The 3rd Birthday Review

The 3rd Birthday Review
Game Specs:
Release Date: 3/29/2011 (Available Now!)
System: PSP
Players: 1
Memory Size: 384kb
Disc: UMD
Rating: M
(For Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence)


One of the many beautiful CG scenes in the game!
More Screens Here:

Spoiler:

The long-awaited return of Parasite Eve, ambiguously titled 'The 3rd Birthday', is a welcome one. The third title in the series, fans will get the most out of the smaller character cameos and setting details. New players shouldn't fret too much if you haven't played the previous games though; Square Enix provides a lot of optional background to pour over that plug the gaps. More critically though, each game features entirely different gameplay slants - with a dense RPG backbone blended with third-person action in this instalment.

Manhattan just can't catch a break these days. Aya Brea, hero of the original titles and Square Enix cult-favourite from the PSOne era, is back in the Big Apple, which has been torn apart in a terrific CG opening sequence. As the game-proper begins, we discover a year has passed and humanity is in a dire state. Aya, pulled from the rubble and now without memory, is tasked with travelling back in time to prevent the outbreak spreading.



The expanded universe of Parasite Eve now incorporates a strange new genetic threat – a gigantic infestation of heinous tentaclular beasts known as The Twisted – and Aya has a new ability at her disposal to stop them in their tracks -- and no, it's not her ability flash a lot of butt cheek. 'Overdive', triggered by holding down the triangle button at any time, allows Aya to immediately teleport to and inhabit any human being nearby. This is, hands down, the coolest mechanic in The 3rd Birthday. Overdiving creates a lightning-quick pace to the shooting and serious depth to the strategy that most shooters can't touch. It works simply, logically and fairly accurately.

Overdive works like a quick-time event - a triangle indicator pops up when you've whittled down your target's health.



By inhabiting other humans, you immediately gain their health status, weapons and placement in the battlefield. That means you can effectively guide your AI counterparts into different formations on the field, creating crossfire points. It also makes it harder for the enemy to pin you into one place.

The Twisted are initially easy to dispatch, but after a couple of chapters, the skies fill with targets spraying toxic clouds, gigantic wriggling behemoths roll towards you from all angles and cover bring a fleeting reprieve. There are dozens of types – and not all are vulnerable to bullets. In fact, without mastering movement and working out individual strategies for each, expect to get punished. It's at this point that mastering Overdive becomes essential.

To balance things, Aya is fairly weak. If you're not fleet-footed and master your dive-rolling and auto-cover abilities, you're smoked. Thankfully, you can choose to 'ascend' back to the secret between-missions facility and tune up before choosing to dive back in time.

It's therefore critical to spend a while tuning up your latent genetic abilities and armament. This is, like both previous entries, a game built on RPG stat-tracking and upgrading – and you can't afford to simply charge into each level expect to live. Weapons are plentiful – and at various points in each stage, there are safe-rooms that allow for saving. The pace and placement is generous, and we're grateful for that.

Like stats and grids? You're in for a treat.

You really do need to spend your experience points upgrading the potency of your weapons and adding new active and passive abilities to Aya. Weapons tables cover all manner of pistols, revolvers, various sub-automatics and a cool dozen special weapons. Tweaking these is fun; pouring points into upgrading clip size, accuracy and overall damage is completely worthwhile – but arguably holding onto some points is also a good idea. You'll unlock a couple of new weapons at the end of each chapter - and these tend to benefit from decent stat-boost anyway.



If that kind of constant upgrading isn't your bag, you're probably going to come up against a wall. Likewise, Aya's genetic makeup stands in for 'magic' – though you're not actively casting spells. Still, the 9 x 9 grid of stackable 'cells' take a bit of thinking to master. If you're not careful, you can completely waste your new genes – and starting again wipes any you've already applied to the grid. You need to be careful.

Of course, you can stumble your way through, since the menus and presentation are fairly clear-cut and, honestly, Square Enix did a great job making a while lot of content as accessible as possible without sacrificing depth. This depth extends to the between-missions briefings, backstory logs, character biographies, a variety of optional achievement-like 'Feats', loads of unlockable costumes and the ability to replay any mission. This is a rich experience for a PSP game.

The 3rd Birthday is a great game and you must buy it!
Graphics that look like a ps2 game and cg movies the look like its from FFXIII,
that is a must!


My rating

9.8
Amazing!

Simply lovely SQUEX never disappoints!

I totally played this game last year around Christmas. Although it was in Japanese, it kicked ass. I even downloaded the soundtrack to it.
And Light, the Maria and Poco title song I gave you was from this game. ...Just a little Easter Egg I thought I'd share.

haha yeah you told me because I asked where the song game from lol its got a good soundtrack

Uhhh...Parasite Eve was SE?

I never knew D:.


You know my SE love. You know you do.

Updated with new screens!