Aya's back in ripped jeans, not as good as it sounds...
Disclaimer: Dear gamer, we know many of you have been waiting a long time for a sequel for one of your favorite heroines...but we don't care. We decided to go a different route and "re-imagine" this franchise for modern times. We know everyone loves action games and everyone wants to be a Resident Evil 5 and Call of Duty action star so we decided to follow in those footsteps, get with the times, loser! We re-imagined this game because we know all our fans would get a kick outta seeing Aya running around in torn clothing and not to mention that shower scene, oh boy! Remember, though, you will be replaying this game 50 times to achieve that shower scene for replay so you can bring your PSP in the bathroom with you for some "private time" (no girls play this anyway). We know the old games were rooted in science but who cares, lets make up some monsters, throw in some time travel, a convoluted story with little to no explanation, many plot-holes and the ability to play dress-up and we got a winner!
With my suggested disclaimer out of the way, let's review!
when I originally heard there would be a sequel to the original Parasite Eve games, I was ecstatic to say the least. Maybe my hopes were too high for a actual sequel to this game. It is easy to see why this is called a spin-off from the original PE franchise. It was poorly planned out. It makes little to no sense to have "3" in the title, bring back most of the characters and have it take place after the events of the first two titles if it was not meant to be a sequel. To state the obvious, it was meant to be a sequel but Square-Enix knew that fans would be more lenient if the title was different, as the saying goes "if it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, then it must be a duck."
Genre
Like many survival horrors games from the past, they have made the jump from it's root to more of an action role to appeal to a larger spectrum of players. It's if they literally finished playing Resident Evil 5 and Call of Duty and stole as much as they could. The monsters are nowhere as intimidating as they were in the first two titles and invoke very little "horror." The entire game devolved into a run-and-gun style of play. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Well no, the PE games always had some action in them and they changed the emphasis to more of that. The action in battles seems to be this titles saving grace. However, the controls are extremely awkward and take some practice before you are able to take full advantage of them. In noway is this a horror game anymore so don't expect to step in and get that.
Story
The storyline is possibly one of the worst things about this title. Aya's got amnesia (gasp!) and as the story progresses, more of her past is revealed to her. She works for a fictional organization called Counter Twisted Investigations (HAHA), CTI for short, as opposed to the other two titles that were grounded in realistic agencies like NYPD and FBI. This game focuses heavily on a new malformed monster breed "cleverly" named the Twisted. These monsters travel through time, which is never truly explained why throughout the game. This is a jarring step from the franchises root in science, genetics and Mitochondria. As the story progresses, very little about Aya's goal is revealed in the hopes that everything will become clear in the end. When major events occur, there is no explanation why they are occurring, they just happen, leaving you asking "why is this happening and how did I get here?" When the game tries to provide an explanation they are extremely cryptic and all explanations can be summed up as "I don't know why, but do it anyway."
In summary, the story is one of the worst things out of SE in a long time. It suffers from cryptic messages, lack of continuity, unexplained circumstances and plot-holes galore. For shame, Square-Enix. Storytelling is as old as time, popular story mechanics will never be a substitute for good storytelling.
Gameplay and Controls
Unlike other titles in the series, this game is a run-and-gun shooter. I actually feel that the gameplay is the best part of this title. Battles are entertaining because of Aya's mobility and range of weaponry. This type of gameplay suffers as there in no easy way to adjust the camera during combat. Adjusting the camera most often requires you to stop dead in your tracks to adjust the camera in the proper viewing direction, leaving you constantly in a vulnerable position. This is not the fault of the game but a limitation of the PSP controls. They could have made it easier to deal with by adding a quick-turn camera function, but they did not, making it extremely difficult to use any manual aiming weapons.
One of the most interesting new features/abilities is Aya's Overdive ability, where she can transfer between soldiers and sacrifice them instead of risking her own physical body, kinda a cheat really. When you leave the body of these soldiers, they don't question how they got where they are nor do they concern themselves with how they received the gaping hole in their chest, they just rollover and die. If not for this Overdive ability, this game would be near impossible as a combination of cheap one-hit kill attacks, auto-seeking attacks and awkward camera angles plague this game to the very end.
One of the most stupidest additions to this game was "armor." Somehow ripped skinny jeans and a tank-top provide "B" rated armor, throw on a white jacket and it instantly becomes "A" rated armor. Over time, your armor protection diminishes as you take damage and your clothes tear off like in so many softcore anime. At a point, most costumes are reduced to Aya running around in underwear so horny teens (developers?) can get some sexual fix. I fail to see how a black tank-top and ripped skinny jeans really provided any type of protection in the first place, unless they are Kevlar infused. To further question the armor addition, Aya projects her subconscious to control these soldiers, why on Earth are her clothes tearing and ripping? Wouldn't it be the ripping of the soldier's uniform? All costumes are a joke anyway, would it have killed them to give her a professional military-looking uniform?
Graphics and Sound
As in true SE fashion, the gameplay and cut-scenes have pretty visuals and an excellent soundtrack, much taken from it's predecessors...but it's not a sequel! For being a PSP title, the visuals really come together for graphic and sound. That's about as far as it goes, enemy and environment design are rather bland, boring and uncreative.
Conclusion
Square-Enix developers went out of their way to make sure everyone knew this was a spin-off. Even though the game clearly focuses on characters from past titles (quite horridly, I might add), takes place after events in the first two titles and the title has a "3" in it clearly indicating it's the third in the series. If you can somehow look past the shallow poor storyline, game mechanics and complete destruction of the franchise's roots, then you are given a very simple run-and-gun action game that may have some replay value. Although, don't expect me to replay this more than a handful of times so I can see some awkward shower scene over and over. Developers really seem hard-pressed to create replay value where there is none, most of the achievements border stupidity. I have never nor will I ever play any title 50 times, get your head on straight SE!
Score 6.5/10.