Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)
(I don't know if people get any use out of these reviews -or even
manage to read them in entirety, since they are so long- but player
reviews are what (used to) make Usnet so great, so I'm going to keep
pumping them out in the blind hope of inspiring others to do likewise
and sparking some sort of Usenet renaissance. Besides, I'm tired of
hearing about ess-tee-ee-ay-em)
"Second Sight" is one of those games that should be easy to review.
After all, it seems to get *everything* wrong. From its graphics, to
its controls, to its gameplay - all the bits and bobs of the game
compare badly to its competitors. It's even a console port! It's the
sort of game that should be a joy to slam. Why then did I end up
enjoying it so much?
"Second Sight" is a third-person action-shooter developed by Free
Radical Design. Set in modern day locales, you play the role of the
amnesiac protaganist as he struggles to regain his memory and unravel
a government conspiracy. But here's the kicker: you have psychic
powers ranging from telekinesis (move stuff with only the power of
your mind) to invisibility and can use them to kick butt.
It *sounds* interesting. So, what's wrong with this game? And how, in
the end, does it turn out all right?
So let's look at the visuals first; they are the first thing you
notice about a game, after all. Simply put, the graphics look very
dated. While servicable, they suffer from low-res texturing, blocky
level design, and low-poly models. The animation is adequate at best.
In truth, the engine reminds me a lot of that used in "Freedom
Fighters", which itself was a fun game, but it came out almost two
years ago (and even then its visuals weren't high-end). The graphics
get the job done, but they are nothing to boast about.
The sound design is equally average. The effects are adequate but lack
variety. Weapons fire and is suitably robust although explosions
aren't. There aren't many enviromental sounds, so the gameworld sounds
strangely muted. The NPCs only have a limited number of "barks",
although on occassion you do stumble across a scripted conversation
that enlivens the world. The voice-acting is passable; the main
characters have acceptable emotion in their voices but some of the
NPCs suffer from overacting and bad accents. The music isn't
particularly memorable, and -again- there's a lack of variety, so
you'll be hearing the same tracks over and over and over again.
Level design is a mixed bag. Adequate for the square rooms and
corridors of indoor scenes, the engine shows its limitations when it
tries to render the natural curves of the outdoors, and everything
looks far too angular. The game features a number of interactive
devices, including computers that can be hacked into to disable
security and closets to hide in. There are also numerous items that
can be manipulated / moved with the telekinesis (mind over matter)
power that can be used to distract or attack the NPCs. The game has an
acceptable physics model -bodies flop down stairs, chairs can be
knocked over- but doesn't make too much use of it. Some parts of the
levels can also be damaged, but this is mostly cosmetic; you can't
blow your way through the walls. The sixteen levels are of adequate
size; most will take about half an hour to get through (a couple might
take an hour or more; a few less than ten minutes. Doing the math
reveals the game is also very short; five to ten hours long). Only a
couple of the levels are really interesting (the insane asylum is the
best of the lot), with the rest being fairly workaday 3D
representations of offices, slums and underground labs. However, they
are all fairly logically presented (e.g., there are no offices that
can only be accessed by crawling through a duct, jumping over a narrow
gorge and then blasting through a wall; it's all pretty true-to-life).
Furthermore, they fit the gameplay style pretty well; the game has
enough areas to hide in for the stealth portions and enough cover to
duck behind for the shooting bits. But none of the levels are really
impressive to look at or play through.
One of the weakest areas in the game is its controls. You can play
with the standard mouse-and-keyboard setup, but obviously this game
was designed for a console gamepad. You move with WASD, but even this
isn't as straightforward as it might seem, you have to slew the camera
around a full ninety degrees or so before your onscreen avatar starts
turning in that direction; prior to that you're just moving the
camera. This makes it difficults to get your character to face a
person he needs to talk to or an item he needs to interact with. You
also can't interact with most objects from a crouching postition; an
odd design choice for a stealth game as it requires you to stand up
and reveal yourself everytime you want to open a door or push a
button. There are hot-keys to select your guns, but none for your PSI
powers, so you have to scroll through a list everytime you want to
select a specific power.
