Second Sight
Second Sight gets a second chance on the PC.
Tags: Second Sight Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Brad on Apr 8th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Second Sight (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Second Sight, a third-person action stealth game is brought to us by Codemasters and Free Radical, the team behind the TimeSplitters series of first-person shooters. They’ve changed pace a little with this new game, slowing things down into a sneaky-sneak psychic-power-fest, dropping you over the shoulder of John Vattic, a mystics-debunking doctor dropped into a special forces unit to hunt down a mad scientist run amok. The game opens with Vattic, his body beaten and bloody, waking up in a hospital bed to find that his mind is playing tricks on him.
Console gamers have had their hands on this game since last fall, but now PC gamers have their shot at it with a budget price. The game survived the transition to the keyboard/mouse control scheme with a few difficulties that might put players off their games, but the core entertainment in playing Vattic as he develops strange new powers remains.
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As the game progresses, you’re thrown back and forth through time, switching between Vattic’s escape from the hospital and a series of flashbacks to the mission that got him into his current predicament. The first flashback sends you to a fairly well-designed tutorial mission where you’ll learn the ins and outs of Free Radical’s interesting weapons and stealth systems.
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Targetting is handled by a lock-on with some fine-tuning adjustments available. Just hold down the right mouse button and a framing cursor will appear around your target. From there, small movements of the mouse will realign the central dot to that cursor, allowing you to take more precise shots. It’s akin to the TimeSplitters aiming system, which has become no small area of contention for FPS fans. It can feel a little floaty, and switching targets can be more difficult than necessary. To change who you’re shooting at sometimes takes a violent whirl of the mouse ball, as the reticule doesn’t always seem to want to leave whatever it locked onto first. It’s not the most elegant thing in the world, and can cause some frustration, particularly when the camera gets hung up on the scenery.
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That camera is a bit of a problem, really. It catches and slides along walls, making turning difficult from time to time, and often lurching foreword and back as you round corners and pass through doors, a nauseating effect. It took a long while to get fully adjusted to it, and I never quite got to the point where I was really easily control it under all circumstances. I often found myself being shot from the sides simply because the camera refused to adjust, no matter how quickly I moved the mouse around.
The stealth element is interesting, in that it makes good use of the scenery, most times. Vattic can crouch and lean up against walls for cover, peeking around and down halls to see if anyone’s coming. Popping out to squeeze off a couple of shots is as simple as a mouse click, and some exciting firefights are possible, assuming you don’t get flanked. The moment anyone comes around to your side, you’ll be fighting with the camera again to get a lock on them.
Thankfully, many of the gunfights can be avoided by strategic use of your new-found psychic powers. Telekinesis can be used to grab objects from a distance, flinging them into enemies, or away down corridors as a distraction. It’s a bit of fun, if not the easiest thing to use in the world. Objects that can be tossed seem to have no weight to them even when you’re not using your powers, meaning that crates and chairs and computer monitors skitter across the floor when jostled, like you’ve just smashed them with a truck.
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Your psychic power gauge fills automatically, and fairly quickly at that, leaving you with only a brief resting period between bouts of action. A healing power allows you to slink off to some quiet corner and recharge without too much trouble, so long as the AI doesn’t actively know where you are.
That’s not much of a concern, really. Even if you’ve been spotted, the AI gives up looking pretty quickly, and frequently can’t find you, even if you’ve just ducked into a closet before their very eyes. The Charm power grants you temporary invisibility, which, combined with the sneaking and hiding behind cover, is a pretty entertaining way to get about. You’ll still be seen by security cameras, but those can be shut down by hacking into one of the desktop computers located around the lab. An astral projection power lets you leave your body behind and explore areas that you can’t normally reach. Or, if you just want to go in guns blazing, your ammunition limit is supplemented by a psychic blast that sends guards flying.
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The way the game is divided into flashback chapters across some 15 hours of play, you’ll find yourself occasionally without your psychic powers and relying solely on your military arsenal and squadmates. There are a couple of escort missions that show off the AI’s ability to duck and shoot as well as your own. It’s not the most spectacular of stories, but it’s laid out well, with a smooth progression in Vattic’s new abilities keeping things fresh.
If there is one shining star of achievement with this game, its light falls on Free Radical’s pedigree in character modeling and animation. From the opening menu, showing Vattic fidgeting in front of a PC screen, all the characters move in an exaggerated, cartoonish manner, with expressive gestures and faces that sell the story well. A number of cutscenes are sprinkled throughout the game, bringing life to everyone in it. I’m always glad to sit down and watch a Free Radical game, if for no other reason than that they just feel more alive.
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Outside the characters, the game looks a bit flat. Levels are squarish and textures are plain; appropriately sterile in parts, but still looking a few years old. There are some great effects that go with the psychic powers, however, with a bit of warping and fading vision as Vattic’s psychic well runs dry. The sound effects to those powers are also brilliant, overshadowing the usual bang-bang of the firearms.
All in all, a very entertaining concept, if a bit marred by some of the play mechanics. Multi-platform gamers might want to skip the PC version and go with a control pad, as it seems obvious that’s what the game was designed for to begin with. No matter which version you go with, you’re still going to run into some trouble with the camera, and might be turned off by a targeting system that comes close to great while not quite getting there.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Great character animation. + Story presentation is refreshing. + Psychic powers have fun sounds and effects. |
7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- The camera hurt my head. - Auto-targetting wasn't built with a mouse in mind. - The AI is dumber than a bowling ball owned by very dumb toast. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| You could do a lot worse, but you could do a lot better as well. | |
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Tags: Second Sight
Posted by Brad on Apr 8th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
