Hello all,

Picked up Psychic Detective last week after reading a couple of reviews
and here's my spoof:

Psychic Detective is a FMV interactive game produced by Colossal Pictures and 
published by EA.  Colossal produces music videos, TV commercials, and are
the creators of MTV's "Liquid Television" and "Aeon Flux".  Psychic Detective
is there first original interactive movie, and as FMV games go is above
average in originality and gameplay.

You are Eric Fox, who likes to call himself "The Psychic Flash".  Eric
is a Psychic who can gather information from objects.  Eric meets Laina
Pozok who hires him to solve the murder of her father.  Laina shows 
Eric how to "jump" into other people minds and see through there eyes 
and ears.  Using these powers, Eric must find the murderer.

At least that's what I thought at the beginning.  It appears that the
actual goal is to beat Max Mirage at the game "Black Diamond".  Black
Diamond pits you against another opponent where "you take their fears,
traumas, nightmares, to destroy there psyche..."  You don't play Black
Diamond till the end of the game.  In the meantime, you must gather information
by selecting different paths to take and different minds to jump into.

Here's an example of gameplay:
(sort of spoiler, but early in the game)

You enter the house with Laina.  When you enter the room there are various
people milling about.  There faces will pop up on the screen and it's up
to you to select which person to jump into.  From there your perspective
changes to that persons and you see what they see and hear.  You can go
with them into another room where whole new choices pop up. Meanwhile
your body is still going through the scene (you can actually see yourself
go upstairs).  You can play out the same scene from different perspectives
and it's pretty cool to watch. 

By traveling different paths through people, you change the outcome of the 
story.  There are 14 different endings to the story.  I've only encountered
two so far.  This is after about 4 hours of play.  In one ending, I lost
in Black Diamond to Max, and I became the village idiot.  

You can save your position anytime during the game by selecting "bookmark".
You can then start back at this point anytime.  That way you can replay a
scene different ways for the best results.  Unfortunately, you can only save
one bookmark on one memory card.

Graphics:
The FMV is pretty good.  It's at a lower resolution (that's why there's only 3 CD's
for this game) and you can select between full screen and small screen by hitting
R1 at anytime during the game.  There are cut sequences that are full screen 
and at a higher resolution.  I found the small screen choice to be ok because
I've got a fairly large TV screen, but for some the full screen choice may be 
necessary.

Sound:
The music is eerie and fits the scenes very well. 

Acting:
Very Good quality acting.  Max Mirage hams it up occasionally, but
he is the villian so that's ok.  The game is "adult oriented" meaning that
there is adult language and situations.

Playability:
As I mentioned earlier, there are 14 possible outcomes.  This keeps you 
motivated to keep playing and trying different strategies.  There are
some scenes in the game that you have to watch over and over, and you can't
avoid this, but I'm not sick of it yet.  This is definitely not a "Dragon's
Lair".  It's a lot more complex and immersive.  

Rating:
For interactive movies, I'd give this a 8/10.  If you're an interactive movie
fan like me, then I'd think you'd like this.  If you're more of a action
person who likes fighters and shooters, than this is probably not for you.


Later,

Mark



-- 
The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of my company or organization.