Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

It takes a lot these days to craft a video game that sticks out as creative, fresh, and original, given the vast amount of software releasing across all the major platforms. This is especially true in the action/shooter genre, which tends to fall into the trap of being mindless and repetitive, whether the quality is high or not. This is the exact reason why Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy very easily could have fallen into that rut - upon first look, it's a by-the-numbers 3^rd person shooter with a weird storyline and generic characters. However, Midway's (one of the single most improved publishers of the last few years) game formerly titled ESPionage is far from ordinary. Using creative use of psychic powers blended in with some insane boss battles and solid level design, Psi-Ops is a breath of fresh air, especially on the Xbox, which has enough shooters to choke a horse. It's certainly not without fault, but the creativity and incredibly fun gameplay more than makes up for it.

Psi-Ops puts you in the shoes of Nick Scyrer, a СMindgate' operative for the US government. These Mindgate operatives are masters of telekinesis and clairvoyance, and are used for military purposes. However, a large group of Mindgate operatives rebel, and form a group called the Movement, which is their method for taking over the world and dominating with their powers (don't stop reading, pleaseЕit gets better!). Nick is sent undercover as a Movement recruit, but unfortunately, he cannot just waltz in. Mindgate instead rearranges his face (of sorts), wipes out his memory so he cannot use his Psi-powers, and he's sent in unknowing of his past. Once you get to the actual gameplay, Nick begins to remember his powers, thanks in part to Sara, your resident hot blonde cohort. As he learns, he begins to understand his mission fully and vengeance becomes part of his agenda. Sure, sure, nothing thrilling about the story - it's just a filler to move the game along. It has its moments and usual predictable twists, but there's nothing all that thrilling about it.

In the case of Psi-Ops, the gameplay is much more valuable than its story. While you could mostly play through the game using the various weapons to kill everything in sight, the Psi-powers are the star of the show. And they should be - not only are the intuitively mapped to the controller, but also extremely fun to use. You start out slowly, gaining back a power at a time (complete with a flashback tutorial to put these powers to use in amusing form), creating a steady learning curve that makes it easy to get into the game, and gives reason to continue on. Your first power is the ability to use telekinesis to manipulate the environment - throw boxes (or if you're really good, Сsurf' on boxes to get to high ledges), pull in stuff from unreachable areas, and the kicker, being able to lift and throw around guards and other enemies like Lex Luger after a night of shooting steroids. Guards can be thrown against walls, or even better, thrown down shafts or holes to their screaming deaths. Yes, it's like a modern day Jedi Knight or something. As you progress, you learn clairvoyance powers to walk through walls and areas with just your mind to scout the area, pyrokenesis to throw fire around, mind drain to regain lost Psi-energy (or in stealth mode, make a guard's head pop off in violent fashion), and my personal favorite, the ability to control the minds of guards, to make them shoot their friends, open areas normally locked, or make them jump off ledges to their death (it even keeps track of forced suicides in the stats after each mission). Believe me, these powers are extremely fun and amusing, and you'll be using them a lot more than the firepower available to you, though it's possible to combine the two and really do some weird damage.

Without these powers, it's possible the game could very much become mundane and unoriginal, or fall into the same category as another recent Midway 3rd person game, The Suffering (which is very similar in progression). As a traditional 3rd person shooter, you follow a fairly linear path, solve some odd puzzles (mostly requiring the Psi-powers), kill a bunch of evil guards with the various weapons like shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles, and find keycards to open doors throughout the entire game, with some stealth elements sprinkled in here and there. There's nothing wrong with any of this, mind you, because it plays very well, but without the special powers, much of the best part of the levels (like a huge open area where you can throw guards some 20 stories to their bloody, messy deaths) would be a waste. It's obvious that Midway knew this though, because it tends to work well because of the powers. They're not just gimmicksЕthey can become vital to success in many tight areas. Getting a guard to turn on his friends and shoot them all, then send himself to his death before Nick's Psi-powers run out can save on health and ammo for the times you need firepower. It's usually up to you to dictate how the powers will help out, or even to use them at all, but it's for certain that the game was designed to make you use them to their fullest extent. And why not? It's what makes the game so entertaining.

To be honest, where the game shines is the boss battles. While there's only a few, each battle is a fight of TK powers against each other. This results in some crazy fights where mere firepower means jack, and instead strategic use of the Psi-powers is the only way to succeed. It's like a mental tug of war as you try to avoid the powers of your enemy and attempt to use yours to harm them by whatever means exist. It makes every major encounter epic and meaningful as Nick gets closer to succeeding in his mission, despite there only being a few of them through the eight mission adventure. As an added bonus, you can collect СEvil Garden Gnomes' (not making this up) very well-hidden throughout the levels which unlock some special bonus missions that are more like minigames that can be crazy fun.

Alas, Psi-Ops has problems. The objectives can be cryptic and lacking much explanation, leaving you to figure out what the hell to do. This isn't helped by the cluttered, utterly useless map that helps nobody. However, you'll learn the relatively small mission areas anyway, because backtracking exists and that's always fun for some people. Of course, this is topped by the keycard-finding gameplay that once overpopulated 99.9% of FPS games that becomes a bit aggravating at times. Thankfully as mentioned, the Psi-powers make this game incredibly fun and energetic, with a freshness and originality that will almost certainly be copied and emulated in numerous games within the next few years (hell, it's already started with Free Radical's Second Sight game). Midway should be commended with not only taking an oft-ignored gift of telekinesis (I'd prefer calling it The ForceЕeasier to spell), but making it fun and usable at the same time. This could have been a frustrating game with all the different powers, but it ends up being intuitive from beginning to end. It's these powers alone that will lead to the addiction that forces you to complete Psi-Ops and see the story - and it's the hopeful promise of improved level design and non-Psi-power elements in a possible sequel/spin-off that will give you some hope that original games can still be done in the Sequel Era.

Visually, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy looks nice but never fully sheds its PS2 origins. Solid level design and textures are abound, and the game is dark in many places with some decent effects to compliment it. The special affects from the different Psi-powers are nice but never mindblowing (the see through walls ability actually has a blur to it that gave me a serious headache). However, the Havok powered physics engine shines and co-exists with the Psi-powers perfectly. Fling an enemy against the wall, and he hits it forcefully and slowly slithers down to this death, all the while flailing his arms like the 4 year old who didn't get his toy at Wal-Mart. Kill them in strange places and you'll see them slumped over, hanging off something, or fried on an electric walkway (that's one of the most satisfying moments in the gameЕjust literally smoking them, you can even hear it. Yes, this game is twisted if you're one sick bastard). Still, there's nothing bad about the appearance of this game, as it's clean, fast and never chugs or anything like that.

Unfortunately, Psi-Ops struggles with some crappy voice acting to hamper the visual performance. Not only are the actors merely competent, the lines they're forced to give are amusing in their badness. It's like an illiterate person penned the script or something. Granted, the story isn't exactly going to win any awards, but at least have voice acting that's not so laughable. Oh well. On the other hand, the various sounds are awesome, from screaming guards realizing they're about to see their lives come a screeching, bloody, nasty end, or the sound of living guards talking and planning a strategy to kill you. Mixed along with dynamic music that picks up and slows down depending on what's going on, it makes the gameplay portion of the audio dramatic and tense as well, as you never know how many guards lurk that you need to take care of by your favorite means.