore.
..... okay, so that doesn't really seem like the best of signs, but bear with me, because i love this game to bits, and i wanna tell you why!😜
Also, my guess would be that you've never heard of this game at all. Simply because in all the years since playing it, we haven't heard anyone else mention it. Ever. We even asked a good friend i went to school with, and even he couldn't remember this game!
As for us, well, playing it again for this post was our first time experiencing it together. I myself played this a lot as a kid, though i think back then i only ever had the demo, which had two levels in it, both of which i could possibly play blindfolded.😜
Though i -have- revisited and finished this game a couple times over the years, which is a rare thing indeed. But then, that perhaps shows you how much i genuinely love this unknown little FPS from ages past.
So with that said, let me begin by telling you about the...
-Graphics-
Okay, so it has to be said: For 2003, this game looked pretty decent on a technical level. For 2026, it unsurprisingly looks quite dated. Though just how dated depends on which bits you're looking at.
The environments, for instance, are very nicely put together. They didn't have many polygons or amazing textures to work with, but they managed to create exactly the vibe they wanted with it. Unfortunately, said vibe is a drab, dilapidated dystopian future with a rather muted colour palette, so it won't -wow- you with amazing beauty.
The weapon models are a bit of a mixed bag. Some look a bit meh, both in terms of modelling fidelity and design originality, but then there's some very cool, original stuff in there too. For the most part, the weapons look fine.
(Also, just wanna put down a side note here: Just for the sake of visual comparison, we actually looked up other 2003 shooters, and it's become incredibly clear that 2003 was an incredible year for FPS games. Raven shield, Hidden & Dangerous 2, Devastation, XIII, the original Call of Duty and more all came out in 2003! Even Will Rock, a game we previously looked at! Madness!)
Though yeah, overall, as much as the game looks -very- invitingly familiar to me, it probably looks a bit meh to you. And that's fair enough. I'm the one with the nostalgia blinders.😉
-Audio-
So audio-wise, the game's got it's highs and lows.
On the one hand, the voice acting is a bit hit and miss., and the sound effects for bumping into physics objects and such are nothing special. However!
The music in this game is awesome, and i -think- it's not just my nostalgia talking! It's another game with that late '90s, early 2000's action drum & bass/trance kind of thing going on, where you can just feel the spiky blonde hair and lacquer combat boots in the air.
And actually, in terms of audio, the game has another trick up it's sleeve: The weapon sounds, both for shooting and reloading, are nothing short of amazing!
Every gun has it's own very unique dakka, but they all have one thing in common: Firing them has a real -punch- to it!
Generally, the more powerful the weapon, the more cataclysmic the sound, so while simple 9 millimetre pistols sound sharp and dangerous, things like sniper rifles and shotguns just sound like pure thunder and doom.
Adding to that, the reloading involves all sorts of nice clicks and clacks, giving the guns a nice mechanical feel.
Though another weak part is the, let's say "minor" sounds the characters make. So the noises that happen when a character takes damage, or when the main character jumps. Those sorts of little "grunts". They sound pretty weird in this game. Like someone's messed with the pitch and tempo or something. It's quite odd.
So i'd say that on balance, the soundstage here is more positive than negative. The good parts are generally the ones you pay the most attention to, while the bad parts are often stuff that can easily fade into the background, anyway.
Now, with the technical stuff out of the way, let's get into the meat of things and talk about....
-Story and setting-
And oh boy, this is where i start getting properly nostalgic, because this game's setting is cool, if a bit cliché.
The game is set in 2075, but boy, this ain't no cyberpunk. Advanced technology certainly exists, but it's all controlled and misused by megacorps like Grathius Inc. and Nakonaki, which are biotech corporations with exactly zero scruples.
Basically, this is a hyper-late-stage capitalist hell, where society has exploited itself to the point where governments collapsed and the average person just kinda tries to survive on the leftover scraps. The "lucky" ones might get an in at one of the remaining Corporations, either as part of their paramilitary forces or as a worker drone doing what they can to feed the beast that murdered society.
Not that the corporations themselves are particularly glamorous. They exist within the ruins they're built on, just like everyone else.
...... so anyway, enough about the current political landscape, let's talk about the game and it's story!😉
So yeah, the setting actually reminds us a bit of Half Life, but without the aliens.
You play as Flynn Haskell, the leader of the San Francisco resistance movement, and at the start of the game, one of your guys uncovers some naughty secrets by infiltrating Grathius Inc. as a mole. Unfortunately they get caught, you get raided and most of your members get wiped out. Looking for more information, you find some mysterious machines of unknown purpose in an underground lab.
