Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy Impressions

Midway stopped by recently to demo Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, the upcoming third-person action game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. The game, formerly known as ESPionage, puts you in the role of Nick Scryer, a psychic soldier tapped to infiltrate a terrorist organization bent on doing unpleasant things to the world. The work-in-progress version of the PlayStation 2 game we saw showed off some of the improvements the development team is implementing, and it looked much better than what we saw of ESPionage.

The demo showed three areas of the game and gave us a feel for several elements of the gameplay. The first area we saw was from the first level. It featured the storytelling, stealth, and combat aspects of the game. The level began with a cinema that showed Nic being freed from a prison cell by a mysterious woman with psychic powers. After busting open the door to his cell, she throws a gun at him and tells him to meet her at a nearby area. Unfortunately, GI Jane isn't the most helpful of liberators. She leaves Nic to his own devices, and he has to make his way to their rendezvous point, passing through areas crawling with soldiers who have a habit of saying hello with a hail of bullets. While Nic was able to get by the soldiers pretty handily using a brutal, but highly effective, mix of telekinesis and good old-fashioned bullets, his options will be more limited at this point in the final game. The terrorist organization Nic has been inserted into has psychics of its own, who would be able to identify him as a threat if they could read his memories, so to ensure that Nic isn't gunned down when he approaches the terrorists, his mind was wiped before he was dispatched on the mission. While this works great for getting past enemy mind readers, the downside is that Nic can't access his psychic powers, because he doesn't actually remember he has them. As a result, Nic won't have much in the way of a psychic arsenal when he starts out. For example, he'll have no powers during this first level in the actual game and will be forced to rely on stealth and good marksmanship to get to the designated meeting spot. Our demo, however, had Nic's powers fully enabled in order to show off how you can uses Nic's telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and mind drain abilities in conjunction with his gun to make short work of foes. While using telekinesis to throw people around and using pyrokinesis to burn them up is all well and good, we have to say we're most pleased with mind drain. This technique will let Nic drain psi energy from foes, which will power his other mental abilities, and it has the added benefit of causing his enemies' heads to explode "Scanners" style.

The second part of the demo illustrated how to use Nic's powers in combination with each other. We were able to see Nic's remote view power, which lets him look into unexplored areas with his mind, and his possession power, which lets him take control of enemy soldiers. Possessing enemies has several advantages. The most significant is the ability to freely move among foes and kill them when their backs are turned. When Nic's done using the borrowed body, he can fling his foe to his death to ensure he doesn't come after him. The downside is that while Nic's taking a joyride in another body, he's vulnerable to fatal harm. The second demo also showed off a unique use for Nic's telekinesis. When a gap is blown in a bridge Nic needs to cross, he'll have two main options. Since the gap is too wide to jump, he can use telekinesis to pile debris across it and form a makeshift bridge. However, the cooler option is to have Nic stand on a piece of debris and levitate it, which indirectly gets him over the gap.

The final part of the demo was of a fight against one of the six bosses in the game. Each opponent will specialize in a mind power and will be able to wield it much more efficiently than Nic. The trick will be using Nic's other powers to ensure that he's not demolished. In the battle, the telekinetic specialist threw anything handy at Nic, ranging from train cars to crates. While Nic was able to ward off smaller objects, such as crates, and in some cases turn the tables and strike his foe, there wasn't a lot for him to do besides run when a train car came at him.

Based on the sampling of demos we've seen, Psi-Ops is headed in a promising direction. The delay in release and the name change have afforded the team some breathing room, which appears to be resulting in better graphical performance and some welcome tweaks in gameplay. The stronger emphasis on psi powers is a plus, and we hope this aspect will be fully explored. Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy is currently slated to ship next year for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Look for more on the game in the coming months.