Messiah (PC)

Developer:

Shiny

|

Release Date:

2000

|

Systems:

Windows

---

Today on Super Adventures I'm playing... a PlayStation demo disc I guess. I mean check out the menu theme I'm hearing right now: Youtube link. A Fear Factory soundtrack's not entirely what was I expecting from a game with a cherub on the cover by the makers of Earthworm Jim.

I've actually had a few requests for Messiah, all of them coming after I wrote about Dark Messiah: Might and Magic a few weeks back. I figured that eventually someone might have suggested the Japanese survival horror Dark Messiah (AKA. Hellnight) instead, but nope everyone wants to see the one with the baby angel in it. So a creepy baby angel's what you'll get.

(Click the gameplay screenshots to view them at their original resolution.)

---

Thank fuck he's wearing a nappy.

This is our hero, sent falling from the heavens so that he can carry out a secret mission on Earth. It's so secret that we haven't even been told what it is, though I've at least learned what the kid is called.

Mysterious voice: "Bob."
Bob: "Yeah?"
Mysterious voice: "I've got something for you to do today."
Bob: "What?"
Mysterious voice: "I want you to clean up something for me."
Bob: "That doesn't sound like fun."
Mysterious voice: "Actually it should be a pretty big job."
Bob: "Why would I wanna do that?"
Mysterious voice: "Because I want you to... and I think it would build character."
Bob: "I got enough character. Couldn't someone else do it?"
Mysterious voice: "I'm sending you to Earth. It's in sad shape and I'm hoping you might straighten it up a little."
Bob: "I'd rather not."
Mysterious voice: "Yup. Enjoy your trip!"

I think I expected angel Bob to be a silent protagonist, but he does have a voice and it's almost certainly performed by a real genuine young child, trying his best to sound obnoxious.

The kid plummets through the clouds like a fiery infant-shaped meteor until the shot fades out to reveal a dystopian cyberpunk metropolis. Again, this is not entirely what I was expecting from a game with Cupid's younger brother on the box.

I'm going into this blind by the way, with almost zero idea what to expect from it. I didn't play so much as a demo when it was new, and anything I've read or seen about it since then has long since faded from my brain.

Bob's descent soon comes to a sudden stop, as he makes a crash landing right into a cop with enough force to knock him off a walkway. I mean seriously, he landed into him. Bob's spirit smashed through the metaphorical (or metaphysical) windshield of the officer's mind and now the baby's sitting in the driving seat.

His friend over there was also sent flying in the collision, but he seems more or less okay! Well he did until the fuel tank next to him exploded in his face at least. I can see that Bob's going to be a real positive influence on people's lives down here.

So now I'm playing as Bob the angel, playing as this cop (you can tell I've taken possession by the halo he's wearing). What I'm meant to do next is a mystery to me, but I think the best thing to do would be to stop blowing up innocent people. Hang on, I'm possessing the body of a cop in a strange futuristic city with no real idea what I'm here for... this is just Omikron: The Nomad Soul again!

You know, I keep hearing this high-pitched voice talking and I think it might be giving me advice, but I can't quite make out what it's saying. Oh, I can just press F5 to bring up my objectives.

My brain's got new email! Seems I need to single-handedly stop a 'Chot' riot that's brewing behind Gate 2. Sounds great, except that's the gate you can see locked shut and blocked by lasers in the background of the previous screenshot, and only a 'commander' has the authority to open it.

At least I've solved the mystery of the annoying high-pitched voice I've been hearing. Turns out there's a cigarette vendor robot up here yelling things like: "The Surgeon General is a fool!" and "Lung cancer is a myth!" to the crowds of gullible people that aren't here.

Well after a little experimentation I've learned that boxes with hand marks on them can be rigged to explode on a timer. Not sure if doing this is going to help me out at all, but I like blowing things up and with any luck I'll catch Cigs-bot in the blast.


BOOM.

 

Drat, Cigs-bot escaped without a scratch and so did the wall. The explosion wasn't a total failure though, as it left behind some ammo and a welding torch. And a dead welder.

Well fuck, there goes my idealistic dreams of getting through the night without blowing up any more innocent people.


I went back to Gate 2 and found another crate down there to apply my new box destroying technique on, and this time I got a proper gun out of it. Then I came back up here and applied the proper gun on the Cigs-bot, and that turned out to be a total waste of time and ammo. So...  now I'm stuck.

Whoa, the tutorial message was right! I went up to pick up the ammo next to the welder, and a message popped up telling me that the metal wall in front of me was actually a door I can open. And it was.

