Home | News | Reviews | Previews | Hardware
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
Score: 96%
ESRB: Mature
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Midway
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1
Genre: Third Person Shooter/ Action

Graphics & Sound:
Take one part third person shooter, add in some light puzzles, and mix heavily with five different kinds of psychic powers, and you get a healthy serving of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy.

The detail in both the models and the levels are great. The armor on each character is colorful and full of character (plenty of scratches -- especially on our hero's attire). Each level contains tons of rooms with objects of varying size and complexity, making the entire experience that much more real.

The music of Psi-Ops, featuring Cold's "With My Mind", also stood out. The music added a ton of atmosphere to the game, and kept me in the mood. One thing I was thankful for was the fact that Nick Scryer, the hero, didn't feel the need to spout out some one-liner every time I dispatched a villain. He was all business.


Gameplay:
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy takes place in the not so distant future. Various governments around the world have put a lot of money into researching and developing military operatives with paranormal abilities, and they have succeeded.

But something went wrong with America's program (called The Mindgate Project). The project was disbanded, but the former leader of the secret agency has amassed an army of mind-controlled minions, Meat Puppets, as well as several powerful psychics from around the world.

One of Mindgate's top operatives, Nick Scryer, has been charged with the mission of infiltrating this army and taking it down from the inside. But with his power and training, the leaders of The Movement (the new military force which threatens the world) would easily pick him out in the crowd.

Before going on his mission, Nick has his memory erased -- and with it, all of his training. The Movement raids an oil refinery, and the only person to escape brainwashing is Nick. As Nick moves about in the base and labs of The Movement, he begins to remember his training. With each training session Nick remembers, he unlocks one of his five psi-powers.

As the story unfolds, you find out that The General (leader of The Movement, and former commander of Mindgate) is seeking out an ancient artifact -- what does it do? Why does he want it? That is part of the mystery.

Within each huge level, there are many checkpoints, where your game is temporarily saved. This means that if you die, you will go back to the last checkpoint. This does not mean that this is where you have saved your game. To actually save the game, you must go into the menu and select "Save Checkpoint". This saves the game to your memory card at the last checkpoint you reached. Unfortunately, I didn't quite realize these details early on.

At one point, I was sneaking through the air ducts of one of The Movement’s bases, and fell out of it -- causing a lot of damage to myself, but also reaching the checkpoint I was going for. My health was down to basically nothing (literally, one shot would kill me). I was stuck in a room with five or six Meat Puppets waiting for me to exit and I had to use every trick my available psychic powers and guns would allow me in order to get out of there. Apparently at some point I had also saved that checkpoint, so I was doomed to repeat that room over and over again. Eventually I got out of there and a lot farther in the level (reaching several checkpoints and thinking it saved them for me). After restarting my PS2 the next day though, I found myself back in that hellish room. It wasn't long before I got out again and got to the first checkpoint after that (and saved it), thankfully.

Is this a good way to handle saving your progress? In hind-sight, I would say yes. I just wish I would have realized it sooner.

Editor's Note: RTFM. ;)

There are also a wide variety of unlockables within the game. But instead of breaking the feel and atmosphere of Psi-Ops by having you pick up random objects along the way, every time you complete a level you unlock several objects. Unlockables include: concept art, documentaries, levels, training sessions and more.

Most of the villains you will face as you trek through the high security facilities of The Movement will be the brainwashed Meat Puppets. But you will also find yourself against several bosses who have mastered one psychic power or another. These powers range from mind control (where a blast from this enemy will screw up your controls, making you move left when you want to go right), telekinesis, illusion and pyrokinesis. How can Nick possibly succeed against such a vast array of opposition? Simple, Nick hasn't mastered just one of these techniques -- he has mastered all of them, well almost all.

Nick's five abilities include TK (telekinesis), remote viewing, mind drain, mind control and pyrokinesis.

TK gives you the ability to pick up objects and move or throw them. Exactly which objects? Pretty much anything, boxes, people, barrels, pipes -- basically whatever isn’t nailed down. The Havok engine makes the flinging of objects and people into other objects and people a beautiful sight.

Remote viewing is like an out-of-body experience. You leave the corporal world and look upon it with a blurry eye. With this you can scout ahead and move through doors before they are opened -- though oddly enough you can't go through walls. This was an excellent feature; it was a major asset in navigating the security filled hallways. One drawback though was the fact that there was a time or two when enemies seemed to come out of nowhere. I didn't see them spawn, but I saw the area where they attacked from, and they were empty.

Mind drain allows you to regain some of your limited psychic powers. There are two ways to drain a person -- either suck it from their lifeless corpse (provided it still has a head) or sneak up on them -- you get more power if they are still alive.

Mind control is just what it sounds like -- take over another character's body and take out your enemies, with your enemies. There are also a couple of weapons (like the flamethrower and rocket launcher) that can only be used if you are controlling a Meat Puppet that has it.

And Pyrokinesis is probably the coolest of all of these powers (though I found I used TK more than any of them). With Pyro, you can set just about anything aflame. This was a great tool for clearing out rooms and taking down several enemies at once.

These psi-powers aren't the only weapons at your disposal. Early in the game you get a pistol with a silencer. As you progress you can pick up other firearms, though you can only hold one extra weapon at a time. These weapons include a machine gun, a shotgun, an assault rifle and a sniper rifle (with scope).

You will need and use a wide variety of tactics if you want to get to the bottom of The Mindgate Conspiracy.


Difficulty:
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy has four difficulty settings, Easy, Normal, Hard and Elite. I found the AI's reactions in the different settings to be fairly dead on. It seemed like the Meat Puppets of lower difficulties would give up on searching for me a little quicker than the ones of Hard or Elite.

There were parts of Psi-Ops which were more difficult than others, which was good, as it gave some variety to the game. There were times when I found myself very low on health and stuck in a room with several Meat Puppets waiting for me on the other side (see above section). It was at these times when I valued my psychic powers the most. I was able to peak around a corner, grab a baddie and throw him off of a bridge or into another enemy. These tougher than normal areas helped to show me the wide range of ways one can go through this game.


Game Mechanics:
Even though Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Experience has a wide variety of actions that you can perform at just about any point in the game, the controls and ability to switch between these actions are surprisingly easy to pick up.

First off are the standard third person shooter controls. Move your character with the left analog and look around with the right, jumping is X, melee attack is Square, crouch is Circle, targeting is Triangle and you fire your weapon with R1. You can switch between your standard side arm (the pistol) and whatever other weapon you've picked up along the way with the down button on the D-Pad.

Now for the other half of the controls. You activate your Telekinesis by holding down the L1 button when the targeting cursor turns yellow. The harder you hold it down, the higher the object will rise. You can control the object with the right analog stick, and if it isn't quite high enough, you can "let go" of the object and catch it again with your TK and you will be able to make it go higher.

You can activate Mind Drain with the R2 button and Remote Viewing with the left button on the D-Pad. Mind Control is activated with the up button and Pyrokinesis is used with the L2 button. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? It is, but the new abilities are spaced out in such a way that you will get plenty of practice with each one before you have to worry about a new button.

I would recommend Psi-Ops to any fan of the third person shooter genre, or to anyone who used to be a fan, but hasn't gotten into one in a long time. This is a game that you shouldn't miss.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

This site best viewed in Internet Explorer 6 or higher or Firefox.