User Rating: 7.5 | Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy XBOX
I first played the demo and was quite excited about the new concept of having all these psychic abilities, and also the game seems to be one of the first to incorporate physics as an integrated part of the gameplay, not just as eye candy. The game is quite cool at times, but unfortunately it is dragged down by one of my #1 annoyances with 3D shooters: It's often cumbersome to find the right way. For example, the game forces you to revisit old locations a lot, by nagging for keycards before you can go through some door. So, find the locked door, roam around to find the keycard, then roam around to find the locked door one more time. In general I found there was a lot of running around to figure out where to go next, as entrances to new parts of the game can be very hard to spot. There is a map function, but it is quite poor. The game has an autosave function based on checkpoints. Fine, but again, makes you replay the same area several times, even though it sometimes seem unfair. And, I am not sure if all the psychic abilities really is so important in the game as it tries to make them. It's more like alternate weapons than core gameplay treats. I often ended up playing it as any normal shooter, and without the psychic abilities thing, the game is actually not that great.