Where the control scheme really breaks down, however, is in the
targeting of enemies. Rather than simply allowing you to
point-and-shoot, you must first raise your weapon with a seperate
command, and then a poorly designed auto-targeting system kicks in.
Items and NPCs around you get a target bullseye slapped on top of
them, and you can only shoot in their direction. Switching between
targets is a chore, especially if you have an NPC hidden behind some
other targetable items, like barrels. There is an optional
first-person view which is a bit less cumbersome, but you can't move
while in that viewpoint. Combat becomes a chore and even using
targeted Psi powers often is more trouble than it is worth.
Like much in "Second Sight", the AI is a mixture of good and bad. On
the one hand, the AI is suitably reactive; if it finds a dead guard,
it'll sound an alarm, you can scare it away with clever use of
telekinesis, it can follow (and -under the right circumstances- lose
sight of) the player if you run, and makes moderate use of cover in
combat. On the other hand, there are some occassions when it's just
braindead, standing around as you knock off his buddies or as you
waltz in plain sight right in front of him because you're just outside
his 30' sight radius.
The plot isn't particularly original but, despite this, it is pretty
good and has an interesting twist near the end. Your player wakes up
as an amnesiac in a hospital with amazing psychic powers. As you are
hunted by government agents you rediscover your past through a series
of (interactive) flashbacks, and uncover a miltary cover-up of a
secret military operation and Russian genetic experiments gone wrong.
The story is cliche, predictible and full of unanswered questions
surely intended to be resolved in the sequel, but for all that the
characters are fun, the setting is believable and the story moves
along at a good pace. There's a constant element of the surreal to the
whole game where you are never sure what is real, which fits in
perfectly in a game all about the mind. It's the best thing about the
game.
The gameplay is terribly hobbled by all the aforementioned problems.
"Second Sight" is a sneaker/shooter; sometimes you are expected to
sneak through an area, other times it's run-and-gun. The developers
ruthlessly enforce the former with that bugbear of bad game design:
endlessly respawning enemies. If you get spotted by a bad guy (or
leave some evidence of your passing, like a corpse), he sounds the
alarm and a half dozen guards descend upon you with guns a'blazing.
Shoot those guards, and new guards appear who inevitably find the dead
bodies of the previous bunch and trigger the alarm anew. If you're
fast and lucky, you just *might* be able to find a hole to hide in...
and then you just sit and wait for five minutes until the alarm dies
down. Then you have to creep back to where you were before the alarm
got set off and try to figure out just HOW to nail the badass who
spotted you in the first place. Alternately, you could try shooting
your way through, but the clumsy controls and awful auto-targeting
system makes combat such an awful experience that you'll want to avoid
that experience as much as possible (alas, for some missions
-especially the "flashbacks" where you take part in a secret mission
with a bunch of army grunts- combat is unavoidable). Its even worse
when you have friendly NPCs on your side, since not only are you
responsible for your own survival, but theirs as well - if they get
knocked off, it's game over. There are a few minor puzzles, but these
are mostly of the sort "use X mental power on interactive item Y" or
"find keycard/switch to open door" to liven things up, but the bulk of
the game is formulaic.
Like many console-derived games, "Second Sight" uses savepoints. Even
more troubling is that these savepoints aren't saved to disk; the only
data permanently saved is how many levels you have completed. Stop
playing halfway through a level (and remember, some of these levels
might take an hour to get through) and next time you have to start
playing from the beginning of the level again. To add insult to
injury, the introductory cutscenes can't be skipped through either.
Your arsenal is small, but potent. Your weapons are fairly standard
(pistol, shotgun, machinegun, sniper rifle), with the exception of the
slow-firing but silent tranquilizer gun. Much more fun are your
psychic powers, which include healing, invisibility, telekinesis,
possession, "psi-blast" and the out-of-body "projection".