It's a so-called "ReGen" machine, and not long after you first learn of the technology, you find out it's fully operational. And you find this out the hard way, when the pacification squad troopers you're fighting start..... coming back.
The corporation introduces some modifications in the process of course, making it so that the troopers that are revived are more obedient and loyal than they ever were before. Standard Evil Inc. doctrine, of course.
But yeah, that's the premise. You fight the corporations, making your way from San Francisco to L.A., then all the way to Taipei and finally Tokyo. Along the way, you make contact with other resistance groups, growing your forces and eventually beginning a proper revolution!
But i'll tell you what, while i was really itching to play this game and write about it, i don't wanna hog this whole post to myself. So why don't i hand off to Amalia, so she can tell you all about the...
-Gameplay-
Hi folks! Well, i'll try not to be too harsh on Michael's childhood darling, here.😜
So! Let's lay down the basics: This is a firt person shooter from 2003, and it feels like one. It's fairly fast-paced, though it does pay to take cover from time to time. Mind you, there's no actual cover system, here. Not even a leaning feature. We're talking about ducking behind stuff and reducing your silhouette.
There's also no aiming down sights, except for weapons with actual scopes. Though some weapons have alternate fire options.
The game has easy, medium and hard difficulty settings, as well as an "arcade" and "simulation" mode. In arcade, you can carry all of the game's weapons at once, while in simulation, you get limited carrying capacity, as well as some recoil, throwing off your aim as you fire. Ammo is also generally much more scarce in simulation mode.
So, let's talk arsenal. There's 26 weapons by our count, and they're divided into categories.
In terms of melee, you can use your hands to punch, there's a bottle and a 4x4 for improvised stuff and there's a combat knife and a katana available. Mind you, 90% of the time, melee is just not the way to go in this game. Though there's a couple of missions where it's necessary.
In terms of pistols, the game has 4 of 'em. 2 different 9mm ones and 2 different .45 ones. All of these have dual-wield as their alternate fire mode.
Just like the pistols, the alternate fire button triggers dual-wielding for all smgs.
Then we have the assault weapons, firstly the "default" Assault Rifle of the game, which is some variant of M4. There's also a Spas-12 and a pump action shotgun. Unfortunately, the shotguns suffer from -way- too much spread in this game, so anything more than a couple of meters away will only be hit by a few pellets. (A double shame because the shotguns sound pretty oomphy!)
Then, there's sniper rifles, of which the game surprisingly also has 3! There's an AWM, which takes you out of scope view to cycle the bolt after every shot, there's a less powerful, but semi-automatic rifle and an actually fully automatic one, which suffers from small magazine syndrome.
There's 2 heavy weapons, in the form of an M-60 style machine gun (Which is belt-fed and can't be reloaded until empty) and a straight-up minigun, which is powerful but the spinup time got us killed more than once.
Then, we get to the really curious stuff. There's a harpoon that shoots explosive bolts, with the alternate fire button setting off the explosions. There's something that the game calls a "Nail gun", but for some reason the nails are clearly electrified. It also does very little damage, so it feels like the most useless weapon in the game.
There's a grenade. It's a grenade. You throw it and it goes boom after a bit. And there's something rather morbid: Rat drones.
Yep. These just appear in your inventory in one of the later missions with no explanation given. It's a rat, equipped with (presumably) some kind of mind-control device and an explosive charge. Bit grim, but it is what it is.
However, there's a weapon you get in the late game that changes the gameplay quite fundamentally, and it's the P-Laser.
On top of all that, it has this cool effect where upon killing an enemy with it, their outline is frozen still in flaming ashes, which will then begin to flake apart and dissipate. AND the thing sounds absolutely amazing to fire.
So yeah, when this thing starts appearing, it instantly steals the show. Where previously, firefights could be somewhat drawn-out, with both you and the enemy taking a decent amount of punishment before going down, it's now suddenly possible to die instantly, but in turn, you can also dispatch your enemies very efficiently with hyper-accurate instadeath beams.
Oh, and it also wins the prize for the most-early-2000's-looking-scope-contest, with this:
Now, you might be worried by the whole "dying instantly" thing i mentioned. It might sound annoying, but there's good news: By the time the laser rifle shows up, you're well into the second half of the game. And that's significant, because halfway through, your little band of resistance fighters makes a bit of a breakthrough.
So that means that for the first half of the game, this is a standard shooter where if you or a squadmate dies, you have to reload your last save, but in the second half, that changes completely!
Suddenly, you can respawn! The game generally opens up a bit, with larger maps and objectives that can be tackled from multiple angles. The enemies now also respawn a lot more aggressively, because while you're trying to complete your objectives and probably disable their spawner as well, they're also trying to attack your spawner, because that's the only way you can be properly defeated, at this point.
