PSP World

Coded Arms

We had high hopes for the first first-person shooter for the PSP — it was eagerly anticipated by mobile gamers everywhere, but Coded Arms doesn't exactly impress. The title has a decidingly sci-fi feel as it takes place in "an abandoned virtual reality system and its portal site inside a giant computer network" that later "turned into a vast and brutal VR world populated with virtual alien invaders, dangerous computer bugs and the VR system’s own security bots." You play as a computer hacker with up to 30 weapons blasting your way through it.

Despite this rather imaginative world, back here in the real world, the game's controls are pretty hard to get the hang of and it will take you a little more time getting used to than most first-person shooters. Gameplay seems somehow like old-school shooters compared to what you can play on consoles these days. One of the only impressive features of Coded Arms is its multiplayer options — Deathmatch, Keep the Mark, and Last Man Standing — which support up to 4 players over Ad hoc Wi-Fi.

Review Round-Up:

IGN: 7.0
"Konami did a great job making their first-person shooter look great. I can't stress this enough – I love this game's sense of style. On the gameplay side, there are over 30 weapons in this game, once you consider all the upgrades. Everything from assault rifles, sniper rifles, pulse weapons and rocket launchers show up and they're cool killing tools. It's just that the square level geometry gets monotonous. I didn't mind it so much in multiplayer, but it's bland in single player. I believe there is still a lot that can be done here if Konami makes a franchise out of Coded Arms. As the first FPS games on PSP, this is a good starting point.

Gamespot: 6.6
"The controls, while initially weird, can be adjusted to, and it's one of the better-looking games on the system from a technology standpoint. The problems are within the underlying design, which simply doesn't have a lot to offer beyond a bland, unappealing corridor crawl with similarly boring multiplayer. PSP owners may find a passable rental in Coded Arms, but that's about all. The first-person shooter genre may have a bright future on the PSP, but Coded Arms isn't it."

1UP: 5.0
"Random or not, there isn't much to Coded Arms. The gameplay is classic run-'n-gun style, creature designs are as uninspired as the environments they inhabit, and the unintuitive controls mean shooting often leads to frustration. Though FPS fans don't have much else to look forward to on the PSP for the near future, Coded Arms is merely serviceable to those who realize what they're getting into."

GameSpy: 5.0
"If you're a PSP owner that's been absolutely dying to play a first-person shooter on your shiny new system, Coded Arms is currently your best option, simply because it's also the only one. Still, it's hard to recommend the game, especially when there are other games out there that truly show off the power of the system. From the boring art design to the painfully weak enemy AI, just about every facet of the game screams mediocrity."

Aggregate Rating: 6.2