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Review: Psychic Force (alternate) |
Hoping to make a good transition into the Sony Playstation, Taito pushes the innovative envelop by introducing a fighting game in the air. The idea of fighting in the air is unique and welcomed in my eyes; the game however does have many flaws that brings the game down from the elite category.
There are 8 fighters with very keen japanimation design; this will appeal to japanimation fans including myself (specially video game related japanimation!). Each character has control of one of the 8 ability or magical powers including: water, air, gravity and so forth which should be familiar to RPG fans.
The action takes place in mid air ONLY. There is no such thing as a floor or ground for that matter in Psychic Force. The japanimation design is a feast for the eyes but the rather grainy graphics hurt this game in one too many ways — specially when the characters are very far away from each other and they look very tiny. The gameplay itself is not really 3 dimensional as you are only allowed to move left and right or up and down as other 2D fighter games.
Once you get into the game you will notice that most of the action will be done in a fireball war style. Since most of the moves for each character are in fact fireball type moves and the characters will usually be very far away, the fireball wars will not be an option but a necessity. There is something wrong with this type of gameplay but my guess is that it was what Taito intended. What further helps support this hypothesis are one of the greatest looking fireball attacks to ever grace the fighting game community. Once you are able to get close to your opponent the action is basically like any other 3D fighting game out there, kick and punch to arrive to your combos. There is really not too much depth here which is really the reason why this game did not leap to elite status.
The music is very fast paced and add great to the mood of the game; there is a really good anime feeling in the music as well! The sounds are nothing to get all excited about but get the job done. The fireball moves however have some great zoooom and shhhhhhhsz sound effects (what do you know eh?) to add to the action.
If it was not for these flaws Psychic Force would have been much better than it is now. If Taito does make a sequel to this game they will hopefully fix the problems now present and add a bit more ingenuity, it is then they will have a killer game on their hands. Psychic Forces trashes its anime counterpart, Tobal #1 though… specially in the graphics department.
- HardCore