It also means that the way you approach the missions might be different. You might not quite make it to your objective, say, but perhaps you took out some enemy snipers during your attempt. The sniper NPCs will respawn, sure, but they'll just join the general fighting, rather than getting back to the original sniping position where the game devs placed them. Or maybe you hack a laser fence, opening a path for your next attempt. You'll find yourself chipping away at the enemy defences, bit by bit.
It also quickly becomes a common theme to push forward to the enemy spawner and disable it, so that one of your teammates can fix and reprogram it, moving your spawn point forward. So in the second half of the game, things can feel a bit like a tug of war, with both sides trying to push back the other.
And with that, i should probably mention, you pretty much always have companions with you in this game. In fact, one of the nicest ways in which this game shows progression is by actually growing the number of people fighting alongside you.
You start out with a couple of levels by yourself, then you quickly get a couple of squadmates. Then a third, fourth, etc., until you have 9(?) NPCs with you. It properly feels like your resistance is growing in numbers. Because it actually is!
You also have a rudimentary command system, where you can tell them if they should follow you, take defensive positions around your spawner base, or push towards the current objective on their own, independent of you.
As for how good they are at following these orders, well, it's a bit of a mixed bag.
On the one hand, the AI squadmates in this game can and will actually take down enemies. They're not as efficient at it as the player, but especially if they get together in a group, they can take care of business pretty well! You can also give them better guns if you wish, but it seems their equipment resets when they respawn, so it might not be worth handing out all your best weapons. (Though your loadout also resets when you respawn, so you technically have infinite laser rifles to give away. Sort of.)
But yeah, when you give the attack order, we've had it happen that they successfully push towards, and take over enemy spawn points on their own. They can't do mission objectives like hacking stuff or planting bombs, but in those cases, they'll try to push towards that objective and secure the area so you can come along and do the job. So in that regard, this game's AI is pretty cool and effective.
Buuuuut....
They -can- also be pretty dumb. They sometimes get stuck on level geometry, or they bunch up and block each other in stairways and ladders. It's usually nothing game-breaking, but it can be a real pain, sometimes.
Add to that the whacky 2003 physics engine, and the whole game ends up with a certain janky quality. It's not like that ruins it, to be fair. In fact, one might argue it adds character. But yeah, a hint of jank is definitely present.
One last thing to note here is that this game is actually quite short. After finishing the whole thing, our playtime was marked at 7 hours. Granted, Michael, and by extension i as well, know this game quite intimately, but still, didn't feel like we were going very fast or anything.
Kind of a surprise, that. We thought after the big Hitman WOA post, we'd enjoy this one for a while before writing a post, but we ended up finishing it on a single weekend. So here we are.
Anyway, let's move on to our....
-Conclusion-
Well, i'd say Devastation is alright. It's got its rough edges, but it also has some cool ideas, like the growing squad you're fighting alongside and the lore-friendly respawning, even in the singleplayer campaign.
With that said, i think what might have doomed it in the bigger picture is the competition. Again, 2003 was -full- of FPS games that would become classics. Some of which are on the to-do list for this blog, like Rainbow Six 3 and Hidden & Dangerous 2.
And of course for games with a similar theme, Half Life 2 was on the way, and that clearly overshadowed this slightly janky, short FPS where characters sometimes don't even move their lips when they speak.
So i would say that Devastation is a bit of a victim of circumstance. Had the competition that year not been so fierce, it might have ended up like say, Freedom Fighters, a 3rd person shooter of the same year that also wasn't -that- impressive, but still sometimes comes up. Y'know, like now.😉
Instead, Devastation ended up in the depths of near-total obscurity.
Obviously though, to my dear Michael, it's a proper cornerstone of his childhood. I wasn't around then, but he's got a -lot- of happy memories of this game, particularly of the two levels that were in the demo, which he played -many- times over.
Speaking of which though, if you're interested in the game.... good luck? Again, no one who made this is around anymore, so while -someone- probably still owns the rights, they haven't bothered to put this up for digital sale anywhere. So you'll have to hunt down a physical copy or use the kind of website we cannot endorse on here. (Well, actually we're not sure. Abandonware is sort of a legal grey zone.)
(The term also makes it sound like some half-finished early access thing, when in reality this game comes from an ancient era when early access didn't exist and games simply came out [mostly] finished.)
But yeah, i think that concludes our look at this piece of Michael's childhood. Hopefully you enjoyed it and look forward to our next post!
Until then, stay safe, don't let megacorporations ruin your society, and have a good one!
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