In Defence Of Pariah - Surprisingly Entertaining
Pariah is, as has already been said, a first person shooter. After some reasonably pretty cut scenes, you find yourself in a crash site in a hostile environment with little idea of what's going on. Still, don't despair - you're a maverick doctor who's been court martialed and threatened with execution if you mess up again, and you've also clearly spent most of your spare time either at the gym or on the firing range. Unphased by the crash or the somewhat confused storyline, you pick up your trusty bonesaw (and a collection of other weapons along the way), and begin slicing and blasting your path through hordes of bad guys bent on your destruction.
The reasonably standard arsenal of machine gun, shotgun, grenade launcher, snipers rifle, rocket launcher etc are all upgradeable using packs collected along the way, making (mostly) satisfying improvements to the weapons each time.
Health is in segments - any partially full segment will recharge given enough time avoiding being shot, and the health tool will refill any completely empty segments.
There are nicely put together vehicles, but they don't feature a lot in the game and it's generally possible to complete the missions without them.
Along the way, you'll learn snippets of the underlying story, but to be honest it's all just an excuse to blow things up. By the end of it, you may well be none the wiser as to why you battled for so long, but there's a great deal of fun to be had doing it so what the hell. The graphics are pretty good, the gameplay is fun, and overall it's a surprisingly entertaining package.
Yes, it's not hugely original, but then FPS is an hugely oversubscribed genre. The 'plot' in any of these games is really there just to provide a framework around which to build level upon level of gun toting nasties, demons, zombies and so on. If you crave detailed storyline and originality, perhaps a library would be a good place to start? Just a suggestion.
Pick it up pre-owned and give it a shot - it might surprise you...