PsychoToxic has ambition, needs more.

PsychoToxic- The Demo
By TrewCrime

With the recent release of the big three, Halo2, HalfLife2, and Doom3, there should be a big sign over the First Person Shooter market that says “abandon hope all ye who enter.”

That warning should be written in stone for small European developers like NuclearVision, which hope that a high concept will be enough to bite off a piece of the pie firmly held by Atari, Activison, UbiSoft, Id Software, and MicroSoft. Heck, the U.S. Army pumps enough money into America’s Army Operations to feed a small African nation, and gives the product away for propogan.... er, for free.

There’s always a chance, though, that an exceptional product will develop a cult so devoted as to make the Manson family look like members of teenybopper’s fan club. DreamCatcher pulled that off with Painkiller, and seems to have hit the mark again with the Battle out of Hell expansion. Including an editor as DreamCatcher did, essentially makes every map modder a marketer for your product, and competes in a place that the big boys fear to tread- letting the heathen unwashed mess around with code.

So what to does PsychoToxic bring to the table, aside from ambition?

Start with plot to spare: Angie Prophet, a Goth-looking young woman, must save New York of 2022 from nuclear annihilation. Said annihilation is foretold by the recent arrival of the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse whom Angie is predestined (Angie PROPHET, get it?) to corral. Mysticism haunts the plot, as it is the "satanic Reverend Aaron Crowley," who has stirred up the urban pot to make thing ready for the big day by using his power and influence and dark magic to ensure that Fourth Horseman has free rein to spew his unbridled destruction.
Add to this a dark futuristic environment. The demo contains two levels, one set in a parking garage, and the other in a huge, sprawling harbor stacked to the stars with shipping containers, cranes, and even huge ships passing by in the background.

Then there are weapons. You start with aknife and truncheon, stealth weapons there doesn’t seem to be much point in using, and a revolver. Angie only has five weapons slots, so it seems wasteful that two are for non-disposable on handtools. Before long pick up a silenced automatic pistol and duel machine pistols. In the harbor level you graduate to a silenced sniper rifle with an infrared scope, well needed in some darker spots, an M16 style assault rifle with a grenade launcher, and some kind of flaming Gatlin gun. The website promises 19 weapons in all, but they needed better dispersion.

Actually random is not a word that comes up in PsychoToxic much. Maybe I’m spoiled by playing online with human opponents, but having bad guys who are always in the same place seems last century to me.

In addition to her physical weapons, Angie finds tokens that provide limited "Angel Power." There's nothing in the demo to tell the user what powers the various tokens provide, and while some are obvious, like the one shaped like a shield which makes Angie invulnerable, others seem to require documentation so the player understands why she's growling like a wolf or whatever the effect may be. Having big glowing gold emblems for items with magic properties seems more Mario Brothers than a deep dark shooter, and it would have been nice to see these items appear more 'realistic.'

Mysticisim or magic or Angel weirdness is where the game claims to shine. According to interviews with the development team, Angie is supposed to be able to infest the minds of her enemies, to hear what they’re thinking and to use them against each other, among other tricks, and there psychological struggle of good v. evil is a major element of the game.

If it is, it’s certainly not obvious in the demo. What is obvious is that claims of a game universe where the user is able to go anywhere and manipulate any item are way overblown. There weren’t many items in the demo, just crates to push about, but aside from nice shading, these are unimpressive polygons and goodies weren’t even stored in them but scattered about on the floor. On the developers forums some people have complained of getting lost on levels, and with so much of the scenery repeated so often, it's easy to understand why. There are some ladders and scaffolding that you can you can climb or destroy, but after I climbed one in the Garage level, and got stuck in a bug which left me outside the level looking in at it but unable to get back, I stuck to destroying them.

The bug was particularly annoying because, as the game promises “dream levels” I thought maybe I’d found some alternate universe for Angie to do battle in and wandered aimlessly for some time. No such luck. A bug is a bug. There are some nice touches, billboards that fall into the ocean with a splash, signs that fall when you brush against them, but it all seemed more like “look what we can do,” because the little effects add nothing to the game play.

There’s supposed to be a dark sense of humor behind the game, but while the cow with udder guns is cute, as are the attacking pink bunnies, they’re just the eye candy, and not much of it. Basically there was less depth here than in a episode of Dark Angel, but, really, who would have watched that show if it weren’t for Jessica Alba? If you're going to do eye candy, do it right.

Putting out a decent demo is a tough call, you want to make the game stand out, but you don’t want to give away the farm. Even though Angie’s thong sticks out of her pants when she dies, there just wasn’t a whole lot here to keep me interested. What was there made me think the best of what PsychoToxic has to offer is in the minds of the development team, not in the game, which I beat in about five tries, despite being a lousy FPS player.

I played the game on an Athlon 64 3200+, with a Gigabyte Nvidia 3 mobo, and a gig of ram; an ATI Radeon 9800XT (256 MB), and an Audigy Z2 sound card and experienced no problems. People have reported lockups on various configurations, and it’s not clear whether sound or video issues were to blame.

NuclearVision needs to pull a lot more rabbits out of its hat to make this amateurish effort worth passing on better known titles, and a suggested release price of $29.95 isn’t enough to do it. Instead of disappointing paying customers they NuclearVision might seriously consider distributing this release to build streetcred for better things to come.

While there’s always hope that the scores of dead police and FBI agents will ignite indignation and furor in the press, or that Bible thumpers will launch a well publicized ban on the game for it’s homage to the forces of darkness, baring that there’s a snowballs chance in GamersHell that PsychoToxic will stick in anyone’s mind for long.

lol, the game has been out in germany for ages....and it was....less than alright.

not only that he dissed on America

Originally posted by KamisoriX@Mar 9 2005, 06:56 AM
lol, the game has been out in germany for ages....and it was....less than alright.

Less than alright is kind. It sucked, but I figured I should explain why.
I knew there was a German version, but since they're doing a big release here I thought I'd write about it. Mostly just working on my writing chops anyway.

Originally posted by mikeeegeee@Mar 9 2005, 07:29 AM
not only that he dissed on America

Who dissed America? Me?
All I (jokingly) said was that America's Army is propaganda for the US Army. That's not dissing America, the Army, or anyone else. Propaganda is not a four letter word.

you posted a nice review dude, really nice, don't look at kami, hes just an old moan.