Coded Arms (PSP) Review

It's inevitable that every platform gets at least one first person shooter. For the PSP, its first is Coded Arms, and things have really started off on the wrong foot. Coded Arms is a boring, monotonous and derivative first person shooter wrapped in a glossy package; it looks great and sounds good, but we all know that looks aren't everything, and after getting into this one for a bit the bells and whistles lose their charm real fast. After giving the Coded Arms single-player campaign a go (read: this is a review of the singleplayer only!), it becomes apparent that this title has nothing but polish as far as aesthetics go, but when it comes to holding its own in the playability department it fails miserably.

As is the norm with most first person shooters, Coded Arms has an excusably trivial plot. Dipping into so many cliché elements of cyberpunk, Coded Arms has players cast as a hacker fighting malicious programs and viruses in a world that resembles...a first person shooter? Indeed! In the future, there are realms of cyberspace (residual from top secret military projects, of course) that have been infested to the brim with nasty little AI applications, and it has become a competition of sorts for hackers to jack themselves in and take their chances in getting as far as they can so they can brag to their hacker friends about how l337 they are.

So, first things first. Coded Arms is a first person shooter, so one of the most important things to address are the controls. Fortunately, the game offers several different configurations and modes, most of which are easy enough to get used to. After giving it some playtime and getting a taste of the various options, the most effective seemed to be a set up that used the analog stick to free look and the four right buttons to control movement. Reloading, changing weapons and zooming in are all done with the digital pad.

Effective controls in Coded Arms are relative, though. While players will get the hang of the input eventually, in the end they aren't as precise and efficiently designed as one would hope you'd find in a first person shooter. While the game features an auto-aiming setup that can be turned on or off, in the end it never feels like you're really able to gain the satisfaction of being able to hone in and pinpoint your targets on the fly; there is a lot of random spraying in this game. In all fairness, the control setups in Coded Arms feel more flawed as a result of the PSP's general design rather than a fault of the develops; the buttons on the right side of the unit are just too far apart to really be able to switch to and fro as fast as one would need to pull of the split second movement and dodging maneuvers necessary to develop any type of mad skillz.

Coded Arms is broken up into several tiers of levels set amount three different environments: Base, City and Ruins. Levels in Coded Arms are randomly generated and never the same thing twice, and unfortunately this is more of a curse than it is a blessing. It is apparently obvious that the levels are completely thrown together in a thoughtless and random manner; progressing through them becomes a tedious pattern of entering an area, killing everything, collecting all the powerups and moving.ll. Sounds like most other first person shooters, yes, but in Coded Arms the rooms are little more than plain boxes filled with enemies and environmental objects so void of personality or detail that sometimes the biggest challenge of the game is simply staying awake.

The enemies that populate the levels come across as dull in the A.I. department. While not completely brain-dead, their general behavior is no more than repeating the same patterns over and over again. They pose a challenge more so from the fact that they move around so quickly, and given the game's generally imprecise aiming controls its makes things hard to always keep a bead on them. They vary in degrees of strategy on the most base of level; some move quicker than others, some have shields that deflect gunfire, others throw grenades down from higher ground. In the end, their makeup and behavior isn't anything that hasn't been seen in a first person shooter before, and fighting them over and over again definitely builds the games overall tedium.

As you progress through the game, enemies drop weapons and upgrades that when added to your inventory allow you to pick and choose what to equip yourself with. Players can carry a maximum of five weapons at a time, ranging everywhere from shotguns, assault rifles, grenades and laser pistols. Additionally, the offensive power weapons you already have can be improved, and there are several tiers of armor upgrades the further you progress into the game. As far as weapons and pick-ups go, there really is quite a bit to gather, and being able to swap and customize your arsenal at any time makes things mildly interesting. It's just unfortunate that the levels and enemies that you use your equipment in are so sorely lacking.

The sound and graphics department is really the only games saving grace. The models and textures are incredibly well done, and look amazing on the PSP's sexy screen. The overall style and art direction of the game aren't anything revolutionary or groundbreaking, but it is fun to look at. Sounds are crisp and carry quite a bit of meatiness to them. It's incredibly gratifying to use the shotgun simply for the sound effects alone. Music in the game is situation-based, but unfortunately the same techno-trance mish-mash comes on for practically every encounter, so after the first few firefights it could really start getting on your nerves. In the end, though, graphics and sound are only a trivial part of this title and really don't make up for what this game lacks in the game play department.

Coded Arms seems to perpetuate a trend that has been sadly been the norm as far as PSP titles go. It's safe to say that the platform is one that really is nothing like handheld gamers have ever seen before, and often times it feels like developers are simply taking advantage of the "wow" factor that so many people are hung up on (reviewer admittedly included). Rather than trying something new and innovative within the capabilities of the platform, Coded Arms gives gamers the same thing they've gotten so much of already: a straight port that simply banks on the fact that it looks impressive and has never been done on a mobile platform.