Psi-Ops, Second Sight, And The War Of The Psychic Action Games
In 2004, a war was raging. Not the Iraq War, but an even sillier war. The war between two video games: Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Second Sight. In the EU, these games launched within a month of each other. I was a staff writer on a PlayStation 2 magazine at the time, and I remember a ridiculous tension in the office about which was better. One was brash, loud, and American. The other was artsy, psychological, and British. But they both featured protagonists with psychic powers, and thus became the subject of a slightly pathetic mini culture war. You like Psi-Ops? How basic of you. You prefer Second Sight? Hipster. If Twitter was around at the time, the discourse would have been insufferable.
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Developed by Midway, Psi-Ops is the story of Nick Scryer, a psychic supersoldier with amnesia who's captured by terrorists and forced to fight his way to freedom. It's a pretty basic run-and-gun shooter at its core, but elevated (literally) by some spectacularly fun, destructive psychic powers. Telekinesis allows you to pluck large objects from the world and toss them at enemies. You can also fly around by surfing on chunks of debris. With Mind Control you can possess enemies and make them attack their allies, or force them to kill themselves. Pyrokinesis lets you start fires, burn people alive, and create explosive chain reactions.
Psi-Ops is not a subtle game. If it was an action movie it would be a Netflix Original starring a grossly overpaid Dwayne Johnson. It's stupid, shallow, and stretches one idea way too thin, but it's also entertaining as hell. It makes excellent use of the Havok physics engine (a big deal at the time), with ragdoll
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