THE 3RD BIRTHDAY (PSP)
For the most ardent of fans, the eleven year wait for a new Parasite Eve must have seemed like a lifetime. The acclaimed RPG/survival horror hybrid was last sighted on the PSone in 2000 in the guise of Parasite Eve 2, and while players have been denied a full-blown sequel, they can at least get their hands on its long-in-the-making spiritual successor The 3rd Birthday. The chameleon-like series this time takes the guise of a third-person shoot ‘em up, but revisits characters and themes of earlier outings and, of course, Aya Brea returns as the lead protagonist.
The critical response to The 3rd Birthday was undecided at best. Discontent stemmed from the its perceived failure to live up to its predecessors, with many fans citing that it didn’t feel like a Parasite Eve. Strictly speaking, both assertions are correct: it isn’t as involved, but then, as its slightly ambiguous title attests, T3B is a different kettle of fish. It’s neither complete success nor complete failure; the shooting is lightweight next to modern home console equivalents, but it boasts a bunch of neat new ideas and design that is both adventurous and, on occasions, inspired. The biggest drawback is a relatively limited shelf life.
The convoluted story (and that’s putting it mildly) sees Aya battling an invasion of ‘Twisted’; creatures who rose from the ground one Christmas and attacked Manhattan, killing many and generally wreaking environmental havoc. As time passes, the outbreak of Twisted grows to near-epidemic proportions, but thankfully, New York can rely on Aya and her awesome abilities. Able to detach her soul from her body, she can ‘Overdive’ into that of another and thus manoeuvre around environments with near-omnipotent speed and ease, using handily-placed soldiers as hosts. In a useful coincidence, the organisation she works for have the means to send her soul back in time, where she can alter the events of the past. All of this means you’ve seriously got to have your thinking-caps on to keep up with the consistently confusing narrative. Aya is driven by troubled memories of her sister Eve, the fidelity of whose existence seems to fluctuate as the story unfolds.
As is increasingly the case with Square Enix titles, the story is as much posturing, pseudo-deep nonsense as it is legitimate narrative and rather ties itself in knots. The sub-standard group of support characters irritate, either through caricatured voicing or with their need to spout hollow clichéd proclamations (‘trust can sometimes be a dangerous thing!’). Nevertheless, Aya is still as cool as she ever was (if a little more subdued); like Japan’s own sophisticated, less chest-heavy variant on Lara Croft, and it’s through her that the player experiences some really good levels.
It has its limits, but the shooting still packs a punch, and is neatly configured to the framework of the PSP’s controls. To compensate for the majority of the firearms adopting an auto-aim function, battles encourage the player to make full use of their surroundings; keeping on the move, finding cover and positioning teammates in such a way as to give your squad a tactical advantage. Holding down the aim button (L) brings up a ‘crossfire’ bar which can be used to focus your team’s firepower in one concentrated burst. Critical hits allow Aya to break foes defences and ‘dive’ at them to cause excess damage, whilst her ‘Liberation’ ability grants a short period of extreme speed and power, and is a life-saver against bosses.
The battlefields are impressively sizable, and it pays to search for a host in an ideal spot. Sometimes it’s a place of relative safety where you can make use the slow but powerful sniper rifles, or there may be a soldier with a massively powerful weapon, such as the magnificent Satellite Cannon which sends an apocalyptic burst of energy down from the heavens, frying anything unlucky enough to be in its path. Nothing’s been left on the table action-wise; some really cool bits even allow Aya to dive into tanks with armed turrets or helicopters with missiles, especially useful for taking out one gargantuan airborne boss.
It has its limits, but the shooting still packs a punch, and is neatly configured to the framework of the PSP’s controls. To compensate for the majority of the firearms adopting an auto-aim function, battles encourage the player to make full use of their surroundings; keeping on the move, finding cover and positioning teammates in such a way as to give your squad a tactical advantage. Holding down the aim button (L) brings up a ‘crossfire’ bar which can be used to focus your team’s firepower in one concentrated burst. Critical hits allow Aya to break foes defences and ‘dive’ at them to cause excess damage, whilst her ‘Liberation’ ability grants a short period of extreme speed and power, and is a life-saver against bosses.