My crosshair just turned red, but am I meant to kill this guy I'm aiming at? He looks like he's about to come after me, but that could just be because I activated 'combat mode' by raising my gun. On the other hand the game did lock on to him itself, and I assume it knows best about these things

I'm not usually a fan of lock on aiming, but in this case I'm grateful because the camera's steering like a oil tanker. It takes a lot of work to get this ship turned around.

Okay, I'm feeling that opening fire might have been the wrong move.

I killed my designated target easily enough, but his friends were just around the corner and these guys are really good shots. A hail of gunfire cut up my co-opted cop, releasing Bob himself into the world in corporeal form, and it turns out that without a host the infant angel actually has the combat potential of a two year old.

It did make me smile when I clicked the trigger button, and he raised one of his chicken-wing arms like he was holding a gun and said "bang!" but it'd probably be more amusing if I wasn't desperately pressing every button in turn trying to convince him to possess someone else.

And the angel kid goes down. Took like two hits, maybe.

Damn, kicked right back to the title screen on death! That's so retro. I wonder what other demos are on this... oh right, it's a PC game, not a PlayStation Magazine coverdisc. The game wasn't even released on the PlayStation, how weird is that?

By the way, that weird ass semi-symmetrical logo up at the top of the screen actually says "Messiah" if you look at it right.

Here, I've coloured it in a bit to make the letters easier to see. I cheated and overlapped the 's's a bit because otherwise it would've looked like 'mes4iah'.

Well I started again and, uh, it turns out that these cops actually have no issues at all with people wandering the dystopian streets at night. Especially when those people are also cops. So if I can hold off from activating combat mode or killing a bunch of people for a bit, I think we'll all get on just fine.

Though now I've come across a new problem, as the street ends with a laser field that requires a scientist to open, and I don't see a pair of glasses, a white lab coat, or a clipboard anywhere. There's a suspicious stack of explosive crates next to the switch, but when I tried setting them off it broke my fragile truce with the cops, and they broke my fragile head. Then I tried crawling through the gap at the top, but that set off the boxes again, with me in the middle of the explosion this time.

It's a bloody puzzle is what it is.

Oh, there's a room directly underneath with a pair of scientists hanging around. I... didn't even think to look for a way down here, even though I could see it through the transparent floor. I am an idiot.

I've figured out how to possess people at least. There's actually no button for it, I just have to abandon my current host and then jump into my next victim in baby-form. Being airborne is the trick, I have to enter the body from the top. Unfortunately the cop I'd been possessing soon came to his senses, realised that I'd jumped across from him into a scientist, and then shot him to death. So lesson learned: don't let people see you switch bodies, it blows your cover.

I reloaded my last save and made sure to park my cop a safe distance away this time before exiting his body and making a run for the scientist. My new scientist body came with the authorisation to deactivate the laser barrier for a few seconds, and it turns out that there was a switch behind it that opens Gate 4! Wherever the fuck that is.

Oh duh, it's in the background of this screenshot.

Finally, a puzzle I actually can solve by jumping off a stack of boxes over a laser fence. Even a puny scientist can pull himself up crates like he's Lara Croft when he's possessed with the power of Bob.

There was no actual stacking or box pushing required though; this doesn't have physics or anything crazy like that.

I had to leave the scientist behind and go cherub for this bit, as there was a bit of a fall involved. Bob can't fly, but he can use his wings to glide a bit and slow his descent. Not that I actually did any of that, nope I dropped my host down into the pit and then leaped out of his shattered corpse at the bottom. I am a bad baby.

It seems that Bob can survive outside of a host indefinitely, as long as people aren't putting bullets into him. For some reason I just assumed that the game was playing by Space Station Silicon Valley rules and he'd take damage over time until he found another body, but there's actually no rush. Which is good, as I've got fans to reposition. I need go around flicking switches to arrange them so that I've got a corkscrew spiralling path for me to jump out of here with.

Huh, I figured that glowing yellow bit was a forcefield, but I jumped up through it with no trouble and now I'm in the room above (you can just able see one the fans down there if you look above my head).

Anyway I found a radiation suit guy to wear so I'm not overly concerned about any crackling I might be hearing, but I'd still like to get out of here. There's four computer consoles around the room that I can turn on and off, so I'm assuming that I have to find the right combination, but there's no clues here what that might be.

