Psychotoxic

aka: Psychotoxic: Gateway to Hell, Psychotoxic: The 4th Horseman
Moby ID: 20380
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Description official descriptions

Psychotoxic is a first-person shooter where the player controls one Angela Prophet, whose mission is simply to save the world from the Fourth Horseman who can bring Armageddon to end all existence. Angela, with a little help from some friends, must journey through the futuristic cities and fantastic Dream Worlds, shooting many enemies in the process in order to stop the evil from destroying everything.

Gameplay spans through two different kinds of levels: There is the Real World, which is a futuristic city with normal weapons and enemies, and then there is a Dream World where not only the guns, but also the enemies and visuals are sometimes quite weird. There are 19 weapons in all, which means that both the dream- and the real world has about 10 guns each. They span from normal pistols and rifles to more fantastic ones that the dream world has to offer.

The basic gameplay is 3D shooting through the eyes of Angela as she makes her way through the levels, shooting people (and monsters), collecting stuff, opening doors, and talking to folks. Once in a while she gets to the Dream World where each level is wackier than the last one, ranging from cartoon-themed ones, to gothic villages and very hell-like environments also.

Spellings

  • Психотоксик: Врата Ада - Russian spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

55 People (28 developers, 27 thanks) · View all

CEO
Original Screenplay and Design
Leveldesign, Gamedesign
Videoediting
Textures, Graphics
Sounds, Music
Frank Fitzner
Managing Director
Characterdesign and Modelling, Additional Object Modelling, Rendering, Texturing
Additional Gamedesign
Tim Bruns
  • Thanks to Konni; my parents and all who believed in me!
Chief Programmer, Framework
David Strippgen
  • Thanks to Franzi and my family for endless support!
Programmer
Achim Meyer
  • Thanks to my parents and friends!
2D/3D Artist, Graphics and Textures, Object Modelling, Particle FX
Additional Scripting
Weapondesign, Leveldesign
Soenke C. Seidel
  • Thanks to my parents and friends!
2D/3D Artist, Graphics and Textures, Object Modelling
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 50% (based on 23 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.4 out of 5 (based on 8 ratings with 1 reviews)

Neutral shade of grey

The Good
When I first read the reviews of this game, I thought: Oh, this must be one very buggy and crappy game indeed. That initial impression wasn't wrong, but when I actually tried the game, I found out that it isn't THAT buggy and crappy. The basic story of the game is pretty good and at least tries to deliver some kind of motivation to all of the action, and a story is one thing often missing from these basic action games. It's quite obvious that the makers of this game actually liked doing it, which is seen in some of the levels and concepts, and the attention to detail in places is quite stunning actually. Some of the dream levels are very well designed and most of the real world levels are also pretty nicely done with lots of stuff lying around. The game is also powered with Valve's Havok-engine which means that most of the smaller items in the game world as well as the characters have appropriate physics.

The Bad
Technically the game isn't nothing to cheer about. Textures are pretty small in size and there's almost no surface effects (reflection, bump mapping) at all, and when there is, the game becomes very heavy indeed. The sounds are a bit on the loose side as well and the guns sound more like "thud" as opposed to a manly "Powrgh!" and all the enemy sounds are a bit on the pathetic side as well with sad "oww" and "goo"-sounds. The level design most of the time is not very good as there isn't anything interesting in them. Like I said above, there is lots of things and props everywhere but the design itself is very basic with a familiar corridor-room-corridor-corridor-room-style of thing going on. No alternate routes and nothing "extra". Despite of the quite nice plot, it isn't been used very well with all the levels degrading to normal, yawn-inducing shooting with the same guns, same enemies (yeah, there isn't that many enemy types in the game) and same everything.

The Bottom Line
If there were an annual awards for shoot-em-ups, this one would win the price of the most basic shooter of year. There's nothing very wrong with it, but there isn't anything, ANYTHING exeptional about it either. If you have played every other vaguely entertaining shooter and are looking for something more, this isn't a bad choice to play through once, maybe.

Windows · by Evilhead (1154) · 2006

Trivia

German version

In the German version, the game is automatically set to the "low gore" mode which can't be changed in-game. This results in a complete removal of blood and ragdoll effects (the latter does not apply to explosions).

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 20380
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Evilhead.

Additional contributors: tarmo888, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 16, 2005. Last modified January 12, 2024.