The battlefields are impressively sizable, and it pays to search for a host in an ideal spot. Sometimes it’s a place of relative safety where you can make use the slow but powerful sniper rifles, or there may be a soldier with a massively powerful weapon, such as the magnificent Satellite Cannon which sends an apocalyptic burst of energy down from the heavens, frying anything unlucky enough to be in its path. Nothing’s been left on the table action-wise; some really cool bits even allow Aya to dive into tanks with armed turrets or helicopters with missiles, especially useful for taking out one gargantuan airborne boss.
The range of weapons is extensive, as are the range tune-ups you can perform on each. Impressively, upgrades are tailor-made to specific preferences and situations, so you opt for either a bigger clip or a greater total number of bullets; bullets with greater power or better critical-hit rates; more penetration at range, or a sturdier aim and so on. These are supplemented by a range of DNA-strands attained from foes, which can be placed on a 3-by-3 board, combined with other strands to attain greater potency, and grant a whole range of abilities, it’s got a lot of depth and can make the difference in battle if you can find some good combinations.
Annoyances take some of the sheen off the gameplay. Aya has a bothersome habit of remaining standing whilst reloading a gun that you’ve been firing from cover, leading to unnecessary damage, and some foes are rather too liberal with their use of instant-kill moves. All difficulty settings above ‘Easy’ (there are several) provide good, tough action but are often undone by some teeth-grindingly difficulty boss battles. The majority of the foes are a fair match-up, but the Reaper’s are needlessly cheap, and an unnecessary hassle given the frequency with which you’re told to escape these formidable creatures near the beginning. One must be killed late on with a laser weapon that very few soldiers possess and if one is killed, you have to wait for reinforcements for another. In the meantime, said Reaper is happily plucking soldiers from the ground and not only instant-killing them, but replenishing health at the same time. This is one instance that exposes the cumbersome nature of the manual-aim special weapons; frequently being chased by a super-fast enemy usually means the camera is facing in the opposite direction to the way you want to shoot, and trying to swing the camera around with the D-Pad whilst on the run with the analogue is an agonising process. The sharp difficulty also leads to a disparity in the usefulness of any weapons carried. Heavy reliance is placed on the two custom weapons you choose to take into battle simply because of their upgrade capabilities. The default weapons specific to each soldier are, in later levels or indeed on stronger difficulty levels, rendered all but useless.
Annoyances take some of the sheen off the gameplay. Aya has a bothersome habit of remaining standing whilst reloading a gun that you’ve been firing from cover, leading to unnecessary damage, and some foes are rather too liberal with their use of instant-kill moves. All difficulty settings above ‘Easy’ (there are several) provide good, tough action but are often undone by some teeth-grindingly difficulty boss battles. The majority of the foes are a fair match-up, but the Reaper’s are needlessly cheap, and an unnecessary hassle given the frequency with which you’re told to escape these formidable creatures near the beginning. One must be killed late on with a laser weapon that very few soldiers possess and if one is killed, you have to wait for reinforcements for another. In the meantime, said Reaper is happily plucking soldiers from the ground and not only instant-killing them, but replenishing health at the same time. This is one instance that exposes the cumbersome nature of the manual-aim special weapons; frequently being chased by a super-fast enemy usually means the camera is facing in the opposite direction to the way you want to shoot, and trying to swing the camera around with the D-Pad whilst on the run with the analogue is an agonising process. The sharp difficulty also leads to a disparity in the usefulness of any weapons carried. Heavy reliance is placed on the two custom weapons you choose to take into battle simply because of their upgrade capabilities. The default weapons specific to each soldier are, in later levels or indeed on stronger difficulty levels, rendered all but useless.