Oh I just had to turn all the consoles on. Well that was weirdly simple and almost entirely pointless. I'll guess I'll just go and grab what I can with my dude's giant metal pincers, and leave everyone else to their important radioactive work then.

Wow, what a jerk! These two have a shocking lack of respect for nuclear science.

Eventually they got disenchanted with my antics and decided to open fire, then suddenly changed their mind and dropped dead instead. Everyone in the room is collapsing around me in fact and I'm starting to think I should've hit the shower before coming in.

Oh wait, I just realised that I'm still carrying an incredibly radioactive box I found back in the console room! D'oh!

Oops, I killed the commander too. I needed her to open up Gate 2 back at the start so I can stop the Chot riot! There's a definite 'possess a certain kind of person then get them back to a door' theme I'm noticing.

Fortunately the game surprised me by dispatching a replacement commander for me to bodyjack. Turns out it's not so cruel after all.


LATER, ALL THE WAY BACK AT GATE 2.

I finally got Gate 2 open! And it's full of people that want me dead!

I'm a commander, not a commando, so I'm not sure how I'm even supposed to win this fight. I've been able to shoot a few Chots dead, and I even managed to dodge their bullets once or twice, but they tend not to miss and my health never lasts long.

After seeing the 'load game' screen a half-dozen times (the game  could really do with quickload and quicksave keys), I decided to change tactics and lure these psychos away to the laser gate room full of friendly cops, but the Chots gunned me down before I even got halfway.

I suppose I could try to lure them towards all these crates and canisters of explosives lying around instead...


A FEW TRIES LATER.

I finally managed to survive long enough to get inside Gate 2 and possess one of the assholes shooting at me. No wonder he was kicking my ass, this Chot guy's carrying a spike launcher straight out of F.E.A.R. that can kill a man and pin them to a wall with a single hit! Which is good, because it stops them shooting at me.

My host is absurdly low on health here and that doesn't regenerate, but they're not quite out of Chots to send in. The fools made the mistake of giving me a moment of peace to get behind a box and save my game though, so I can keep retrying this over and over until I get it right (or find an exit).


CHAPTER 2: OLD TOWN.

I did it, I actually resolved the Chot riot! I can finally cross objective #1 off my list of things to do. I should at least keep going to the end of chapter two though, see if the gameplay evolves or a plot begins to emerge.

Okay I've wandered into some kind of lab... I think, but the exit's locked so I need to solve another puzzle.

I've got a scientist behind a laser field I can't get into, a huge meat grinder that I don't much want to get into, a set of stairs that lead nowhere useful, and a welder guy standing next to a button that says "Container is 25 percent filled" when I press it.

Hmm... I think I may already have the solution to this one.

The tricky part is going to be getting my host body to fall into the spinning cogs of the meat grinder, while simultaneously making sure that Bob doesn't. A backwards leap off the railing followed by a mid-jump depossession and a lot of desperate wing flapping should do it I reckon.

Then I'll walk over and hit the button again, and if the percentage has gone up then I'll know I'm on the right track!


TWO DARING KILLS LATER.

Dropping the cop and the welder into the blender got me up to 75%, so I just need one more unwitting victim and I think I know who it's going to be. It all depends whether I'm small enough as a baby to crawl underneath these lasers.

And it turns out that I... am.


SOME GRINDING LATER.

I was rewarded for my efforts with a nice full jar of human being juice to use as step to get over to that ledge over there. Yep, that's the only reason that three innocent people had to die here.

Well four really, as I possessed another scientist after the grinder was filled and accidentally dropped him far enough to break both his legs.

He held on for a good while though, crawling across the floor and begging for help. It's all played for laughs I assure you.

Oh that reminds me: corpses disappear over time to save memory, but they don't just fade away or dissolve, there's a little flying robot that comes by and disintegrates them one by one to clean the place up. It's a nice touch.


SOON, IN THE INCINERATOR ROOM NEXT DOOR.

Man it took forever for me to make the leap from the blood jar over to the ledge. I tried it over and over again, falling just a little short each time, until I finally got enough height to get his little baby fingertips to grip hold.

I wouldn't have bothered if I'd known then that the next room was full of even harder jumps.

It's hard for me to show what I'm dealing with here, as every time I step back against a wall and look up I get a nappy right in the face, but I'm basically trying to leap from pipe to pipe and failing miserably. And every time I screw up I have to reload my last save because it's way faster than trying to get back up again myself. I'm experiencing a lot of this game in 5-10 second bursts between loading screens.

