I had a 30 minute try-out of the new Parasite Eve Game, The 3rd Birthday. It's very unfortunate that we could not provide a full The 3rd Birthday review as of this time, so we'll just quickly drive into the important things that we noticed.
The 3rd birthday story starts on the city of New York... The date is December 2012, when some giant roots suddenly came up from the ground and destroyed everything that got in its way. In order to turn things back, CTI (Counter Twisted Investigation) sent agent Aya Brea back in time to investigate what happened, where it all began. The overdrive, is a process where a person's consciousness is transferred back in time, into another person's body at that time. In the game, Aya Brea is able to take her true form, and able to transfer into another person's body.
The 3rd bithday PSP had a huge leap in terms of graphics, you play in 3rd person view, the environment is in full 3d and the character models were good. The cutscenes were also of high quality, and the animation is smoothly close to real-life movements.
You can change and equip different guns, the only caveat I see is that the game doesn't pause when you switch weapons which makes you vulnerable to attacks. As mentioned above, you can transfer your consciousness to other people in the game and each person you transfer to has different names and have their own health bars. If you die while inside that person's body, it's game over... So you have to wisely switch between people.
You can also now make use of barricades to hide from enemy attacks, simply put Aya behind a barricade and she will automatically duck and hide. While ducking, you can surprise an enemy with an attack but this leaves you exposed as Aya will have to stand up. While in this state, you can scrape left and right, ala-Metal Gear Solid style.
All the PSP controls are fully utilized... The default setting is you move using the analog stick, rotate the camera using the direction buttons, aim using the L trigger and while holding it, use the R trigger to shoot. Switch weapons using the square button and choose which weapon to use with the DPad. You can dive to avoid attacks by pressing x while moving forward.
I had a chance to encounter some normal enemies which were quite aggressive from the start. You also get to fight gigantic bosses, most of which you have to hit on their weak spots in order to defeat.
Aya has a special move called "Leberation", which covers Aya in red aura and she's able to move faster and fire powerful attacks from her gun. To some extent, liberation mode helps you survive even when the person you overdrive to reaches zero life. There are several skills that you can use with liberation mode... But I don't know about that anymore since... Hello... This is a 30 minute play, first impression.
The wait was definitely worth it, and it was such a good thing that they released this for the PSP instead of mobile phones. The 3rd birthday is certainly a good reason to keep your PSP, or buy a new one if need be.
The 3rd Birthday PSP Final Thoughts
- Excellent graphics
- Interesting gameplay
- Interesting storyline
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