Poorly placed save points and some other issues turn this potentially great game into just a good one.
User Rating: 7.6 | Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy PC
One thing that you can say without a doubt is that Psi-Ops is a unique game for the PC. Another thing that you can say about it is that it has a few new, wonderfully implemented game mechanics, and that a lot of thought went into this game. Psi-Ops has all of the parts required for a truly great game. Unfortunately, it has one or two major issues that sap its enjoyment value. Chief among these is a handful of save points that are so poorly placed that they almost ruin the game. The last 1/3 of the game also isn’t as enjoyable as the first 2/3. This is a shame, because this game could have been one of the finest action titles of 2004. Psi-Ops starts off as a vanilla third person action game, but it quickly introduces some very innovative and useful features. Namely: psionic powers. Through the game, you will learn the ability to move and throw objects with your mind, use mind control, set enemies on fire, and so on. These psi powers completely change the game from a mundane shooter into a unique and memorable action game. The psi powers in Psi-Ops are implemented so well that they provide some of the most fun game mechanics out of any game in the past few years. This game uses Havok physics and lets you throw stuff around, and it came out before Half-Life 2 did. For my money, and it pains me to say this, it actually does it better in some ways. Throwing a sniper out of a tower from a distance and watching him plunge to a ghastly death is so much fun that you could do it over and over again and it would never get old. It’s also a blast to lift up an explosive barrel and launch it into a pair of enemies. Or lift up a guy in front of you and use him as a human shield. What’s even more fun is using the mind control power to make one of your enemies commit suicide. One level in the game has a factory assembly line where you can possess enemies and have them walk into a press, where they get smashed like grapes. The game even tracks the number of suicides that you force in this way. It’s rare to see new features like these implemented so perfectly. The weapons in the game aren’t that powerful, so you’ll have to use psi powers and physics to make it through the game. The offensive powers are all fun, but they are well-balanced, so that you cannot just sleepwalk through every room and use the same attack on every guy. You will find yourself using all six of your powers during the game. However, telekinesis will probably dominate, in addition to one or two others. The level design, by itself, is pretty ordinary, but whatever the situation, every group of enemies is fun to fight. It can’t be overstated how much the psi powers steal the show in this game. Psi-Ops also has a handful of boss battles that are fairly par-for-the-course. You avoid the bosses deadly attack and then whittle away at his or her health by exploiting a weakness. They mostly require you to use telekinesis to punish them with objects that are lying around the room. None of them are hard to solve, so at least they aren’t annoying puzzle bosses, but the need to slowly whittle away their health by tossing objects at them draws out the battles. The save points for some of them are horrible too – more on that in a minute. As a console port, you might expect this game to have some minor control issues, and it does. One of them is the binding of the “jump” and “use” function to the same key. Another is the difficulty in using the mouse to steer and throw items with telekinesis. You actually use the mouse to throw objects, and it’s pretty inaccurate. To throw an object hard, you have to move your mouse forward on the table a whole foot. This feels like a function that was much better suited for an analog stick. Towards the end of the game, when you have to use telekinesis often with precision to survive, this flaw starts to stick out like a sore thumb. Psi-Ops has a surprisingly good look to it, given that it came out on the Playstation 2 and the X-Box. Each psi power has a very cool special effect associated with it. The characters and enemies in the game look very nice. They are animated well and they have lots of detail. This is especially true of the main character, Nick. This game doesn’t have that “blurry texture, annoying HUD with big fat letters” look that plagues lots of console ports. If there is any fault with the graphics, though, it’s that the locales are pretty generic and drab warehouse and military base type settings. Audio-wise, the game is pretty good, but not outstanding. The weapons sound great, and the enemy sound bites are pretty satisfying. Especially the way that they scream in terror as you throw them off of a high building. The music is decent, but the footstep sounds are pretty weak, and the voice acting is kind of corny. The worst feature of Psi-Ops, by far, is its horribly thought out checkpoint save system. For some parts of the game, the save points are perfectly spaced. For other points, however, they are absolutely horrible. So horrible that they will hit you as some of the worst design decisions that you have ever experienced. There are about three or four save points in this game that are so frustratingly bad that they almost ruin the game by themselves. Two of them, in particular, come after marathon two-stage boss battles that will have you pulling your hair out. Since the bosses require use of telekinesis to win, the klunky controls on the PC for this feature accentuate the frustration with these brutal save points. It’s impossible to overemphasize how aggravating it is to spend two hours getting past part 1 of a boss, only to find out that part 2 comes without an opportunity to save the game. If you get killed, then you have to redo part 1 all over again. A single play test would have revealed how frustrating this setup is. Why do developers work so hard and then almost spoil their games with one or two really moronic decisions? The story in this game isn’t great, but it’s at least coherent, and it provides a good excuse to go from level to level and terrorize your enemies with your psi powers. Length-wise, Psi-Ops is average to above average. It takes about 12 hours to play through, although at least two or three hours of that is replaying long stretches between save points. This game loses a lot of steam towards the end, as the enemies start to become more and more resistant to your Psi powers. Especially the supernatural monsters, which are purely annoying and basically add no value to the game. Psi-Ops is a game that starts off a 9 and ends up a 6. This game can be a blast when it wants to be, but stupidly placed save points and a few other frustrating issues leave you feeling that this game could have and should have been much better.
