PSP World

Coded Arms Contagion Review

What would you do if you had to jack into the net to fight cyber criminals? Would you risk your brain to save the world from cyber terrorism? Here is your chance soldier with Coded Arms Contagion for the Playstation Portable. This is the new sequel to the last game that came out in 2005. It is kind of hard to pull off a FPS (first person shooter) for the handheld but lately the developers have been doing a good job lately. So cadets get your Nortons anti-virus program ready and jack in for C.A.C.

You play as a lone security agent who has to stop a cybernetic crisis in a VR military program called "A.I.D.A". Not only do you have to stop them but you also have to make sure they don't use the program against you. So hack the planet has a whole new meaning in this game. I would like to say this is a big jump from the first game and Konami has done a good job of making the levels much bigger and enhanced. It doesn't have that repetitive feel as the first game does, nor is it as closed in. The narration and animation is beautiful especially for a handheld game.

You start off with a training simulation, which gives you a great feel of the game. You get COM messages from your commanding officer letting you know what you can do and how to do it, especially when it comes to your weapons. You begin with the pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle and than the grenade which are all great weapons to practice with. Button scheme is pretty simple. The analog stick is for moving forward and back, also strafe left or right. The shape buttons controls your view: Square and Circle turns you around, Triangle and X serves the purpose of looking up or down. Shoulder buttons are your fire and jump, while the D-pad deals with reloading, choosing your next weapon, locking on an enemy and toggling the scope. You can always change the scheme in options to fit your style.

Now let’s get down to the combat which is the fun part of the cyber world. I have to say that the combat is interesting, but the A.I is not too bright. They run right in front of you and stand there, yes I know what you might say "They are programs!" but a terrorist program should be able to be a better challenge. The tactics in the game of hacking doors and turret guns is cool, but can be a bothersome when you need to hack a turret gun that is a threat to you, but dealing with re-spawning enemies. Yes enemies re-spawn after you kill them which I call the reboot factor, but with that said you have to be quick with your hacks to move on to the next part of the level.

The upgrade element is the most fun I find in games. You get certain points during the game that can be put towards your equipment. For example, you can make your guns create more damage or reload much quicker. However you must choose the weapon you want upgraded the most unless you save your points, which is kind of hard to do. The weapons later on do get a new look, for example, to me it seems like an EMP gun or plasma gun.

Now this is interesting, the online multiplayer. This is double jacking in because your character is already jacked into the net and than you have to jack into the net and then you can play up to eight people including yourself on online shoot outs. You have your usual modes Death match, last man standing and Team death match. There is also an online statistic where you can see your stats in all the modes. So far no one has shown up for the online features so I can introduce to you how it works, but that will have to wait until people receive the upgrades they need for a challenge.

All and all, the games visuals are up to pare with PS2 cinematic graphics just a bit. The A.I could be a bit more challenging and I mean challenging not in the sense of respawning every five seconds. Just some evasive moves or hiding when attacked. The storyline is very interesting, but not that in-depth. You are in layman's terms, a super anti-virus program (hopefully better than Nortons), trying to stop the enemy from taking information from the military program. The controls are decent but there should be a quick 180 turn option. Still no one online to play against but give it time and people will show up, but without online headset support that really kills it. I would have to give Coded Arms Contagion 3 modem lights out of 5. Jack in and give this game a shot! Stay frosty gamers.