Oh I see, I can tap the button to make him fly a little bit higher! Well now that the difficulty level has been downgraded to 'possible', maybe I'll be able to progress at a more reasonable pace.

Nope.


15 MILLION RETRIES LATER (I HATE THIS GAME SO MUCH).

Well I finally got past the jumping bit, only to end up in more combat as a group of cops took issue with the Chot host I'd grabbed along the way. But that's fine, because I've figured this out now: I don't need to win a shoot out, I just need to possess the last man standing! If I can just avoid being shot too much while exposed in my angel form, I can jump from body to body, letting the enemy kill each other to get me.

Bob's health doesn't regenerate over time, but it seems like he saps the life force of his host like a parasite. Not constantly though, just enough to get himself back up to full again for the next daring out of body experience.

And now all the cops busy fighting Chots or being dead, I'm free to make a run for this lift, ride it up to that door up there, and... the game just crashed to desktop.

Crap, the game crashes to desktop every single time I open the door.

I checked the GOG.com forums and it seems I'm not alone with this problem, so now I have to go through each potential solution in turn, loading the game over and over again and retrying the level until I find something that works. Seems pretty close to regular gameplay to be honest.


EVENTUALLY.

I eventually managed to get past the crash by running in D3D mode instead of Glide, and now I wish I hadn't bothered as I'm getting an explosion in the face every time I try to get down this next street, and it's been a fair few times now.

My body leaping tricks don't work when there's a guy firing rockets at me from way down the road! I've been trying my 'shooting them with a gun' tricks instead, but once he knows I'm here I can't stop moving to take aim or else I'm blown up back to being a useless baby in a single hit. And the next hit kills the useless baby.

Hang on, I just managed to trick a gang of people into shooting each other didn't I? Maybe one of those guys dropped a better gun...


CHAPTER 3.

It took a considerable amount of trial and error, but I eventually prevailed and managed to fight my way through a section of crappy third person shooter gameplay to reach the next chapter! Where I got stuck at a broken elevator and had to quit.

Well I was planning to stop here anyway, so I can't complain.


CONCLUSION

---

Messiah didn't really win me over after two chapters, but even at its worst I was more bored than genuinely angry with it, and I think that's probably a good thing.

I mentioned earlier that the game reminds me of Omikron: The Nomad Soul, which came out around the same time and has a similar look to it, but this makes far more use of the 'nomad soul' premise, as I was never stuck in one body for long. It also reminds me a lot of Space Station Silicon Valley, but I haven't played that since the 90s so I've no witty and insightful article to link to there. The trouble is that I was basically using people as keycards rather than making use of any special skills, and most of my body shifting was done in an attempt to survive the terrible combat.

It's a comedy game for sure, set in a Judge Dredd dystopia, with GTA-style satirical billboards, a Cigs-bot, and a total disregard for human life. Grimdark cyberpunk science versus religion and the supernatural, with a arrogant human dictator opening up portals and capturing demons for his own sinister purposes, and a clueless homicidal angel baby caught in the middle. There's no real interaction with NPCs though, so the story's all been told through silent brain emails so far. Any people in the game are just there to be shot, hijacked or dropped into a grinder. Or pinned to the wall by a spike, that's always cool.

I can't say I had much fun with Messiah though and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I don't regret playing it either weirdly. The main appeal of the game for me, I think, may be the potential it has to throw something unexpected at you. Sometimes I'll whine when a game keeps trying to pull me away from the core gameplay I'm enjoying (with hacking minigames, QTEs, turret sequences, surprise stealth levels... boss fights), but I've also played some some frustrating games which gave me zero motivation to keep playing, because I knew that the only reward I'd get for winning a level would be more of the same.

In this on the other hand I had no idea what was coming up next. I'd finish a scientist murdering puzzle, which then opened a door into a tedious jumping challenge room, which then dropped me imto a crappy shooting level, which then led to me running around as a rat in an irritating top down sewer maze... wait, why am I praising this again?

I suppose for all its faults, fifteen years later this is still the best asshole baby body possession cyberpunk game by default, and it's likely to stay that way until the Wachowski's get off their ass and put The Matrix: Young Agent Smith Chronicles into development.

---

That's another game request I can tick off my list, which leaves about... 113 games left. Crap, I don't think I'll be getting through all them by the end of the year somehow. Don't let that discourage you from suggesting things though, especially if you've found something amazing that's been forgotten over the decades.

Also you're welcome and encouraged to share your own opinions about Messiah, my site, disappointing Shiny Entertainment games of the late 90s, or whatever else is relevant.