Psychic Detective (PS1 game)

Psychic Detective is a game for Playstation 1. Here's my copy, it's PAL, 18 rated and 3 disks long.

I've been meaning to write something up about it for a while but have been putting it off... I never got a "good" ending to the story, though I kind of worked out how to get one (find out the secret of the old woman, save her, use her in the end game...)

It's an interactive movie. As in, actual film footage. The picture quality is not great but it's a lot better than most; it's about what you expect from PS1 era technology. The main character is a psychic, he gets roped into being a detective. His power is that he can get into the mind of people he can see. This means that you can switch the game flow to the viewpoint of other characters, and view their interactions, if they leave the room you can switch to other characters, etc etc etc. You also have a small amount of influence, so you can try and save people or find out things, or whatever.

In terms of technical achievement... well, it must have taken ages to film and re-film scenes from different viewpoints, and the transition is quite believeable. You would not think that the same scene had been re-filmed from another angle when playing.

In terms of story and gameplay... the first time I played through the story I got to the end and was "wha???". It made no sense. Well, it made a bit of sense but not really. It doesn't take too long to play through the game again, so I played it through a few times, took different routes, found out some more and then I knew what is going on in the story.

I still have some gripes:

* The story, when unravelled, is still not that amazing.
* It's really annoying to have to change disks on Playstation every 10 minutes.
* It's boring to watch the same scene lots of times just to choose a different path in the story.

So, I know what to do to get a good ending but I have run out of motivation to go and watch it again to get better endings.

A lot of story-based games these days (e.g. visual novels) have a "skip" option so you can quickly run through bits you've read before, and choose an alternate path in the story. It would be difficult to put that in this game though, because paths are taken in a more organic fashion - the film never stops to let you choose, you have to hop to the next person or perform an action when the chance arrives.

So one of the game's strong points also leads to its weak point. I could use a lot of save files, I suppose...

Chrono Cross (US) going cheap

Play-Asia have a sale on at the moment. 25% off everything in stock.

One of the best deals (in my opinion) is Chrono Cross for $24.90 US dollars. That's about £12.50 in UK money, a pretty good price for a game that never came out in this country. It's the sequel to Chrono Trigger which is a really good RPG, and Chrono Trigger is being ported to the Nintendo DS later this year. :D

Oh and hurry since there's only about a day left of the sale.

UK PS3 Launch

The Sony Playstation 3 was finally launched in the UK last Friday. I'd hardly have noticed...

News reports I noticed:

Freebies were given away at launch, in one shop in London (the huge Virgin Megastore on Oxford St) - that was a gift of a Sony 46" HD television to the first 100 customers. the cost of which totals £250000. Talk about selling consoles at a loss! It's silly. Now, if they'd put that money towards, say, lowering the price of the machine around the country, I'd be much more satisfied with that. But that's not going to happen; SCEE are all about price-fixing; that's why us Europeans are banned from importing our PS3s and PSPs from most online retailers around the world!

Microsoft also had a publicity stunt at the same event at the London opening; handing out chairs with a website address on it. The website goes to a bit of flash that says "Xbox welcomes PS3 to the next generation. Sony... you're late! Let the games begin". And that's it. A tad juvenile, and I'm sure it'll polarise the Sony fanboys against Microsoft a little more.

It's all silly, really.

PS3s were selling on ebay 3 days after launch at £100 *less* than in shops. The whole reselling-for-profit thing that happened in Japan and the US *sooooo* hasn't happened here!

Other links:

PS2/PS1 backwards compatibility list. There's a lot less compatibility in the European PS3 than in the Japanese/American versions of the console. Something to do with the PS2-emulation chips being in short supply, and relying on emulation instead. I'd like to see someone (unofficially?) take a PS3 and fully use its power as a proper PS2 emulator (and other consoles of that generation). It's a very powerful machine; it would be good to see it used for something useful...