Forgotten Game Greats: "Second Sight" (2004) 

- by Ninja Ross, 8 January 2014

You wake up in a hospital with no memories. No idea who you are, no idea how you got there and now idea where THERE even is. And then you start throwing stuff around with your psychic power, sneaking around government labs and unravelling a plot involving evil scientists and psychic experiments. I know what you’re thinking (I HAVE PSYCHIC POWERS!): "But Ross, what game could be this cool?" Second Sight is this cool.

In "Second Sight", you follow amnesiac John Vattic as he wakes up in a government hospital. After overhearing orderlies discuss how he’s a murderer, he escapes in order to find out just what the heck is going on.

The only memories he has are brief flashbacks to a mission several months ago, where his role of advisor to a group of U.S Marines known as WinterICE became a bit more “hands on” in the search of an evil Russian scientist (they’re always Russian) whose experiments have caught the eye of the Pentagon.

The game is split up between the present and the past. In the present, you spend your time tracking down the old team and trying to find out what happened to you and why you have psychic powers. In the past, you’re playing out the memories as Vattic pieces everything together.

The gameplay styles are switched up between the past and the present, too. The past has more of a run and gun style, with a little stealth, where you’ll spend more time looking down the sights of a gun than anything else.

The shooting isn’t incredibly great, though; it feels a bit flat and never seems to have any real impact. You also don’t get any psychic powers in these sections, which isn’t too bad since it’s the story you’re playing for here. But the action works well enough that you shouldn’t get too frustrated at any point, and it’ll keep you entertained.

Creepin'

It’s during the present when this gamer really shines. It’s more stealth based, making you sneak around and use your psychic abilities to distract guards, possess them and turn invisible.

The psychic powers are a blast to use. You discover each one as the game progresses, just when you need them. You’ll get powers like Healing, Psi Blasts and Astral Projection. All of these are meant to be used defensively or, in, the case of the psi blast, as a last resort.

While the more action-orientated sections are fun enough, you’ll definitely want more of the stealthy psychic sections. There are some pretty great level designs here, too; most notably the asylum early on in the game, where you rescue one of the team members. It’s dark, a little spooky and full of great stealth sequences.

As I mentioned earlier, the story is a pretty big part of this game. It’s full of twists and turns, doing a better job of keeping you interested and engaged than most modern action films. It’s a bit predictable in places and there are a couple of clichés, mostly when it comes to the Russian enemies, but the faults are easily overlooked.

So, it has great gameplay, good level design and a fantastic story. Does it look good, too? Yes. Yes it does.

The game was developed by Free Radical Design (now known as Crytek UK), who developed the Timesplitter series. And boy, can you tell! The style is very similar to that of "Timesplitters", with some of the characters looking like they’ve been traced over. It’s an excellent style that helps hide the age of the game, making it look pretty darn stylish. Unfortunately, Free Radical went into administration a few years ago, before being bought by Crytek. Now they’re making things like Crysis and Homefront... Hey, a job’s a job.

The game is well worth getting. It’s not available digitally, as far as I can tell, but it’s available second hand. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand to Amazon or EBay you go!


Have you played Second Sight? Got any suggestions for the next instalment of Forgotten Game Greats? Let us know!

Tagged: video games, Forgotten Game Greats.

blog comments powered by Disqus

---

Follow @TrashMutant