Unfortunately, most of these powers are of limited usefulness, either
due to the innate design of the power or the limited psychic manna you
have. For instance, I never resorted to using the psi-blast power to
take out bad-guys because bullets were more readily available and took
out enemies faster. Still, on the rare occassion that I did
successfully use the powers -such as possessing a machine-gun toting
guard and taking out his friends with my mental puppet- I felt a great
sense of satisfaction.
At least the game didn't suffer from any major bugs; no crashes to
desktop, no corrupt graphics, no broken AI. I did notice that, after a
few hours, the sound didn't synchonize with the graphics; the speech
would start to lag behind the lip-synch, but this was a minor issue.
"Second Sight" uses Starforce copy-protection drivers, which slows
down game load-up, but otherwise framerate was smooth as silk even at
highest settings(as should be expected with such dated graphics).
Yet for all its problems, I enjoyed playing "Second Sight". The total
was greater than the sum of all its parts. Yes, I was cursing
everytime I had to endure the hide-and-seek of a triggered alarm, or
fight against the controls whilst simultaneously combating enemy
soldiers. But the setting was entertaining, the psychic powers were
neat and -when everything came together *just right*- it was eminently
satisfying. Unfortunately, getting to these moments requires a lot
more work than most people are willing to invest in a game. "Second
Sight" is hobbled by some really bad design choices, which is a shame
since there is an entertaining product beneath all the cruft. I had
fun with "Second Sight" and expect I'll replay it several times in the
future, but most people will likely abandon it by the second level,
frustrated by the poor controls, endless respawning enemies and drab
graphics. I can't say I'd blame them, but I regret that an otherwise
promising project was ruined by these ruinous flaws.
Completely Arbitrary Numerical Score (CANS)
(for those who like this sort of thing):
240/500 (just below average)
System Specs:
Athlon AMD 3000 XP (Barton)
1024 MB RAM
BFG GeForce 6600 GT w/128 MB (AGP)
Windows XP
"Second Sight" was played at extremely smooth frame rates at 1280x1024
resolution, with all settings at highest
(I don't know if people get any use out of these reviews -or even
manage to read them in entirety, since they are so long- but player
reviews are what (used to) make Usnet so great, so I'm going to keep
pumping them out in the blind hope of inspiring others to do likewise
and sparking some sort of Usenet renaissance. Besides, I'm tired of
hearing about ess-tee-ee-ay-em)
"Second Sight" is one of those games that should be easy to review.
After all, it seems to get *everything* wrong. From its graphics, to
its controls, to its gameplay - all the bits and bobs of the game
compare badly to its competitors. It's even a console port! It's the
sort of game that should be a joy to slam. Why then did I end up
enjoying it so much?
"Second Sight" is a third-person action-shooter developed by Free
Radical Design. Set in modern day locales, you play the role of the
amnesiac protaganist as he struggles to regain his memory and unravel
a government conspiracy. But here's the kicker: you have psychic
powers ranging from telekinesis (move stuff with only the power of
your mind) to invisibility and can use them to kick butt.
It *sounds* interesting. So, what's wrong with this game? And how, in
the end, does it turn out all right?
So let's look at the visuals first; they are the first thing you
notice about a game, after all. Simply put, the graphics look very
dated. While servicable, they suffer from low-res texturing, blocky
level design, and low-poly models. The animation is adequate at best.
In truth, the engine reminds me a lot of that used in "Freedom
Fighters", which itself was a fun game, but it came out almost two
years ago (and even then its visuals weren't high-end). The graphics
get the job done, but they are nothing to boast about.
The sound design is equally average. The effects are adequate but lack
variety. Weapons fire and is suitably robust although explosions
aren't. There aren't many enviromental sounds, so the gameworld sounds
strangely muted. The NPCs only have a limited number of "barks",
although on occassion you do stumble across a scripted conversation
that enlivens the world. The voice-acting is passable; the main
characters have acceptable emotion in their voices but some of the
NPCs suffer from overacting and bad accents. The music isn't
particularly memorable, and -again- there's a lack of variety, so
you'll be hearing the same tracks over and over and over again.
