Second Sight

Ferrago 'sight' this title for a 'second' time...

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Anyone doing a psychological evaluation of the minds of game developers would probably come to the conclusion that they suffer from a serious crisis of identity. What else would you think when approximately 78% of all game plots involve amnesia, with a whopping 93% of those games beginning with the central protagonist waking up in some mysterious location with a splitting headache and not the slightest clue as to who they are. This device is so common in games that we really need to come up with a new variant on the word cliché so as to recognise it's near ubiquitous use. I propose gamché.

Waking up strapped to a medical gurney our hero uses a mysterious power to unlock his shackles and set himself free. What follows are 17 levels of exposition and action as the hero, Dr. John Vattic, attempts to figure out what has happened to him and why he is slowly gaining an array of psychic abilities. It soon transpires that he was a civilian attached to an elite military unit, WinterICE, which was despatched to the wastes of Siberia to apprehend a crazed scientist who was experimenting on psychically gifted children. Through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards the tale unfolds. Much of the story is revealed in the many cutscenes yet as both the graphics and the direction of these elements are first rate I rarely got impatient for things to get moving again.

The dual narrative device works superbly with the story being well crafted enough to keep all the pieces of the puzzle in view while ensuring the final revelation only comes about at the very end. And while I had my suspicions, despite its clichéd beginning Second Sight delivers an engaging and adequately inventive plot, a story which was strong enough to ensure I wanted to discover its conclusion. If you ever forget what's going on in the story there's a helpful online database of characters, powers and mission goals, past and present. Interaction with the computers dotted about also wields up new information for your PDA and if you manage to find the two arcade cabinets located in the game you can play their simplistic shooters from this info screen as well. Still, there is an over reliance on NPCs giving you stolen keys to high security areas and other contrived devices which left me feeling that the developers weren't trying as hard as they could have been.

Something which cannot be said for the art team. The lush, stylised graphics infuse the game with tons of charm and the care paid to personalise each of the characters creates a strong sense of identity and hence concern as to their respective fates. The animation is also pretty good, although Vattic skitters down stairs like a man on an embarrassingly desperate search for a commode. The physics are unfortunately a bit weak, with every object having the same weight and feel. As the physics features quite heavily in many of the puzzles it's a shame that it's not more convincing. Certain other game elements also conspired to make me push away my keyboard in frustration.

Action adventure games have always been plagued by camera problems. Some, such as Splinter Cell, have managed to minimise the points of conflict between what the player wants to see and do and what the camera will allow. Second Sight needs a good bit more work to bring its camera above the just passable mark it currently deserves. There's a completely useless option to move to a fixed camera which if it worked would help alleviate some of the many issues concerning the normal view. The camera rotates well enough with the mouse but it has an annoying compulsion to slowly float back to a view directly behind Vattic. When working close to walls it also has a tendency to attach itself to a random point and in tight circumstances there's a 50/50 chance you won't be able see a damn thing except the top of Vattic's head. I got very irate with the camera on numerous occasions finding it to be the weakest technical element of the whole game by a long way. Aiming itself is also somewhat hit and miss, with the console origins of the game betrayed by the cumbersome and imprecise method for selecting targets.

The weakest element of the entire game and by an appreciable distance is the behaviour of your enemies. AI is limp, with the bad guys all suffering from terrible myopia. So while it can be handy to grab one guard from behind and drag him away to be knocked out, it is disappointing to be able to do this when his comrade is stood less then twenty or so feet away. The cone of vision for the enemy also seems to be around 20 degrees wide which makes it rather easy to sneak past guards in some of the levels. Combat AI is nothing special either. Vattic can attach himself to walls, creep along them and pop out of cover to take a shot. In fact the chap is rather acrobatic; he can even hang off of ledges and creep his way along them. The enemy, on the other hand, will use cover if it has been placed there by the level designers for that very purpose, otherwise their combat training seems to have consisted of nothing other then chase-guy-and-shoot-till-one-of-you-dies.

So the AI isn't going to win any awards, but it's functionally passable and provided enough of a challenge to make firefights entertaining and to add tension to some of the stealth levels. Second Sight's biggest crime, one which is inexcusable in any form and utterly reprehensible when it is so out of control as it is here, is respawning enemies. Now plenty of the levels are sensible, allowing the player to methodically work their way through the guards towards their objective. But others, probably just under half, are beyond a joke. I have had enemies spawn behind me in a store room with a single entrance while I was standing in it. They will spawn anywhere the player's vision isn't focused, and they will continue to do so until the player dies or somehow manages to get away and hide for a while. It breaks any sense of immersion and when it's not making the game stupidly difficult it just plain gets on your tits. No other way of putting it.

So I'm almost at the end of my review and I have barely touched on the psychic powers that make this game stand out from the rest of the third-person adventure crowd. Maybe that is because they are mostly underwhelming. Telekinesis is fun for dispatching enemies and is useful for completing the thoroughly prescribed puzzles. Charm allows you to walk past guards unnoticed and heal allows you to... the most interesting power is projection, which allows Vattic to venture forth in ghostly form, flicking otherwise inaccessible switches or even possessing enemies and getting them to flick the switch before vaulting over a gangway to their doom. The powers do make for some unusual gameplay mechanics as well as some genuinely entertaining moments. But the developers have one power in mind for almost all of the puzzles, leaving it up to the player to figure out which one is needed to progress past a certain point. So while Second Sight is frequently different from other examples of the genre I never felt that the developers had truly exploited the possibilities that these supernatural powers could offer.

The camera, AI and dreadful respawning conspire to cause great damage to an otherwise enjoyable yarn. Second Sight has an interesting story to tell and tells it very well. The graphics are universally of a very high artistic calibre and the voice acting is joined by some minimalist music to make for a positive aural experience. I think Second Sight's biggest problem is that of style over substance. It looks fantastic, has some great atmospheric music and a well developed and superbly told story. So it's sad to see such promising ingredients spoiled by a chef that is still too inexperienced (certainly on the PC) to do them justice. For all its technical flaws and poor gameplay decisions the style of the game is just strong enough to overcome its substance problems, making Second Sight a short but enjoyable bit of fun.

68%

By Sam Gibson