PlayStation Basement #47 - Psychic Force

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 16^th, 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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