This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on July 20th, 2019.
Hello, and
welcome to PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an
odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or
Neutral. Now, let’s go!
July 16th,
2019 is the day when the film Akira
was set to occur. I didn’t see any news about psychic mutant teenagers in
Japan, but here’s a themed game for this occasion. Today, we’re talking about Psychic Force, a very unusual fighting
game from Taito. The PlayStation version of this 1995 arcade game was published
by Taito in October of 1996 in Japan and by Acclaim in April 1997 for North
America and July 1997 for Europe. Similar to Akira, Psychic Force
features battling teenage psychics.
The cover
art shows some of these psychics: the main character Burn Griffiths and
antagonist Keith Evans. The cover art is almost the same in all regions, but
the original Japanese version has a different background than the others.
Comparing the two, the Japanese cover’s nighttime setting makes a lot more
sense with how everything is shaded. It’s odd to me that Acclaim changed the
skyline to a bright afternoon.
Psychic Force looks pretty good
graphically. The animated cutscenes have a classic style to them, and the
character designs are very distinctive. The characters animate decently, and
the special attacks look pretty cool. The game features characters flying in
the air above various areas from cities to mountains. Those backgrounds are
fairly static, despite what could have been done, but they still look nice overall.
I really like a lot of the colors used.
Psychic Force sounds great. The
soundtrack is full of awesome tracks, both brooding and epic orchestral numbers
and slashing rock tracks. The sound effects are pretty cool too, brash and
unapologetic. Everything is maybe a bit bright, but it works together overall.
One thing that really doesn’t work well is the poor voice acting. The
characters stumble through cheesy lines all day. Interestingly, Psychic Force also had an anime OVA like
many other fighting games from this era, and that film has the same trouble
with dialogue. I could only find the Japanese version, so this wasn’t even a
poor localization as the video game seems to suffer from; it was just bad from
the beginning with characters yelling names loudly, trying for that “Tetsuo!”
of Akira. Anyway, let’s move on.
As
mentioned, Psychic Force features
flying characters fighting in the air. Like the previously reviewed Evil Zone, Psychic Force has some odd controls. In this game, there are only a
few buttons – light attack, heavy attack, and guard. Characters have a few
combos and special moves. Very unusually, the special moves can be input in any
direction as long as the motion is input. For example, if you had to input a
180 motion from left to right, it could also be input from up to down. Since
most special moves are long-range attacks, this enables you to aim your attacks
to hit the opponent as they fly around the enclosed area. Getting hit can
really leave you open to more attacks if you hit a wall behind you, leaving you
open to more attacks from the opponent as they close in. Thankfully, you can
also erect some barriers at a significant cost to your Psycho Gauge, a
constantly refilling meter of energy. It’s a well-made system that can be
confusing at first but isn’t too hard to pick up once you understand the
basics.
Psychic Force includes a few different
modes – story, arcade, training, and versus. The characters run the gamut of
anime and fighting game tropes. The unique gameplay really makes this one stand
out, and it’s really fun because of this. The game spawned a sequel, Psychic Force 2012, another future world
that’s now in the past.
Psychic Force receives a Good.
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