Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Any Channel
Publisher: Accolade

There are two ways of looking at the PO'ed visuals; on the one hand, lack of perspective correction means that the graphics can occasionally be dizzying, as the player "swims in textures". On the other hand, the game is very chipper: bright, colorful, and inviting. Sprites are ultra high resolution, and the engine is a technical marvel: truly 3d with undistorted looking up and down, full-on transparencies-- even multiple layers of them on top of each other-- and floors above floors!

There are only a very small number of songs in PO'ed-- one of which plays during the title screen-- as the game's designers opted for ambient noises, much like many contemporary games; think the "Souls" series as an example. This was probably done for technical reasons, but the resulting ambience was successfully obtained anyway, even if by accident. Enemy and weapon sound effects are crystal clear and some of them are fairly memorable, giving the game its own sense of character.

The PO'ed control scheme works great, allowing the player to easily move throughout the game's complex 3d environments while flying, strafing, switching weapons, and looking around. The weapons and enemies all feature interesting, nuanced mechanics. The level design is a big let down though; the maps feature pseudo real-world locations, like giant skyscrapers and massive pyramids, with sprawling outdoor areas and tight hallways alike. The use of too much geometry causes the framerate to sometimes crawl though, and the constant vertical play-- faciliated by jetpack-- can make navigation through the maps extremely confusing.

PO'ed is such an incredibly experimental game that it was bound to have some hits and some misses. The engine is incredible, the art direction is very good, and the jetpack mechanic is fabulous. It's almost as if the game just needed a different set of level designers, because on the occasional map that uses a more traditional, Doom-like corridor design PO'ed really hits its stride, only to fall apart on some overly-sophisticated structures in a subsequent map.