Second Sight

"Surprising Game With A Strong Narrative And Concepts"

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have psychic powers, if even for just one day? Have you ever wondered what kind of abilities you would possess? Would you use telekinesis to lift objects routinely off the ground and move them at your will? John Vattic could not even imagine the possibilities of psychic powers, but somehow he ended up with them.

Story

John Vattic awakens in a blandly blue facility to find himself beaten, battered, and broken, mentally and physically. Somehow he can almost magically break free from his cuffs that bind him to his bed. From there, it is time to find out why your mind is blanked and broken; who did this to you; how to get out; and why you have these incredible powers. Without giving too much away, Vattic will embark on a psychological and physically demanding journey through past and present events that determine the fate of his future and his friends.

The story is broken up into two parts: The present, and the past. In the past, you play as Vattic pre-incident, who is basically a nerdy scientist that is taken on a mission to Russia with an elite team of commando s. Their goal is to find out about some sort of weird experiments that a rogue Russian is conducting on children. You are sent to the past missions via flashbacks from the present.

As you progress through the present Vattic realizes certain things and remembers the past and you flashback to your missions in Russia. What you do in the past affect the present and future, so you have to be careful not to fail your comrades. While progressing in the present, your primary goals will be to find out what happened to you, and why you have these incredible powers.

Gameplay

I have some serious gripes with the control set-up, but I m not going to bash Free Radical about that just yet. The concept that Free Radical Design (TimeSplitters 2) has come up with is not new, but they brought enough fresh ideas to really show that they are not just a simple-minded first-person shooter developer. Second Sight is a 3rd person action game that includes psychic powers.

You can gain and upgrade five different powers in the game. They all will eventually be used in the game at some point, so you probably can t expect to go in gunning everyone down. The psy-powers are really intuitive and fun to use. The healing power heals, duh. As you use your healing power, your power meter will drop, just as if you were to use any other psy-power. Telekinesis will probably be your most widely used power since you can basically pick up any object that the game has and move them around with your mind. As you do this, your power meter depletes, but regains its fullness soon.

My favorite psychic power in the game is the Psi-blast. Vattic can muster a lot of his brain energy into a fireball type form and throw it at an enemy, blasting the poor guy/girl 15 feet across the hall. As fun as it is, it quickly depletes your power meter and should be used only in important situations, unless you re just going around having fun.

Two other sparingly used, but important powers exist. Charm and projection are the remaining two powers that round out the total five. It is hard to explain charm, but after reading the manual, I have come to a conclusion that you basically become invisible to guards or any other people for a short amount of time, almost like you use your brain to shield yourself. This can be useful for getting past guards and other enemies. Projection is used to access areas that might not be easily accessed in regular form. Your brain and body interact and you can temporarily leave your shell and explore other areas. I know it sounds crazy, but to Vattic it does too.

While these powers are really cool to use, it is a pain to cycle through them all and cycle through enemies to target. The cycling system for weapons and powers disrupts the flow of gameplay quite effectively by pausing the whole game as you search for the weapon or power you want to use. And when you finally choose the weapon you want, it often auto-aims at the wrong person, so you have to end up cycling through your enemies and objects, since almost any object in the game is usable in some way.

Enemies in the game are generally stupid, but because swarms of them seem to appear out of thin air, the gunfights can get pretty amazing and serious. Seriously, guards and enemies just appear in areas that you cleared already, and they come in numbers that are sometimes mind-boggling to the human mind. When you trip an alarm, these guards come, and they never stop coming unless you hide somewhere and the alarm goes off. This can become aggravating and pointless, but sometimes it is actually a challenge and the firefights can get very intense.

The mission based play suit s the game well, and the pacing of the story, the atmospheric style of the game, and the effective style of Free Radical Design really make up for lack of control in the game. I would have to say that this game should be nominated for Best Story at the 2004 GOTY awards.

Graphics

Add a third-person perspective and the TimeSplitters 2 character designs, and you basically have Second Sight. Free Radical wanted to keep the zany stylized look of the TimeSplitters characters in Second Sight, and it works well. Over exaggerated limbs and facial features are a real hoot to look at and actually keep you interested in the whole scheme of things.

Environments, buildings, and particle effects look nice and fluid, and the game rarely drops in its framerate. The game is a smooth moving action thriller that does not ruin the eyes.

One problem does exist with the camera angles. The pre-set cinematic camera is very clunky and it gets stuck behind walls, pillars, and other places. This is common in most third-person action games, but luckily Free Radical included a free moving, user-controlled camera, which is much better.

Sound

The atmospheric and psychotic thriller game required some convincing music and sound, and Second Sight got what it needed to hit the spot. The in-game music is absolutely incredible and really gets you into the game. I am a little annoyed by the battle music that plays every time a guard sees you, but the rest is very good.

The voice acting is cheesy, but it makes sense, considering its Free Radical Design we are talking about. Cheesy suit s the game well, even though I was a little disappointed by some of Vattic s repeated phrases. Many characters say the same things over and over, which gets on my nerves, but at least the acting was done in a manner so that we could laugh at it in the end.

The final part to cover is the in-game sounds; such as, weapon firing sounds, and other things. The weapons have some serious kick and can do some pretty amazing damage. The shotgun, for example, is extremely powerful and loud. It cracks and explodes shells right into your enemy and they go flying away like a dummy without a seat-belt. There was no frame of reference for the Psychic power use sounds, so I think Free Radical did quite a good job designing those sounds.

The game boasts a normal and hard difficulty setting difference. Normal is the standard and can be beaten in a relatively short time of about 8 hours. Hard basically just throws more guards and enemies at you, if you really want that irritation then you might get 10 hours out of the game. If Free Radical had put more extras in as incentives, it might have been more worth playing. The game is definitely a good buy for the story, concept, action, and the powers, but don t look for a perfectly made game here. There are some flaws that needed to be worked out and some other silly problems that really hindered the experience as a whole.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/05