Version needed: 1.50
Players: 1-4
Wi-Fi Compatible: Ad Hoc
Coded Arms is the first first-person shooter for the PSP, and of course, anticipation was running high for this game because of everyone’s curiosity as to how it would be played. The lack of a second analog stick has been a worrying issue for this genre in particular, but Konami seems to have figured out how to get past this without entirely disrupting the other control functions.
With Coded Arms, the buttons on the right-hand side of the screen replace the functions of an analog stick, while the directional buttons are now used to perform the other actions, such as reloading a weapon and zooming in on a target. This layout takes some time to get used to, and so it helps that the first level is a sort of training level because it gives you plenty of time to practice before moving onto the task at hand. Although, saying that, there is very little to the storyline for this game. Your character, an anonymous hacker, has to “jack-in” to a program in order to hack it. This is done by taking out all the enemies in the levels in order to move onto the next sector. In some respects, the game sounds like it could be related to The Matrix: with gifted hackers known as “the ‘coded’ ones” hardly convincing us otherwise.
You are armed with only a pistol to begin with, but you’ll pick up many different weapons along the way, including rifles, snipers, flamethrowers and grenades. These ‘plug-ins’ can be updated, so the higher the version it is, the more powerful your weapon will be. However the process of upgrading seems quite slow. You need to collect the orange keys (which don’t look anything like ordinary keys) so, like the PSP itself, your weapon becomes version 1.5 for example. Once you’ve collected the required amount it will properly upgrade, but you’ll need to do this with all the weapons in your inventory if you want to become stronger. Your armour can be upgraded too but the process is slightly different, and more straightforward. By defeating certain gatekeepers: the soldiers holding the key to the next level or to the exit, you will be rewarded with an upgrade for your armour.
The game is visually impressive from the start. The opening movie certainly grabs your attention with its action-packed sequences; and the techno soundtrack matches its futuristic style visuals. However, the levels seem to be made up of either corridors or box-shaped rooms and lifts to give it some variety. And although these ‘programs’ have different settings – from ruins overgrown with plants and inhabited by creatures and insects, to deserted Japanese cities that can be almost eerily silent until you run into a few soldiers – it is difficult to get past the fact that the levels really are all the same. The enemy types don’t really help to mix things up either. There are soldiers that have weapons similar to yours; flying machines that fire bullets or use lasers, and creatures that try to poison you or jump on you and explode after contact for a couple of seconds. These all appear frequently throughout the game, and it’s not until you get further into the game that the enemy types really start to change.
For the first PSP FPS, Coded Arms is quite good. The controls could’ve been a major issue, but Konami have almost completely managed to avoid this problem; the accuracy of the buttons when aiming could’ve done with a bit more fine-tuning. There’s a nice range of weapons, with plenty of opportunity to upgrade them, and countless levels to use them in, but the levels themselves hinder the game’s originality and creativity; and the lack of a storyline during gameplay, which normally would make the game feel more rewarding once completing a particularly tough sector, will instead leave you wondering if there was a point to all this.
Action-packed though it may be, Coded Arms had the potential to be one of the top choices for PSP games. Unfortunately the lack of variety lets it down, leaving it as only half the game it should’ve been.
Overall: 72%
Posted on 20/06/06 by Steph
Linear Mode
