3rd Birthday Review
So I finally got this game a month I think after it was released and been wanting to get my hands on it for a while. This is practically the first game I have ever played on my PSP in 3 or 4 years. My PSP has been collecting dust for that long, I suppose cause all the games I wanted to get to play on it I couldn’t have gotten due to taking cause of my daughter for those past few years. That and the games I wanted to play weren’t very, child friendly so haven’t much time to play those type of games besides World of Warcraft. With that said I have finally purchased the game and started to play it once I had finished updating my PSP firmware and such. I do have to say it was what I thought it to be like. Almost like Dirge of Cerebeus in the controls and system but different. Considering that I remember very little of Dirge (I probably should pop that into the PS2 and play it again and finish it) when I started to play the game it seem familiar to it.
What The 3rd Birthday is: It is the third installment of the Parasite Eve series. It is a survival shooter game with some aspect of RPG in it. You kill monsters and gain experience to level up. It isn’t a first person shooter type but and over the shoulder shooter type. It’s not like the old Parasite Eve where it’s turned based and you choose through the menu to pick a command to do. Not at all anything like that. If they redid Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve 2 and had this system implemented into the game I would play it over and over again. Although I a playing the old Parasite Eve series on the emulators. Also have to mention that when Aya takes enough damage from the monsters, some of her clothes get’s ripped up and it’s almost soft core nakedness there.
The game play of the 3rd Birthday is very easy to get use to, however not to sure if it’s good for the PSP handling. When I started to play it the first three days my left index finger had this pain kind of like when you wake up the next day and your muscles are sore from a heavy work out you did. I could have changed the button configuration but I just didn’t feel like it and I am a glutton for pain so I decided to keep going with it. The trigger button which is R seems like the normal shooter button, while the L is your aim button. The aim button is the reason why my left index finger can bend into a perfect 90 degree angle now. >.> Of course I’ve played through the game about 3 times now and on my 4th around playing the game on Insane mode.
When you start the game for the first time you get to choose, Easy, or Normal mode. You have to finish Normal to unlock Deadly, and you have to finish Deadly to unlock insane. Which is all good and dandy, the game is really about 10 hours long, depending on what mode you’re playing in. 2-4 hours long if you’re just doing it on easy mode. The story line does move fast although I was almost unhappy when I found out that I was about to finish the game in less than 20 hours, but I suppose the different levels of difficulty would make up for that as well as the extra secrets you can unlock.
The graphics though are good, not as great as the cinematic graphics, but it suits the game. Although I think my biggest complaint is that some character designs are just very recycled and lately every main character designs looks the same as a character from another game. Which is what I’m probably going to blog about next (Recycled SquareEnix Game Characters!!!)
Storyline is a bit confusing on my first play around, and I was perplexed by some of the events. When I finished the game I was wondering, what happened and who is who, so while going on my second play through of the game it slowly made more sense.
I’m just going to say I like this game overall, but don’t take my word for it because I am a fan of the Parasite Eve series.
Originally published at Song of the Phoenix. Please leave any comments there.