Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
Wrap your head around this: Midway has a serious sleeper hit on its hands.
Published: July 25, 2004
I'll be the first to admit that I had written Midway off as a developer on track to crash and burn in the style of 3DO or the soon-to-be-tanked Acclaim. Gone, I thought, were the days of Mortal Kombat where Midway ruled the arcades, instead replaced with poor cash-ins of old licenses with mediocre production values.
Then, slowly, the quality of the games, and more importantly the talent and production behind them, began to rise. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance showed some real promise, though it was apparent the developer was still struggling. Still, they pushed on, hiring some former industry big guns and began turning the tide.
If the last Mortal Kombat game showed the beginnings of a rebound, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy is the first example of the developer/publisher back on track. Through innovative use of the nigh-ubiquitous Havok physics engine, a decent (if rather clichéd) storyline, and some impressively well fleshed-out game design, Midway has managed to create a game that offers something different, but more importantly, a whole hell of a lot of fun.
Things open with an impressive pre-rendered movie showing a group of psi-powered mystery men doing everything from controlling throngs of look-alike Nazi stormtrooper-esque soldiers against an army of apparent good-guys (also rather look-alike) to lifting a massive oil tanker and lobbing it like it was made of styrofoam. The bad guys apparently win, and begin shuttling the mass of near-clone goodie-two-shoes into a concentration camp of sorts.
Here's where you come in. See, as Nick Scryer, you're not just another face in the crowd of shaved-head grunts. Nick is actually quite adept at flexing a little psi muscle, but in order to get into this concentration reconditioning ubercamp operated by the psi-jujued bad guys, he had to have his memory (and powers) wiped out so as not to arouse suspicion. A handy break from his cell and a shot in the arm is all it takes, however, to awaken Nick's abilities and memories, albeit slowly, and in big fragments – it seems Nick's awakening didn't quite go as planned.
This is where you're plopped into the game, initially only given a pistol, the ability to sneak around and cap fools, and within a few minutes, you're granted your first psi ability: telekinesis. TK is easily the most useful and downright fun game mechanic I've seen in a long time, and the way Midway wrangled the Havok physics system into line with all the different psi powers – particularly TK – is what makes the game so damned fun. TK essentially allows you to lift up nearly anything in a level that's not bolted down; crates, chairs, barrels, and most importantly, people.
There really is no way to properly describe how freaking cool tossing some poor sap into one of his buddies, then over some railing to his doom. You could play the game 20 times over and still never get tired of just sadistically effing with people. And, impressively, that's only one of the powers Nick gains. The others include remote viewing (which allows him to pass through doors to scan ahead for danger), mind control (which allows you to possess most enemies), pyrokinesis (think being able to toss fire), the all-important mind drain (lets you suck the remaining brain juice from dead characters or pop the heads of live ones for more), and aura view (kicking this on lets you see enemies that're normally invisible, and view differences in objects that don't normally appear in real life).
Aside from the unbefreakingly cool Havok fun you can have for literally hours, there's the complementary level design. It's definitely at it's best early on (more on that in a second), but even later on in the game, the flexibility of the level layouts and your assorted psi powers essentially mean there are a good two or three ways past something. Any combination of your powers acquired up to that point in the game can be used in a variety of ways – even impromptu combos (my fave is still TKing an enemy at you in a high arc and the right before he collides with you, mind draining him while in mid-air to watch his body slowly spin and then crumple to the ground when all his brain juice is absorbed). It's this approach to the game design that adds a fantastic free-form style of play that can be different every time you run through the game.
Take, for instance, the videos we've already shown you of a blown-out bridge that impedes your progress. You can use your TK to move big steel flats over the hole and run across, mind control soldiers and have them just run off the bridge to their death, use TK to "surf" with the aforementioned steel slab across the gap or just jump up on the guide pipes and jump across the hole. All work more or less equally well, and it shows the amount of flexibility in both the programmers' designs and the variety in powers you gain while progressing through the storyline.
It's not perfect, however. As the sci-fi storyline pushes on, it becomes more and more populated with clichés, right down to the dialogue. Level design starts to become a bit simplistic as well, eschewing the more tackle-things-any-way-you-choose style for a more linear experience. You can still use your powers as you see fit, and there's always ample opportunity to use TK to move stuff around, but towards the end there's less opportunity to use powers in unconventional ways.
Boss fights, too, are rather basic, almost always relying on you using TK to batter an opponent into submission. Most will spout out an endlessly repetitive set of a half dozen or so lines over and over again until your desire to defeat them comes more from just making them shut the hell up than a more one-on-one fight with psi powers. There's still plenty of room to use the environment against them up until the final fight, but again, you're relegated to mainly using TK. More variety would have been nice, especially since you're given quite a few different powers.
I'm still rather impressed with how well Midway managed to pull together a whole world, while maintaining a nice set of visual standards. The majority of the game takes place in rather sparse, claustrophobic hallways, but when it does open up a bit, the views are indeed eye pleasing. Most of the game is textured with slightly antiseptic, basic décor, but that's not to say it's bland. Most of the hallways and corridors you're forced to navigate have a consistent feel, whether it's the dilapidated walls of ancient ruins or stark right angles of an office-like compound. The confined environs also mean a relatively clean framerate throughout, though there are times when the Havok calculations put a bit too much overhead on the PS2, causing a bit of chug.