Level design is a mixed bag. Adequate for the square rooms and
corridors of indoor scenes, the engine shows its limitations when it
tries to render the natural curves of the outdoors, and everything
looks far too angular. The game features a number of interactive
devices, including computers that can be hacked into to disable
security and closets to hide in. There are also numerous items that
can be manipulated / moved with the telekinesis (mind over matter)
power that can be used to distract or attack the NPCs. The game has an
acceptable physics model -bodies flop down stairs, chairs can be
knocked over- but doesn't make too much use of it. Some parts of the
levels can also be damaged, but this is mostly cosmetic; you can't
blow your way through the walls. The sixteen levels are of adequate
size; most will take about half an hour to get through (a couple might
take an hour or more; a few less than ten minutes. Doing the math
reveals the game is also very short; five to ten hours long). Only a
couple of the levels are really interesting (the insane asylum is the
best of the lot), with the rest being fairly workaday 3D
representations of offices, slums and underground labs. However, they
are all fairly logically presented (e.g., there are no offices that
can only be accessed by crawling through a duct, jumping over a narrow
gorge and then blasting through a wall; it's all pretty true-to-life).
Furthermore, they fit the gameplay style pretty well; the game has
enough areas to hide in for the stealth portions and enough cover to
duck behind for the shooting bits. But none of the levels are really
impressive to look at or play through.
One of the weakest areas in the game is its controls. You can play
with the standard mouse-and-keyboard setup, but obviously this game
was designed for a console gamepad. You move with WASD, but even this
isn't as straightforward as it might seem, you have to slew the camera
around a full ninety degrees or so before your onscreen avatar starts
turning in that direction; prior to that you're just moving the
camera. This makes it difficults to get your character to face a
person he needs to talk to or an item he needs to interact with. You
also can't interact with most objects from a crouching postition; an
odd design choice for a stealth game as it requires you to stand up
and reveal yourself everytime you want to open a door or push a
button. There are hot-keys to select your guns, but none for your PSI
powers, so you have to scroll through a list everytime you want to
select a specific power.
Where the control scheme really breaks down, however, is in the
targeting of enemies. Rather than simply allowing you to
point-and-shoot, you must first raise your weapon with a seperate
command, and then a poorly designed auto-targeting system kicks in.
Items and NPCs around you get a target bullseye slapped on top of
them, and you can only shoot in their direction. Switching between
targets is a chore, especially if you have an NPC hidden behind some
other targetable items, like barrels. There is an optional
first-person view which is a bit less cumbersome, but you can't move
while in that viewpoint. Combat becomes a chore and even using
targeted Psi powers often is more trouble than it is worth.
Like much in "Second Sight", the AI is a mixture of good and bad. On
the one hand, the AI is suitably reactive; if it finds a dead guard,
it'll sound an alarm, you can scare it away with clever use of
telekinesis, it can follow (and -under the right circumstances- lose
sight of) the player if you run, and makes moderate use of cover in
combat. On the other hand, there are some occassions when it's just
braindead, standing around as you knock off his buddies or as you
waltz in plain sight right in front of him because you're just outside
his 30' sight radius.
The plot isn't particularly original but, despite this, it is pretty
good and has an interesting twist near the end. Your player wakes up
as an amnesiac in a hospital with amazing psychic powers. As you are
hunted by government agents you rediscover your past through a series
of (interactive) flashbacks, and uncover a miltary cover-up of a
secret military operation and Russian genetic experiments gone wrong.
The story is cliche, predictible and full of unanswered questions
surely intended to be resolved in the sequel, but for all that the
characters are fun, the setting is believable and the story moves
along at a good pace. There's a constant element of the surreal to the
whole game where you are never sure what is real, which fits in
perfectly in a game all about the mind. It's the best thing about the
game.
The gameplay is terribly hobbled by all the aforementioned problems.
