Ureview by: Eraser
Ureview points: 28
Ureviewer since: April 2006
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Reviewed On: Monday July 3, 2006
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9 | Recommends product: Yes
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Introduction
In Second Sight you play as John Vattic. At the start of the game you find yourself imprisoned in some sort of medical facility. You quickly discover that you posses over certain psychokinetic powers, meaning that you can control objects or perform actions with the power of your own mind. In the meantime John has a hard time remembering his past. It's nothing more than a blur of images and sounds.
As you make your way through the medical facility you run into familiar images and memories start to come back. These memories guide you in the direction of unraveling your past... and much more.
Second Sight was developed by an English group of developers known as Free Radical. They're famous for the Timesplitters and Timesplitters 2 games, and have a Timesplitters 3 coming up early 2005. Free Radical stems from a number of developers who were also responsible for mega hit games like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 under the flag of Rare.
Graphics
Second Sight was build using the TimeSplitters 2 engine. This alone guarantees a certain level of graphical quality. Second Sight shows some added graphical features but apart from that looks pretty much the same as TimeSplitters 2, although maybe a bit more detail in the textures and scenery.
The visual style of Second Sight also reminds us a lot of the style Free Radical has adopted for their TimeSplitters games. A sometimes slightly cartoony feel to everything gives it that special Free Radical touch. Second Sight sticks more to the realistic side of things though with characters that do inherit a lot from their TimeSplitter based ancestors but seem to be a touch more realistic rather than the "overdone" facial features you'll see in TimeSplitters.
All in all it's quite an impressive game to see and TimeSplitters fans will feel instantly at home in these typical Free Radical surroundings.
Gameplay
Second Sight has some pretty solid gameplay but does show some quirks which need to be mentioned. At it's heart Second Sight is a Third Person Shooter. You'll spend most of your time running through corridors of labratories, bunkers, asylums and research facilities, but also through cold syberia, ghettos and villages that would be quaint if it weren't for the assault rifle toting russians.
Weapons
Through the game you get to handle a number of weapons. Starting off with your own fists, you quickly pick up a gun. You'll also getthe very silent (and therfore useful in stealthy situations) sleeping dart gun. This gun's efficiency is dependant on where you hit your opponent. Hit him in the head and he'll take a good long nap. If you hit him in other places, like his legs the sleeping poison will take longer to take effect, resulting in an alarmed enemy that will drop to the floor in due time.
Later on in the game you'll also get to handle shotguns, SMG's, assault rifles and sniperrifles.
Psi powers
Second Sight offers a number of psi powers in addition to the weapons. Some of these powers are good only for attack, some are also good for other things. Your most basic power is the heal power, which can be used to heal yourself. This already adds one quirky gameplay element to the game, as you can quite easily heal yourself, often even in the middle of a firefight while bullets are hitting your body. This tends to make the game a tad easy from time to time, especially in the first half of the game.
Another power is the Psychokinesis power. With this power you can target objects and pick them up without touching them. You can move objects like desks, chairs, crates and other things around with a single thought of your mind. The effect of this on some of the less well informed characters in the game can be pretty amusing. They'll think they see ghosts and run to the nearest corner to shiver in fear. Another, more efficient, cruel and satisfying way of getting rid of your enemies is by picking them up. This will allow you to move them over a deep pit and drop them off to their death or hold them still in the air while they are choked by your rather Darth Vader-ish way of punishing your enemies.
This power is also often used to flip unreachable switches.
Other powers involve firing off psychokinetic blasts, making yourself invisible or projecting a mental version of yourself. Most powers have a "secondary use" as well, for instance, the psychokinetic blast can be fired in two different ways.
controls and camera
The controls are a bit iffy sometimes. The first thing that I noticed was that the default camera choice is pretty much useless in most situations. During gameplay you can switch camera's using the Y button on the GameCube controller. By default it starts off in a Resident Evil type of fixed camera position which shows you most of the room but not always in the direction you'd like to see things.
The second (and most useful) camera type is a classic third person view. I used this most of the time as I found it to be the best way to play the game. The only downside is that there really isn't a button that puts the camera straight behind your character. However, the left shoulder button activates targetting mode and will put the camera automatically behind your character so this pretty much fixed my problem.
The third camera view is a first person view. This camera view is rarely used as well as you can't move around in first person view. Whenever you hide inside a locker (yep, just like in Metal Gear Solid) your view switches to first person as well, which allows you to target enemies with your psi powers while being in the locker.
Combat
Combat is often easy enough to do although targetting specific enemies is often a bit of a hassle. When you've selected a weapon or psi power the left shoulder button activates targetting mode. All target-able objects and enemies will have a little spiral wavy thingy drawn over them. With the C stick you can now select the target you wish to shoot at (or use your psi power at). With the right shoulder button you then fire or use the selected psi power. The downside of this is that sometimes when you activate targetting mode it'll have a crate preselected while you were hoping to aim for that bad guy with the machinegun. A slight annoyance sometimes but this barely puts a dent in Second Sight's gameplay.
story
Now this is where Second Sight starts to shine. Where many people complained about the lack of a solid story in both TimeSplitters games, Second Sight more than makes up for that. The storyline in Second Sight is simply excellent and puts games with a high "story expectance" like Half-Life 2 to humiliating shame. I'd say Second Sight's story is just as well written and well executed throughout the game as that of the Legacy of Kain series. If you think story isn't important, then maybe this game can change your mind. You really want to know what's going to happen next and the way the game is put together (current day events and flashbacks to past events alternate each other) makes things really interesting. Without spoiling too much I can say that the plot keeps thickening all the way to the end of the game, where a very well done plot twist that forces you to view the entire game the exact opposite way as you thought it was is really the sugary coating of the cake.
Music
I can't say enough good things about the music in this game. TimeSplitters 2 already had a fantastic soundtrack and Second Sight follows in TS' footsteps. Typical Free Radical tunes spice up the action and make those stealthy moments all the more tense. It really adds to the mood of the game, which, to say the least, has a fantastic atmosphere all the way throughout it.
Conclusion
In terms of story telling, Second Sight is a masterpiece. It has great graphics, good and interesting gameplay, enough levels to satisfy your needs and interesting ways to use your psi powers. The biggest downsides of this game are the lack of multiplayer and the little replay value it offers. One can try to finish the game a second time on the "challenging" difficulty setting, but as the story has been completely unravveled, things won't be half as interesting anymore as that first time.
What we do get in return though are two typical Free Radical minigames hidden in the main game which you can play whenver you want. It even keeps your high score ;-)
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| Pros: psi powers, excellent storyline, solid gameplay, great graphics, lengthy |
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| Cons: controls, sometimes too easy, no multiplayer, little replay value |
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