The one area where I really noticed this is also one of the places where the game becomes potentially impassable. A well-documented bug right before a boss fight causes tanks that normally should rise to aid in the fight fall into a bit they're supposed to come out of. The canisters of fuel clanging around cause some gnarly hitches, but more importantly won't let you beat the boss. The problem can be fixed by simple reloading the level, but that option isn't available from the pause menu; you have to access the special features and then choose the level from there. It's needlessly cumbersome, and for a bug that so many people have experienced, it shouldn't have been there at all.
The audio is right on par with the visuals, allowing for smooth, ambient or thumping, energetic scores to lay right under the usual screams from soldiers, the rapport of gunfire and the whooshy, zappy sounds of Nick firing off his psi powers. The aforementioned dialogue, while more than a bit cheesy, is delivered with a nice bit of punch, especially early on when Nick is still starting to piece together the bits of his memory. The shrieks of some ethereal nasties later on in the game are actually good enough to cause a bit of apprehension if you happen to hear them behind a door you're about to open.
This may sound a bit overzealous, but I really do feel that Midway has made the best use of the Havok engine in games thus far. Much has been made of what Half-Life 2 will be able to do, and while I can't discount that for a second, the sheer quality of the ragdoll animations, utilization of weight and mass, and the way you're able to control it means that Psi-Ops has done for Havok what GTA III did for RenderWare; it shows the a developer with enough talent can turn a simple middleware solution into an indispensable tool for game development.
Game-breaking bugs aside (and the final score is absolutely going to get dinged for that, so don't hold the numbers themselves too harshly against the game), there is literally nothing about Psi-Ops that can keep me from telling everyone to play it. This is a damn fine way to drop $50, and hopefully some developers will be able to overcome the same stigma I'd attached to a Midway product and take note at what the developer was able to do.
I honestly could have made this review all about how many hours I spent just tossing people around and indulged a bit in my more sadistic side. It's good enough to just goof around with for a few minutes without actually progressing in the game proper, which is something I haven't been able to feel since playing GTA III. While I won't compare the two games as a whole (it's really a case of apples to oranges anyway), the same freedom to tackle things as you see fit, on some fundamental level, is present in both games, and I can only hope that Midway manages to keep the bar at this level with future projects.
To all the boys and girls at Midway, I apologize for thinking you couldn't come back from the brink. Psi-Ops is one hell of a game, and deserves more than a few bucks tossed back at the people who crafted it. If you haven't already, head out and pick this up. You won't be sorry you did.
Then, slowly, the quality of the games, and more importantly the talent and production behind them, began to rise. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance showed some real promise, though it was apparent the developer was still struggling. Still, they pushed on, hiring some former industry big guns and began turning the tide.
If the last Mortal Kombat game showed the beginnings of a rebound, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy is the first example of the developer/publisher back on track. Through innovative use of the nigh-ubiquitous Havok physics engine, a decent (if rather clichéd) storyline, and some impressively well fleshed-out game design, Midway has managed to create a game that offers something different, but more importantly, a whole hell of a lot of fun.
Things open with an impressive pre-rendered movie showing a group of psi-powered mystery men doing everything from controlling throngs of look-alike Nazi stormtrooper-esque soldiers against an army of apparent good-guys (also rather look-alike) to lifting a massive oil tanker and lobbing it like it was made of styrofoam. The bad guys apparently win, and begin shuttling the mass of near-clone goodie-two-shoes into a concentration camp of sorts.
Here's where you come in. See, as Nick Scryer, you're not just another face in the crowd of shaved-head grunts. Nick is actually quite adept at flexing a little psi muscle, but in order to get into this concentration reconditioning ubercamp operated by the psi-jujued bad guys, he had to have his memory (and powers) wiped out so as not to arouse suspicion. A handy break from his cell and a shot in the arm is all it takes, however, to awaken Nick's abilities and memories, albeit slowly, and in big fragments – it seems Nick's awakening didn't quite go as planned.
This is where you're plopped into the game, initially only given a pistol, the ability to sneak around and cap fools, and within a few minutes, you're granted your first psi ability: telekinesis. TK is easily the most useful and downright fun game mechanic I've seen in a long time, and the way Midway wrangled the Havok physics system into line with all the different psi powers – particularly TK – is what makes the game so damned fun. TK essentially allows you to lift up nearly anything in a level that's not bolted down; crates, chairs, barrels, and most importantly, people.
There really is no way to properly describe how freaking cool tossing some poor sap into one of his buddies, then over some railing to his doom. You could play the game 20 times over and still never get tired of just sadistically effing with people. And, impressively, that's only one of the powers Nick gains. The others include remote viewing (which allows him to pass through doors to scan ahead for danger), mind control (which allows you to possess most enemies), pyrokinesis (think being able to toss fire), the all-important mind drain (lets you suck the remaining brain juice from dead characters or pop the heads of live ones for more), and aura view (kicking this on lets you see enemies that're normally invisible, and view differences in objects that don't normally appear in real life).
