Title Coded Arms: Contagion Date 10.12.2007 Genre Action, Stealth Platform Sony PSP Developer Konami Publisher Konami

PROS
+Guns and animations are ok.
+Music and voice acting is decent
+You might find multiplayer fun

CONS
-Boring, clichéd, uninspired story
-Boring, clichéd gameplay
-Boring, clichéd everything else
-Dear god, why?

I did not finish Konami's Coded Arms: Contagion. I just couldn't do it. The original Coded Arms had it's flaws, but it al least provided some light-hearted shooting fun, plus being the first FPS on the PSP had to put it somewhere in video game history books. Contagion, however, only offers pain, misery, mediocrity, and above all else, boredom. I write this review in order to help the poor souls who are looking to pluck down forty US dollars on…. this.

CONTAGIOUS STORY
The original Coded Arms had no story; you were just some hacker going through a computer system with computer-generated guns, shooting computer-generated enemies. Contagion attempts to give you reason to go through its thirteen levels by offering a “story”. The computer system from the first Coded Arms named AIDA (what's with all crazy computer systems being named AIDA or ADA nowadays?) has apparently been brought under control. You play as Agent Grant, a Special Forces officer who is ordered to jack into AIDA to see if it really is under control. Of course…he finds out it totally is and the game ends right then and there!!

PSYCHE!!!

I would have actually welcomed that though, as it would have been a welcome change of pace form clichéd, tacked-on story #8458994439. AIDA is still running amok, and Grant has to go through it, mowing down computer-generated enemies with his computer-generated guns, and find some way to shut it down. You even get the clichéd, cigar smoking hard-ass general to guide you along. JOY!! I'm glad I didn't finish this game, it lets me hope that the ending turned out to be that the world these generic characters live in is taken over by AIDA and replaced with computer-generated characters that are more interesting and fill a story I actually haven't seen before.

CONTAGIOUS GAMEPLAY
I'll get to what Contagion does right first: the controls. Your basic set-up has the analog nub moving you forward and strafing, while the face buttons look around and turn. R is to fire, L is to jump and the D-pad buttons let you reload, change weapons, activate zoom, and use a lock-on. It's the basic set-up for a PSP shooter and for the most part works well. There are other set-ups to try out as well if you don't like this one. I personally like left-handed controls, where the nub is used for aiming and the face buttons for moving. There should be a control scheme that works for anyone, so good job there Konami.

However, that's where the “good jobs” end and the “dear god whys?” begin. Let's begin with your enemies. You have blue colored soldiers, then red colored soldiers, the blue colored flying things, then…well, I could go on but you get the idea. You would think that an advanced computer system could generate better defenses for itself, but no. You enemies will come right for you, never taking cover or anything as you pump their guts full of virtual lead. Expect to see these virtual morons firing at you from behind walls as well. Now imagine playing an entire game fighting these things. You would think the bosses that pop up at the end of some levels would attempt to level this out, but they are just the same: Lock-on, and shoot till dead.

Let's talk about the lock-on. Pressing down on the d-pad activates it, where you lock-on to whatever enemy you are pointing at…or at least that's what it's supposed to do. Most of the time if there were more than one enemy on the screen, the game would lock-on to the enemy that was of NO threat to me at the moment. This of course left the soldier/flying thing/crab thing closest to me with free hits while I fumbled to deactivate the lock-on that was on the enemy 100 feet away from me. Of course by this time I had probably whipped myself around so now I'm getting those free hits on my backside.

OK, so how about your weapons and how they work? Well, you start off with a pistol with infinity ammo, which of course fires like it's underwater and has no power whatsoever. Luckily, you pick up such FPS staples like a machine gun, shotgun, assault rifle, grenades, and a RPG. You also pick up some “futuristic” weapons such as a pulse rifle and lightning gun, but I found these weapons either ammo eaters or just utterly useless. During the game, you can find upgrade points that you can use to upgrade the performance of the weapons and your armor, however you can only upgrade to certain levels of power on your weapons at certain points in the game. Why? I don't know. Maybe they wanted use to lug around 100 extra upgrade points while I struggle against a room full of soldiers that take thousands of hits before dying because my gun's are underpowered. Dear god, why?

Ammo is another problem. The game doesn't really give you any. For the first few levels it was fine, but as I got to later levels and forced to pump all my ammo into respawing enemies because my guns were underpowered because the game won't let me upgrade them…it's a little infuriating. In one of the later missions, I had to destroy 3 generator things in a row, each one with respawing enemies hell bent on protecting it. So after blowing up the first one and using up almost all of my guns ammo, you would think the game would give you a break and restock you before moving on to the next. But no, I get to the next generator and its like, “Here are six shotgun shells and a clip of rifle ammo, good luck!” Then all hell breaks loose as twenty enemies suddenly appear and kill me within a minute because all my ammo is gone and my infinite-round pistol sucks. You also can't trade out weapons unless your at the main menu are at a save point.

It isn't all shooting though (gasp!) You also have to take 30 seconds of your time to hack doors and such but staring at two lines of numbers and picking the number that appears in both lines! Anyone, anyone? Oh well. Basically, the single layer campaign is moving from room to room exhausting the ammo of your underpowered weapons since the game won't let you upgrade against dumb enemies with the occasional same hacking. You wonder why I didn't even bother finishing this game.

Contagion also offers ad-hoc and infrastructure multiplayer for up to 8 people. However, unless you like laggy, boring deathmatches without the benefit of a lock-on, I suggest you stay away. I should also point out that the game crashed on me a couple times, once when I was about to save my game. Whoopee.

CONTAGIOUS GRAPHICS
The gun models and animations are decent, as are the FMVs that pop up from time to time. Everything else is ho-hum and bland. Rooms tend to look the same in whatever area you're in, with the same old crates and boxes in them. Enemies have a severe lack in variety. Basically, everything in this game is average at best. You get a neon-colored area towards the end of the game though… which isn't brown, I guess.

CONTAGIOUS SOUND
Audio is at least decent. Music is only noticeable when you're in fights, which are mostly some techno-beats. Guns sound OK as well. Voice acting also gets its job done, although I'm sure all the voice actors took long naps after having to read such a generic story.

It seriously is. You don't want to catch “crap”, so stay away from the boring, clichéd mess that is Coded Arms: Contagion. The only way I can see someone enjoying this is if they really get into the multiplayer, which is a huge stretch. Better off just to stay away. Replay Syphon Filter instead, you'll be much happier.

Game Score

D

Reviewed By: Contributed