You play the role of Nick Scyrer. Nick is a soldier trained by the Mindgate Department of the government. He is sent out to infiltrate the Movement, an evil group intent on ruling the world, by having his memory erased and getting a little plastic surgery. After infiltrating the Movement, he causes a ruckus in front of the psychopathic leader and is sent to solitary confinement. During this display, a mysterious woman (Sara) recognizes Nick and decides to help him. She rescues him from solitary confinement and gives him a gun to help him fend for himself. Once you get to the actual gameplay, Nick begins to remember his powers, thanks in part to Sara, your resident large chested blonde. As he learns, he begins to understand his mission fully and vengeance becomes part of his agenda. But let's be honest, the story is little more than an excuse to move the game along. It has its moments and usual plot twists, but there's nothing all that thrilling about it.
Thankfully, gameplay is much more important than plot. Two bars indicate Nick’s status. One bar is for his health and the other is for his psi-energy. Nick can pick up medical kits to heal himself. These are stored in his inventory so they don’t have to be used right away. When Nick uses his psi-powers, it drains his psi-energy bar. He can replenish them with psi-vials or other methods that I'll get to soon. 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 they 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, and most important, power is the ability to use telekinesis to interact with the surrounding environment. Throw boxes, pull in health packs and weapons from unreachable areas and even being able to lift and throw around enemy guards and treat them like mere puppets on a string. Guards can be thrown against walls, or even better, thrown down shafts or holes to their screaming deaths. Various other parts of the environment can be used too. A fire-furnace or spinning fan from an air vent nearby just begs to have an enemy thrown into it. Telekinesis isn't the only power you gain. Powers to walk through doors with just your mind to scout the area, pyrokenesis to throw fire at will, 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. You can even use other things to dispatch the enemy. Gas cylinders, exploding barrels and even the enemies own grenades can be 'picked up' and throwing back at them exploding on impact which is certainly one of my favourite features of the game. Psi-powers aren't just used for combat. Many small psi-puzzles litter the game be it simple stuff like controlling a guard to press a switch, or using a box combined with Telekinesis to float across a broken bridge.
Without these powers, Psi-Ops would very much become mundane and unoriginal, or fall into the same category as another recent and rather forgettable Midway 3rd person game, The Suffering. As a traditional 3rd person shooter, you follow a fairly linear path, solve some odd puzzles, 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 down endless pits to their messy deaths would be a waste. The Psi-powers are not just gimmicks, they are vital to success. Getting a guard to turn on his friends and kill 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. Where the game excels is in the boss battles. While there's only a few, each battle is a fight of mental powers against each other. Weaponry firepower does little as strategic use of the Psi-powers is the only way to succeed. It's like a mental struggle between two minds as you try to avoid the powers of your enemy and attempt to use yours to harm them by whatever means possible. In a similar way to Metal Gear Solid, it makes every major encounter epic and meaningful, despite there only being a few of them through the eight mission adventure.
But Psi-Ops isn't without its problems. The objectives can lack proper explanation at times, leaving you to figure out what to do which really isn't helped by the rather useless map in the pause menu. However, you'll learn the relatively small mission areas anyway, because backtracking exists due to keycard-finding gameplay that populates each level. Also, gunplay isn't as good as it could be, often lacking accuracy at medium to long range. While these little problems do little to drag the game down, the final Psi-power you receive (Aura View) spoils the last 1/5 of the game somewhat. Aura View allows Nick to ‘see’ what normal humans cannot. It sounds like a good idea, and it is, but it's one that's been poorly executed. The level designs near the end of the game force you to almost constantly use Aura View power in order to avoid traps (invisible mines, etc), killing the fast paced nature of the game leaving you frustratingly tip-toeing around. Since you can only use one power at a time, Telekenisis and any other powers are very limited. By limiting the powers Midway have limited the fun.
Visually, while never fully shedding its PS2 origins, Psi-Ops looks excellent. Solid level design and textures are abound, and the game is dark in many places with some decent effects to compliment it. Lights emanate throughout the building, showing the way. Floodlights cast realistic shadows. Pipes leak fire or mist. Little touches like these help make the environments realistic. Nick looks good in action, his movements are fluid whether he is running, jumping, shooting, or sneaking around. However, he really comes alive while using his psi-powers. Objects or enemies will glow while Nick uses his Telekinesis on them. While using his Remote Viewing, the screen has a ghost-like effect. Using the Mind Drain will spray lightning and cause the enemy body to wriggle with pain. However, the 'Havok' powered physics engine is what makes the game what it is by complimenting 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 trying to cling onto whatever life he think has left. Kill them in strange places and you'll see them slumped over, hanging off something, or even better, fried on an electric walkway. Still, there's nothing bad about the appearance of this game, as it's clean, fast and never chugs or anything like that.
Psi-Ops doesn’t have much in-game music to talk about. There is some during the cutscenes to set up the mood, but the game concentrates on the use of the ambient noise instead of music. The ambiance of the buildings is heard throughout the game. A low hum around machinery buzzes in your ears. Computer terminals whistle. Explosions are suitably bassy, electricity crackles. The psi-powers also have their own sound effects. The Remote Vision is accompanied with a wind-like whistle, while the return trip will cause a rewind-type sound. Unfortunately, Psi-Ops is let down with some sub-par voice acting. The actual voice actors aren't too bad but when combined with the laughable lines within the script the end result isn't good. Admittedly, the story isn't exactly going to win any awards, but at least have voice acting that's not so laughable. Actual voice work within game goes some way to make up for it though. From screaming guards realizing they're about to fall 100ft to their death to the sound of living guards talking and planning a strategy to kill you, it goes some way to making the enemy feel more alive than just being some faceless body to throw about.
Psi-Ops is a good length for it's genre, around the 10-15hr mark for an average gamer and offers a huge wealth of unlockables to obtain via collecting hidden 'Evil Garden Gnomes' littered around each level, or by completing certain tasks or beating a target time. From simple concept art, movies and features to bowling mini games where you use your psi-powers on a huge bowling ball to know down pins, the unlockables are enough reason to come back to the game after completion. There's even a 2-player co-op mode in there too with one controlling movement and aiming while the other controlling psi powers and weapon fire. It works pretty well and co-operation between both player is essential. In the game business, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy came out of nowhere and is what I'd call a sleeper hit. It gives the 3rd person action genre a fresh, and much needed, lick of paint with its excellent use of Psi-powers. Torturing and throwing guards around (amongst other nasty things you can do to them) provides hours of fun in itself. It could use a bit more gameplay polish and less keycard puzzles and it really could have done without the Aura View themed stages near the end, but the bulk of Psi-Ops is great stuff and Midway should be thanked for bringing something a bit new to the table.
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