Aside from the unbefreakingly cool Havok fun you can have for literally hours, there's the complementary level design. It's definitely at it's best early on (more on that in a second), but even later on in the game, the flexibility of the level layouts and your assorted psi powers essentially mean there are a good two or three ways past something. Any combination of your powers acquired up to that point in the game can be used in a variety of ways – even impromptu combos (my fave is still TKing an enemy at you in a high arc and the right before he collides with you, mind draining him while in mid-air to watch his body slowly spin and then crumple to the ground when all his brain juice is absorbed). It's this approach to the game design that adds a fantastic free-form style of play that can be different every time you run through the game.
Take, for instance, the videos we've already shown you of a blown-out bridge that impedes your progress. You can use your TK to move big steel flats over the hole and run across, mind control soldiers and have them just run off the bridge to their death, use TK to "surf" with the aforementioned steel slab across the gap or just jump up on the guide pipes and jump across the hole. All work more or less equally well, and it shows the amount of flexibility in both the programmers' designs and the variety in powers you gain while progressing through the storyline.
It's not perfect, however. As the sci-fi storyline pushes on, it becomes more and more populated with clichés, right down to the dialogue. Level design starts to become a bit simplistic as well, eschewing the more tackle-things-any-way-you-choose style for a more linear experience. You can still use your powers as you see fit, and there's always ample opportunity to use TK to move stuff around, but towards the end there's less opportunity to use powers in unconventional ways.
Boss fights, too, are rather basic, almost always relying on you using TK to batter an opponent into submission. Most will spout out an endlessly repetitive set of a half dozen or so lines over and over again until your desire to defeat them comes more from just making them shut the hell up than a more one-on-one fight with psi powers. There's still plenty of room to use the environment against them up until the final fight, but again, you're relegated to mainly using TK. More variety would have been nice, especially since you're given quite a few different powers.
I'm still rather impressed with how well Midway managed to pull together a whole world, while maintaining a nice set of visual standards. The majority of the game takes place in rather sparse, claustrophobic hallways, but when it does open up a bit, the views are indeed eye pleasing. Most of the game is textured with slightly antiseptic, basic décor, but that's not to say it's bland. Most of the hallways and corridors you're forced to navigate have a consistent feel, whether it's the dilapidated walls of ancient ruins or stark right angles of an office-like compound. The confined environs also mean a relatively clean framerate throughout, though there are times when the Havok calculations put a bit too much overhead on the PS2, causing a bit of chug.
The one area where I really noticed this is also one of the places where the game becomes potentially impassable. A well-documented bug right before a boss fight causes tanks that normally should rise to aid in the fight fall into a bit they're supposed to come out of. The canisters of fuel clanging around cause some gnarly hitches, but more importantly won't let you beat the boss. The problem can be fixed by simple reloading the level, but that option isn't available from the pause menu; you have to access the special features and then choose the level from there. It's needlessly cumbersome, and for a bug that so many people have experienced, it shouldn't have been there at all.
The audio is right on par with the visuals, allowing for smooth, ambient or thumping, energetic scores to lay right under the usual screams from soldiers, the rapport of gunfire and the whooshy, zappy sounds of Nick firing off his psi powers. The aforementioned dialogue, while more than a bit cheesy, is delivered with a nice bit of punch, especially early on when Nick is still starting to piece together the bits of his memory. The shrieks of some ethereal nasties later on in the game are actually good enough to cause a bit of apprehension if you happen to hear them behind a door you're about to open.
This may sound a bit overzealous, but I really do feel that Midway has made the best use of the Havok engine in games thus far. Much has been made of what Half-Life 2 will be able to do, and while I can't discount that for a second, the sheer quality of the ragdoll animations, utilization of weight and mass, and the way you're able to control it means that Psi-Ops has done for Havok what GTA III did for RenderWare; it shows the a developer with enough talent can turn a simple middleware solution into an indispensable tool for game development.
Game-breaking bugs aside (and the final score is absolutely going to get dinged for that, so don't hold the numbers themselves too harshly against the game), there is literally nothing about Psi-Ops that can keep me from telling everyone to play it. This is a damn fine way to drop $50, and hopefully some developers will be able to overcome the same stigma I'd attached to a Midway product and take note at what the developer was able to do.
I honestly could have made this review all about how many hours I spent just tossing people around and indulged a bit in my more sadistic side. It's good enough to just goof around with for a few minutes without actually progressing in the game proper, which is something I haven't been able to feel since playing GTA III. While I won't compare the two games as a whole (it's really a case of apples to oranges anyway), the same freedom to tackle things as you see fit, on some fundamental level, is present in both games, and I can only hope that Midway manages to keep the bar at this level with future projects.
To all the boys and girls at Midway, I apologize for thinking you couldn't come back from the brink. Psi-Ops is one hell of a game, and deserves more than a few bucks tossed back at the people who crafted it. If you haven't already, head out and pick this up. You won't be sorry you did.