Portable Gaming Revolution

You take on the role of a computer hacker, who is breaking into an abandoned virtual reality system. This abandoned system was originally designed by the government to train its soldiers, but a serious bug that could not be fixed forced the termination of the project and the VR world. The simulator’s AI didn’t let this happen, and has been running on its own ever since. Knowing about the system, and seeing the AI code it contains as valuable, you take on the task to enter the system, defeat the enemy bots, and harvest the code for yourself. With 30 weapons to collect and upgrade, you have your work cut out for you.

Coded Arms, developed and produced by Konami, is the first real first person shooter on the PSP. FPS games on handheld systems have always been interesting to see because of the lack of processing power on the earlier systems. When Sony released their super powered PSP all of the FPS lovers out there let out a squeal of pleasure, quickly followed by a sigh of defeat when it was announced that there was only 1 analog stick on the PSP. Although tricky to get the hang of initially, you’ll find that you can quickly become accustomed to the lack of a second stick. Thinking ahead to the potential control problems that its users may run into, Konami included 4 default control schemes with the option to remap any of the control buttons yourself. This basically takes away any complaints one would have with the controls, and is a move I would love more developers to take. I quickly settled on Type A which used the analog nub to move and the buttons for looking and aiming, although I’m sure many will chose to use the left analog stick for aiming as that will provide you more accurate control while sniping.

Knowing the limitations inherent with the lack of a second analog stick, an auto aim targeting system was included. I would have to say that this system was well done. When your targeting cursor is in the general area of an enemy a targeting reticule will turn red and pop over the enemy. After about a second or so that enemy will be targeted, and your shots will be quite accurate. You can adjust how stiff this auto aim system is in the menus, so finding the proper amount of auto aiming for your play style is fairly easy. Of course this can be turned off at anytime as well, but doing so will make this game nearly impossible to play, especially in later levels where the enemies come in greater numbers.

Graphically, this game is amazing. The textures are bright and detailed. The lighting was well done as well with specular highlights on different surfaces, as well as a Matrix styled code texture that pops up as things are destroyed or on walls when you miss your shot. This adds to the illusion that you are fighting in a VR based system, not some random warehouse. I really liked the style that they were going with here, as even the menuing system had that same cyberpunk miscellaneous operating system feel to it.

There are 3 distinct styles of levels which aim to keep the game fresh. You’ll battle through the ancient Ruins, an underground city and a high security base. All of the level types are completely different from one another, with varied textures, objects and enemies. They are further separated from one another when you take into account that all the levels are randomly generated, even if you die and restart the level you’ll find that it is different. Each level type uses different sized and shaped level building blocks, to make their levels feel different then the others. While this is nice for multiplayer, I actually found the randomly generated levels too similar in the regular game to even warrant the inclusion of this feature. There were even times that I found myself backtracking to a small room off the starting point to kill a gatekeeper, allowing my passage to later levels. This made the game feel more like an old school shooter then something that has been released in the last couple of years. I can understand the inclusion of a random level generator, as it helps to increase replayability, but seeing as all level pieces are basically different sized cubes or rectangles I feel that the time devoted to developing this system could of better been used to create some interestingly designed levels.

Sound-wise the game is nothing to write home about. There are 30 guns, and they all sound like they should which is nice. The game is really lacking a serious soundtrack though. All the levels contain a similar generic techno piece that loops throughout the levels. When there are enemies within range the music’s volume cranks up and gets a little more intense. It’s a neat effect and helps to warn you before you get swamped by enemies behind you. While the soundtrack is not hard on the ears per say, more could have been done to really make the soundtrack fit in and become part of the levels.

The one place where this game really shines is in its multiplayer game modes. Unfortunately only supporting Adhoc play, this game allows you and 3 of your friends to engage in some wifi deathmatches. Since the levels are randomly generated you do not have to spend time memorizing the levels, and can just quickly jump in and frag your friends. Konami added 3 multiplayer modes in the game. The first being the standard Deathmatch mode, a Last Man Standing mode which has you battling to be the last one alive, and a Keep the Mark mode. The one interesting point with Codedarms’ multiplayer is that you bring your collected arsenal into the game. Have the napalm gun? The RPG? Your favorite grenade? Use them! Of course in the game settings you can tweak or turn this ability off, but having your single player successes impact your multiplayer abilities is a neat twist to the standard deathmatch formula.

For a first attempt at a serious first person shooter, Konami’s Coded Arms was a great effort. I tried and tried to love it more then I do, but I just couldn’t get past the boxy levels that appear in this game. The graphical style and story ideas were quite engaging. I just wish Konami had taken this a bit further and really polished up the single player game by taking out the random level generator. It’s gimmicky and cool at first, but I quickly grew tired of it in the later levels.