I was wrong about this game and I'm ready to take my medicine.
User Rating: 8 | Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy PS2
It takes a big man to admit when he was wrong. I am that man. I was wrong about this game and I did you, the reader, a disservice. For that, I humbly apologize. First thing’s first, here’s a brief snippet of what I originally wrote… “In some ways this game didn’t turn out like I expected it might. If you’re a fan of Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and Art Bell, then telekinesis and remote viewing are not new concepts to you. And if you HAVE listened to this fine radio program, then you’ll also recognize the often times quirky nature of spoon-benders and psychics. There is nothing quirky about Psi-Ops. It’s a robust action game. Period. The action with regard to your weapons is really very generic, but that’s not why you’re playing this game. In fact, once you get most of your powers back (through interactive flashbacks), you’ll probably find you’ll never use a gun ever again. It was so much fun tossing the bad guys into walls or each other and then sucking out their psychic energy until their little heads popped off that I was never able to collect any remaining ammo since I ended up never firing a single shot. It’s that much fun.” That’s some of what I originally wrote. And while this assessment isn’t necessarily incorrect, it is incomplete. The fact is, the psi powers you’ll use (especially telekinesis) are a whole mess of fun to play with. However, once you’ve spent a lot of time with the game their “funness” wears off. And once this happens, well…you’re left with a somewhat frustrating and hollow game. There are two reasons I wrote such a favorable review in the first place. 1. The newness of the psi powers had yet to wane for me and 2. I hadn’t yet played Second Sight. In case you don’t know, Second Sight is another game released around the same time as Psi-Ops that also uses telekinesis and other psychic powers. These two games are frequently compared for obvious reasons. And since I played Psi-Ops first and it has generally been rated higher than Second Sight by many people out there (and I assumed it was the better of the two), I had no frame of reference to compare the games. As I said, I’ve since played Second Sight to its conclusion and frankly, in my humble opinion, it is the better game. One caveat to this though – when it comes to straight-up action and the sheer fun you’ll receive from tossing people around with telekinesis, Psi-Ops is much stronger. The rag doll physics are implemented perfectly and are a sheer joy to watch. However, if you were to remove this one aspect from the equation, then this is where the game losses out. The telekinesis (its only strong characteristic) is simply fantastic…when it works. Often times (especially as you progress through the game) it is extremely difficult to target your enemies properly. Second Sight uses auto-targeting, which I generally don’t like. However, in this sort of game I found it to be nearly necessary. It’s one thing to fire a dozen rounds in the general direction of your enemies while aiming with a reticle in front of you, it’s another thing altogether when you’re in the midst of a heated battle and exact aiming is required in order to pull off a simple move. In other words, one of Psi-Ops shortcomings is that it is very difficult to aim your reticle into a swarm of bad guys and hope that you’ll always select the appropriate person. Sometimes you’ll accidentally grab a person farther away or worse, a box or barrel. And for every second you toggle between these incorrect targets, you’ll have been hit multiple times by enemy fire. This, unfortunately, makes the game too difficult in a cheap way. The only remedy for this, I found, was to play it on “easy” but then it becomes no challenge at all. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the game itself is too difficult. I’m say that I found, with its flawed targeting, it became too difficult to fight without taking a bunch of cheap shots and dying a lot. In the end, while this game is a whole mess of bloody fun when it works, you’ll likely find that a lot of its potential is lost to the frustration of its flawed controls. And though this game is much more robust when it comes to hardcore action, the overall design of Second Sight makes it a far better game in the end. Or at least it does in my humble opinion. 
