We don't get new game concepts very often. “Why think of a new story when there are tons of movie and sequel licenses just lying around?” seems to be what lots of people are thinking. When a new idea does surface, it often doesn't get further than the drawing board, and if it does get released, it never sells as good as it deserves. Why do developers still bother making really new games you ask? Well, perhaps some of them like working on their own ideas instead of recycling work of others. Free Radical thought it would be a good idea to breathe some new life into the gaming scene, so besides working on TimeSplitters 3 they started developing a new game, Second Sight. Can Free Radical pull it off to create a new game that's successful both creatively and financially? We'll have to wait a while to see how it does financially, but we've been able to sample a bit of the game so we can tell you how it plays.

 

The first thing you should know about Second Sight is that it's a third person action adventure with psychic powers and stealth gameplay. Don't run away yet, it's more refreshing than it might seem. You play John Vattic, a scientist who distrusts anyone that even mentions the word psychic or supernatural. You can imagine his surprise when he wakes up covered in scars and bandages in some sort of lab, only to realize he now has telekinetic powers. Vattic has also lost his memories, so how he got his powers and why he is locked up in a medical lab are big questions for both you and him. After walking around the lab and playing with your new powers for a bit you get a flashback to an event that happened a couple of months earlier; you and a team of soldiers head out to Russia to investigate a wanted scientist's secret research, he's researching (you guessed it) psychic abilities. The story is worked out very well, you play a disoriented Vattic with strange powers in one level and replay a flashback to an earlier event in the next one, the cool thing about this is that you learn what has happened along with Vattic.

All this psychic stuff and flashbacking controls very nicely. You switch camera points with Y, the standard one is a fixed position, which usually gives you a good view of the situation, the second one is controllable with the C-stick and the third one is a first person view. Controlling Vattic works the same both in the present and in the flashbacks, holding L you can lock onto a target (flip the C-stick to switch targets), you can then use either your psychic abilities or your weapons on it. The coolest thing about playing Second Sight is that you can pretty much choose how you want to play it for yourself. Do you like stealth? Then use your psychic abilities to distract guards and sneak past everyone unnoticed. Do you like shooting? Well, you can also run through the levels Rambo-style, using your powers to sling explosive barrels at the guards and generally cause destruction all around you. It both works and both ways are challenging to pull off successfully.

 

In the first levels the number of psychic powers we could use increased and the flashbacks kept on giving the story new angles. We can only imagine what we'll be able to do and what will happen in the rest of the game. The game looks very nice as well as it's got a good amount of TimeSplitters' slightly cartoony 3D style and some nice visual effects for the psychic powers. The character models look very nice, especially Vattic's models, and even the lip-syncing during the ingame cutscenes looks good. As you can see, we're quite enthusiastic about this game; it looks nice, plays good and has a very interesting story. Now let's hope the quality lasts and gamers worldwide will pick it up. Stay tuned here for more coverage.