I must have a different game then the rest of you because my Coded Arms is AWESOME!
Another lie you'll encounter is that the game has no story. It has indeed a story but I won't type it down here, it can be found in the instruction booklet on pages 5 and 6 and probably online somewhere too if you are interested.
The last lie I can remember reading is that when you die you are forced to replay an entire battlefield from sector 1 instead of just the sector you died in. In Coded Arms you chose a battlefield out of three different ones, City, Base and Ruin, and in all three there are several sectors you must go through to complete the battlefield.
Let's say you die in sector 9/13, if what some reviews say is true then you'd have to start all over again in sector 1/13 and work your way up, collecting all the upgrades, weapons, ammo etc. again, but thankfully it's not true and you'll simply have to restart at the beginning of the sector you died in, in this example being 9/13.
Then everything else mostly comes down to what taste you have if you'll like the game or not.. I personally think it's really good and enjoy playing it, even when it shows it's most difficult sides!
Now on with my review..
The story is cool if you ask me and it makes for a good excuse why the enemies are what they are and so on.
You are inside a computer as a kind of cybertrooper. You're a soldier fighting against a combat simulator gone loco, almost like a mix of The Matrix and SkyNet (from Terminator).
The enemies consist of soldiers (remnants from the combat simulator), robots (bots), bug-like aliens (bugs) and three bosses (a giant supersoldier colossus, a big robot and a large alien bug).
All levels in the game are randomly generated except for the boss-levels, so you'll never have to worry about running around in the same old levels over and over again no matter how many times you play through the game or play multiplayer, although in multiplayer, exactly like in Worms, you can type in a code to create a level then save that code to play the same level again and again.
Also, loading times are acceptable and do not spoil gameplay.
The graphics are really good, light-bloom effects are plenty to behold, tons of effects, shadows, ragdoll-physics and everything is nicely detailed, enemies, weapons and background objects all look great, and the design of everything is really cool too.
Sound effects and music is good too, from the footsteps of your character to gunfire, explosions and enemy-sounds, everything sounds really crisp and clear and the music changes pace with the action.
You can save anywhere on all levels to continue where you left off at any time, and the save files only take 112kb's so you can save several without having to worry about your memorystick filling up.
There are tons of weapons and equipment that you can customize which ones to use at any time, once you've obtained them in the game from killed enemies and bosses that is. The weapons are well varied, there are pistols, machineguns, sniper rifles, bazookas, flamethrowers, grenades and other special weapons, and you can upgrade all of them.
So now all that's left to say is that I think FPS games on PSP have a bright future thanks to the brilliant Coded Arms series with the first game already out on the market for everyone to enjoy and the sequel, Coded Arms Contagion, coming out soon!
I strongly suggest that if you like futuristic shooters you should definitely get this game, it can be found fairly cheap now too.