"Second Sight" is a sneaker/shooter; sometimes you are expected to
sneak through an area, other times it's run-and-gun. The developers
ruthlessly enforce the former with that bugbear of bad game design:
endlessly respawning enemies. If you get spotted by a bad guy (or
leave some evidence of your passing, like a corpse), he sounds the
alarm and a half dozen guards descend upon you with guns a'blazing.
Shoot those guards, and new guards appear who inevitably find the dead
bodies of the previous bunch and trigger the alarm anew. If you're
fast and lucky, you just *might* be able to find a hole to hide in...
and then you just sit and wait for five minutes until the alarm dies
down. Then you have to creep back to where you were before the alarm
got set off and try to figure out just HOW to nail the badass who
spotted you in the first place. Alternately, you could try shooting
your way through, but the clumsy controls and awful auto-targeting
system makes combat such an awful experience that you'll want to avoid
that experience as much as possible (alas, for some missions
-especially the "flashbacks" where you take part in a secret mission
with a bunch of army grunts- combat is unavoidable). Its even worse
when you have friendly NPCs on your side, since not only are you
responsible for your own survival, but theirs as well - if they get
knocked off, it's game over. There are a few minor puzzles, but these
are mostly of the sort "use X mental power on interactive item Y" or
"find keycard/switch to open door" to liven things up, but the bulk of
the game is formulaic.
Like many console-derived games, "Second Sight" uses savepoints. Even
more troubling is that these savepoints aren't saved to disk; the only
data permanently saved is how many levels you have completed. Stop
playing halfway through a level (and remember, some of these levels
might take an hour to get through) and next time you have to start
playing from the beginning of the level again. To add insult to
injury, the introductory cutscenes can't be skipped through either.
Your arsenal is small, but potent. Your weapons are fairly standard
(pistol, shotgun, machinegun, sniper rifle), with the exception of the
slow-firing but silent tranquilizer gun. Much more fun are your
psychic powers, which include healing, invisibility, telekinesis,
possession, "psi-blast" and the out-of-body "projection".
Unfortunately, most of these powers are of limited usefulness, either
due to the innate design of the power or the limited psychic manna you
have. For instance, I never resorted to using the psi-blast power to
take out bad-guys because bullets were more readily available and took
out enemies faster. Still, on the rare occassion that I did
successfully use the powers -such as possessing a machine-gun toting
guard and taking out his friends with my mental puppet- I felt a great
sense of satisfaction.
At least the game didn't suffer from any major bugs; no crashes to
desktop, no corrupt graphics, no broken AI. I did notice that, after a
few hours, the sound didn't synchonize with the graphics; the speech
would start to lag behind the lip-synch, but this was a minor issue.
"Second Sight" uses Starforce copy-protection drivers, which slows
down game load-up, but otherwise framerate was smooth as silk even at
highest settings(as should be expected with such dated graphics).
Yet for all its problems, I enjoyed playing "Second Sight". The total
was greater than the sum of all its parts. Yes, I was cursing
everytime I had to endure the hide-and-seek of a triggered alarm, or
fight against the controls whilst simultaneously combating enemy
soldiers. But the setting was entertaining, the psychic powers were
neat and -when everything came together *just right*- it was eminently
satisfying. Unfortunately, getting to these moments requires a lot
more work than most people are willing to invest in a game. "Second
Sight" is hobbled by some really bad design choices, which is a shame
since there is an entertaining product beneath all the cruft. I had
fun with "Second Sight" and expect I'll replay it several times in the
future, but most people will likely abandon it by the second level,
frustrated by the poor controls, endless respawning enemies and drab
graphics. I can't say I'd blame them, but I regret that an otherwise
promising project was ruined by these ruinous flaws.
Completely Arbitrary Numerical Score (CANS)
(for those who like this sort of thing):
240/500 (just below average)
System Specs:
Athlon AMD 3000 XP (Barton)
1024 MB RAM
BFG GeForce 6600 GT w/128 MB (AGP)
Windows XP
"Second Sight" was played at extremely smooth frame rates at 1280x1024
resolution, with all settings at highest
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