Drawing comparisons between Free Radical’s new psychic-themed title Second Sight and Midway’s similar game Psi-Ops is only natural. After all, both are third-person action games that feature a main character imbued with psychic skills that allow him to manipulate the environment and battle his enemies in a myriad of ways. Second Sight attempts to set itself apart by incorporating these supernatural elements into a gripping storyline with two distinct play elements. While in some ways these features provide a more entertaining experience than did its competitor, and the game offers more fully realized stealth abilities, the gameplay itself is rough around the edges, keeping the player from ever being fully immersed. Second Sight is still a decent action title, but some cumbersome controls and unpolished presentation keep it from reaching its high-minded aspirations - or even from clearing the hurdle placed by its solid predecessor. In Second Sight, you take the role of John Vattic, a psychic debunker hired to join Winter Ice, a secret government operation investigating unusual scientific experiments in Siberia. When the game begins, John has lost his memory and awakened in a mental hospital. As he attempts to discover information as to his identity and what brought him to the facility, John flashes back to the Russian missions. The story is intriguing and the narrative device is not only well implemented, but it divides the game into two separate entities. In flashback episodes, the game plays as a more standard third-person shooter with some decent stealth and squad action. In the present, John can use his psychic abilities to defend himself from the authorities giving chase and solve various puzzles as he attempts to learn more about his current predicament. The story is the star of Second Sight, and is fascinating enough on its own to keep the game afloat. The psychic powers themselves are fun to play with. With telekinesis, John can lift objects or people and thrown them around; projection lets him leave his body and manipulate certain objects or sneak around; he can heal himself or hurl a psi-blast at his enemies; and with the useful charm skill, he can sneak past adversaries, although he will not be immune from the prying eye of security cameras. The powers are handy for solving various puzzles, but the most fun is to be had in the way you can use various combinations of psychic abilities, firearms and stealth to accomplish your objectives. Unfortunately, a few things can really get in the way of the psychic fun, not the least of which is the slightly cumbersome manner in which you have to cycle through abilities to equip them. While in Psi-Ops, you could activate powers with a simple press of a button or pull of a trigger, here you must cycle through abilities and select the one you want. Selecting a target is simple and you can easily cycle from one to the next, alleviating the main control issue from the aforementioned title – although it can sometimes be too time-consuming to select the target you need, making you vulnerable to enemy fire as you furiously move from one to the next. It’s also worth noting that while it is fun to fling objects around telekinetically, the implementation of the Havok physics engine is not as satisfying in Second Sight, not only because items don’t fly around with the same ease as they did in Psi-Ops, but because objects have a noticeable tendency to clip through walls or stutter against objects as they try to move in a direction they can’t go. It’s too bad that unlike in Psi-Ops, you can’t use guns and psychic powers in combination: either you have a power equipped, or a weapon, so you can’t, for example, hold enemies in the air and unload ammo into them. Apparently, even though psychic powers originate in the mind, John’s hands must be free to use them. The shooting aspects aren’t bad, because you get a pretty good variety of weapons, including a sniper rifle with a terrific zooming implementation: when equipping the rifle, a window opens up at the lower right of your screen, allowing you to focus on your target without losing your third-person perspective. Aiming and controlling weapons work much the same as with your psychic powers, but is somewhat more intuitive, as there are fewer targets at your disposal as you cycle through the choices. There are times when you will default to a first-person view, such as when you crawl through pipes or other close spaces. This works effectively, although we twice encountered a bug in which the camera moved to the first-person view for no apparent reason and we could not move or change perspective, forcing a restart of the level. And while you can switch to a fixed first-person view for exploration, the camera has an annoying tendency to get stuck behind objects in the standard third-person view, sometimes making it difficult to locate the enemies firing at you. The stealth moves in Second Sight are executed well, and you can sneak along walls, peek around corners, and inch your way along ledges as you hang. This is a blessing, considering you will be forced to use stealth often, lest you be riddled with bullets. Most missions are open-ended enough to let you use a variety of approaches, even though there are times when there is no immediately clear way of getting from point A to point B. The sensitivity of security cameras when stealth is required can get rather annoying, since if you trip a camera, legions of enemies will come at you in waves, and in some missions, the trial-and-error method of managing your escape will mean a few too many deaths before you figure out the best approach. One nice touch is the way you can interact with computer terminals to see floor maps, solve puzzles, and learn about John’s medical history. These computers also sometimes feature arcade-type mini-games that can be a fun diversion for a few minutes, although they don’t add much replay value to a single-player campaign that can be finished in just over a dozen hours and has no multiplayer mode – or any significant unlockable content. Second Sight is attractive to look at, with colorful but sometimes plain environments. The avatar models and faces are highly expressive, though, and characters move and speak with exaggerated movements and gestures. Psychic powers are accompanied by nifty visuals – and actually, by some terrific sound effects too. Unfortunately, weapons sound a bit underpowered, making them a little less satisfying to use than we would have liked. The voice acting is quite good, considering there is quite a lot of it, particularly from John himself – who sounds like the geeky, confused scientist that he is. The soundtrack is excellent, adding to the cinematic narrative with an appropriate dramatic flair. To its credit, Second Sight implements certain basic features of stealth action games more fully than did Psi-Ops, and offers a far superior story to boot. Sadly, the often cumbersome controls and sometimes lackluster execution of its psychic abilities means the excellent narrative has to carry the bulk of the title’s weight. Still, while we give an edge to Midway’s earlier entry, Second Sight’s involved story and sophisticated gameplay concepts make it worth checking out, frustrations notwithstanding.
By damned_beast | Review Date: May 19, 2006 | XBOX
Second sight came at a big surprise; to me I never saw how good it was going to be! The game has this crazy unique story that will take you for a wild ride, wondering what is happening, it keeps you guessing in some plac... Read Full Review
I have to say, without second sight my life would be incomplete. It has awesome graphics. They are a little cartoonish, but not really. It has almost no glitches. The sound and voicework and stuff is great! The cutscenes... Read Full Review
