Konami Gamers' Day 2005 Hands-On: Coded Arms
The PSP gets its first first-person shooter, and we get our first hands-on play time.
Published: February 2, 2005
If the first PlayStation was the realm of the platformer, the PS2 has become the home of the FPS, so it's not entirely surprising that the PSP already has a first-person shooter. What is surprising is that this one certainly seems to have a fair amount of ambition and a unique take on the presentation, something the genre seems to lack.
It's also the first time Konami has ever attempted a FPS, making it a bit of a gamble for the Japanese publisher. Coded Arms' futuristic storyline isn't without a pull for cyberpunk fans or wanna-be hackers, but all we really know at this point is that it takes place inside a virtual reality construct originally created to run simulations for soldiers to prepare them for repelling alien invasions. Like all pilot programs, there are flaws, and a critical one that could end up causing harm to jacked-in trainees eventually resulted in the system being shut down. Problem was, the system never really shut down completely, it merely lay dormant while the construct grew and expanded, evolving in every way -- including upgrades to the bugs, programs and security bots originally set up to police the systems.
Hackers can still dive into the construct in search of ultra-rare bits of code (or, if you will items), with the dangerous trip through the systems (and the adrenaline rush of going up against programs and glitches that have grown more powerful than the original creators ever intended) offering almost as much value as the items themselves. Almost, but not quite. Weapons and armor, like everything else in the game, have been given the computer lingo treatment, appearing as bits of code with .arm and .dfn extensions, respectively. Errors in the code show up as a variety of literal bugs, alien simulations look like assorted soldiers and the security bots look like, well, machines.
The whole idea here is that gamers can dive into the system, peruse the randomly generated levels for equally random items, and then take those into combat against other players. The multiplayer's real draw, besides offering up to four players the opportunity to duke it out sans wires, is the ability to "bet" hard-earned items to sweeten the pot for the winning hacker. In this way, it's possible to gain wholly unique items that you wouldn't get with, say, a dozen play-throughs all by yourself, and it allows for the oh so popular collectable card game dynamic that has so many kids geeking on stuff like Yu Gi Oh! right now (which should come as no huge surprise given that Konami holds the YGO license).
The whole idea is that the single-player game drives the need to bulk up your character with rare items, which in turn allows you to wager (and hopefully win) different, better items which you can then ply towards advancing deeper into the single-player game. That's the ideal setup, of course, and it remains to be seen how easily PSP gamers can adapt to the idea of only having one slightly twitchy analog stick to control things. Konami's trying to fix this by allowing literally every button on the PSP to be mapped however players like until they get the hang of things.
The overall look of the game already makes it one of the visual front-runners for the system's near-launch lineup. The texture work is clean and detailed and the lighting is simultaneously electronically warm and antiseptically cool. The three levels we got a chance to check out all had their own distinct feel, from a claustrophobic cave to a neon-lit Neo Hong-Kong to a refinery of some sort. We'll have to get more of the story, but the entire way the game is presented, from PSP logo-like fonts on the HUD and menus to the loading screens that play at logging into the backdoor of the construct has a decidedly polished feel.
When levels begin, your view refreshes in waves of slowly sharpening passes from top to bottom. When you change weapons, they don't just swap in and out, a clean, angular arrow with a bounding box describing the weapon pops up. When you fire a weapon at a wall or trigger and explosion or kill and enemy, a stream of quickly snaking greenish lines randomly branch off as the energy is absorbed back into the construct. It's one of the coolest attempts at cohesive art design we've seen in quite a while, and all of the graphics look absolutely stunning on the PSP's bright screen.
We really do need to get our hands on a preview build of the game to wrestle with the controls and see if a custom-mapped layout will help us come to grips with the idea of a single analog-stick to control a game that requires quite a bit of freelooking. At least the lock-on can be configured to allow for some pretty forgiving targeting.
If nothing else, Coded Arms stands as one of the most visually impressive games on the system, and if the storyline can come across with more depth and bulk than your typical FPS, we could be looking at one of the best games to come out of the PSP development process yet.
It's also the first time Konami has ever attempted a FPS, making it a bit of a gamble for the Japanese publisher. Coded Arms' futuristic storyline isn't without a pull for cyberpunk fans or wanna-be hackers, but all we really know at this point is that it takes place inside a virtual reality construct originally created to run simulations for soldiers to prepare them for repelling alien invasions. Like all pilot programs, there are flaws, and a critical one that could end up causing harm to jacked-in trainees eventually resulted in the system being shut down. Problem was, the system never really shut down completely, it merely lay dormant while the construct grew and expanded, evolving in every way -- including upgrades to the bugs, programs and security bots originally set up to police the systems.
Hackers can still dive into the construct in search of ultra-rare bits of code (or, if you will items), with the dangerous trip through the systems (and the adrenaline rush of going up against programs and glitches that have grown more powerful than the original creators ever intended) offering almost as much value as the items themselves. Almost, but not quite. Weapons and armor, like everything else in the game, have been given the computer lingo treatment, appearing as bits of code with .arm and .dfn extensions, respectively. Errors in the code show up as a variety of literal bugs, alien simulations look like assorted soldiers and the security bots look like, well, machines.
The whole idea here is that gamers can dive into the system, peruse the randomly generated levels for equally random items, and then take those into combat against other players. The multiplayer's real draw, besides offering up to four players the opportunity to duke it out sans wires, is the ability to "bet" hard-earned items to sweeten the pot for the winning hacker. In this way, it's possible to gain wholly unique items that you wouldn't get with, say, a dozen play-throughs all by yourself, and it allows for the oh so popular collectable card game dynamic that has so many kids geeking on stuff like Yu Gi Oh! right now (which should come as no huge surprise given that Konami holds the YGO license).
The whole idea is that the single-player game drives the need to bulk up your character with rare items, which in turn allows you to wager (and hopefully win) different, better items which you can then ply towards advancing deeper into the single-player game. That's the ideal setup, of course, and it remains to be seen how easily PSP gamers can adapt to the idea of only having one slightly twitchy analog stick to control things. Konami's trying to fix this by allowing literally every button on the PSP to be mapped however players like until they get the hang of things.
The overall look of the game already makes it one of the visual front-runners for the system's near-launch lineup. The texture work is clean and detailed and the lighting is simultaneously electronically warm and antiseptically cool. The three levels we got a chance to check out all had their own distinct feel, from a claustrophobic cave to a neon-lit Neo Hong-Kong to a refinery of some sort. We'll have to get more of the story, but the entire way the game is presented, from PSP logo-like fonts on the HUD and menus to the loading screens that play at logging into the backdoor of the construct has a decidedly polished feel.
When levels begin, your view refreshes in waves of slowly sharpening passes from top to bottom. When you change weapons, they don't just swap in and out, a clean, angular arrow with a bounding box describing the weapon pops up. When you fire a weapon at a wall or trigger and explosion or kill and enemy, a stream of quickly snaking greenish lines randomly branch off as the energy is absorbed back into the construct. It's one of the coolest attempts at cohesive art design we've seen in quite a while, and all of the graphics look absolutely stunning on the PSP's bright screen.
We really do need to get our hands on a preview build of the game to wrestle with the controls and see if a custom-mapped layout will help us come to grips with the idea of a single analog-stick to control a game that requires quite a bit of freelooking. At least the lock-on can be configured to allow for some pretty forgiving targeting.
If nothing else, Coded Arms stands as one of the most visually impressive games on the system, and if the storyline can come across with more depth and bulk than your typical FPS, we could be looking at one of the best games to come out of the PSP development process yet.