Parasite Eve had a penchant for memorable, show-stopping full-motion video sequences; the mass-combustion of a theatre audience in the original for instance, and who could forget the freakish creature bursting its way out of a diner’s face in part two… Ahem. Happily, The 3rd Birthday follows in this fine tradition, and from the moment you see Manhattan being torn up and the Twisted smashing through a nightclub, you know it’s going to be a visual extravaganza.
Even if the character models seem a little rough around the edges, there’s no denying that the look of the environments, and indeed the fluidity of the often-breathless action, is superb. From the eerily quiet, Christmas snow-fall of the Manhattan prologue, to the bright lights and disco-décor of Club Sacrifice and the dingy subways that follow thereafter, there’s an attention to detail and depth to each location that shows a real mastery of the hardware. One particularly clever
touch involves Aya’s outfits; you know there’s been a tough battle from the shredded look of her clothes, an indication of compromised armour. Enemies are varied and challenging, there’s a generous helping of mostly-impressive looking bosses and due to the positioning of your teammates, there are many ways of going about each encounter. The music is occasionally guilty of anonymity during the longer fire-fights but the title theme in particular is a chillingly impressive composition and the tunes generally make up for some inoffensive though rather morose voicing.
Even if the character models seem a little rough around the edges, there’s no denying that the look of the environments, and indeed the fluidity of the often-breathless action, is superb. From the eerily quiet, Christmas snow-fall of the Manhattan prologue, to the bright lights and disco-décor of Club Sacrifice and the dingy subways that follow thereafter, there’s an attention to detail and depth to each location that shows a real mastery of the hardware. One particularly clever
touch involves Aya’s outfits; you know there’s been a tough battle from the shredded look of her clothes, an indication of compromised armour. Enemies are varied and challenging, there’s a generous helping of mostly-impressive looking bosses and due to the positioning of your teammates, there are many ways of going about each encounter. The music is occasionally guilty of anonymity during the longer fire-fights but the title theme in particular is a chillingly impressive composition and the tunes generally make up for some inoffensive though rather morose voicing.
There’s no denying the endeavour on show in T3B, but whilst fans dreaming of a new Parasite Eve may bemoan the lack of puzzles or atmosphere, its biggest shortcoming is that there isn’t enough of it. Whilst it took me around 13 hours to finish the game, it should be noted that the majority of that was spent replaying earlier levels in order to gain more points for upgrades. The six missions typically last around 45 minutes first time through, except for the finale which can be polished off in ten, so you’re looking at no more than 4-5 hours of unique playing experience. There is some value for the hardcore fraternity, who will note the healthy hoard of extra goodies and difficulty levels as incentive enough to battle on past the credits.
As a potential test-pilot for a console outing, The 3rd Birthday’s ‘dive’ ability undoubtedly shows potential, adding an unexpectedly smart tactical flavour to the shooting. With the addition of online functions and more favourable shoot ‘em up controls, the idea might be worth revisiting one day. However, it’s tough to fully recommend due to a lacklustre storyline, poor characters and fleeting lifespan. Square Enix have on their hands a solid shooting engine, but even with all of the bells and whistles, it will likely leave fans of Aya Brea’s earlier adventures yearning for a return to her quirkier endeavours of the past.
As a potential test-pilot for a console outing, The 3rd Birthday’s ‘dive’ ability undoubtedly shows potential, adding an unexpectedly smart tactical flavour to the shooting. With the addition of online functions and more favourable shoot ‘em up controls, the idea might be worth revisiting one day. However, it’s tough to fully recommend due to a lacklustre storyline, poor characters and fleeting lifespan. Square Enix have on their hands a solid shooting engine, but even with all of the bells and whistles, it will likely leave fans of Aya Brea’s earlier adventures yearning for a return to her quirkier endeavours of the past.
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