Codename: Tenka (1997)

Beat. This game did not work on PSP at first because the game would not progress to the main menu if 2 memory cards were inserted. This had nothing to do with emulation, other than no way to disable 1 card. What the shit kind of programming was this? Looking online I found a patched version of the game that bypassed the memory card check but it did not allow saving at all. For the entire game I was worried about it crashing or dropping my PSP. Sure enough it did crash late into the game. I would have given up there but there were level select and all weapon cheats that allowed me to pick up where it crashed. The game did not have custom key bindings so I had to remap several buttons in the emulator to get sensible controls; square to shoot, triangle and X for look up and down, 0 for jump (though I never needed it), run on R1, crouch and weapon swap on stick, and strafe on L1. The biggest problem with the controls was strafe was a modifier that changed left and right into strafing rather than having separate buttons for the 2 directions. I hated this so much and it made the game far more clunky than other shooters on the system. The music and voice acting did not work so I watched a youtube video in between levels to hear the briefings. It was nothing worthwhile, mostly pointless dialogue. The story was dumb, something about an evil Corp in a different quadrant luring people to turn into cyborg soldiers, but the main character somehow avoided the mind control and fought back. It could have easily been set on the moon or a little further to be more believable. The ending was very lame too. I guess he finally met the female voice that was giving him the briefings, then she hit him and the game ended. Did he die? There was no resolution.

Weapons had to be swapped without pausing and new weapons were unlocked by collecting cubes, which were occasionally found as treasure and usually dropped by cyborg enemies. I have no idea why the video had the laser way before I got it, especially since my laser did not unlock until after rapid fire. Bullets could be fired single shot, 2 round burst or full auto once the better modes were unlocked. Single shot was good for sniping and the mutant enemies. I even used it late game to activate switches and destroy 1 bouncy mines, but not against enemies. Burst was twice as powerful but wasted twice the ammo if I missed, and it was the best weapon for about half of the game. It definitely overstayed itself. Full auto was the best for a short while after and what I mostly used against drones and mutants. Could be tapped to burst as well making the actual burst obsolete. It could not kill cyborgs quickly enough. Laser weapons used a different type of ammo and were overall much better, combining the accuracy of single shot with high damage. The single laser was better than full auto, and double laser was by far the best weapon in the game, melting the toughest enemies in seconds. The last weapon, burst laser, charged up for a big shot. It seemed pointless with how quickly the double laser killed. Maybe if there were boss fights. Then the 3 explosive weapons each had their own ammo. Missile was ok, especially when there were multiple enemies, turrets and barriers in the explosion radius. Mines were proximity and somewhat clunky due to the significant delay between pressing fire and the mine appearing on the ground. It was not a good idea to run in front of enemies to drop a mine, and once I waited too long and triggered the mine myself. Pretty much not worth using unless you already know the stage. And lastly grenades I kept blowing myself up until I figured out I had to hold down shoot to make it go further. Even then it did not kill the enemy I was shooting at. It needed more damage radius and firing towards the crosshair like a normal weapon instead of dropping at your feet like a dumbass.

The levels played out similar to Doom, with lots of colored keys and locked doors. There were other special items to collect, panels that required certain items to activate something, and even a few minor puzzles. Instead of a map of any kind you could drop little beacons that flashed a color and beeped constantly. Would have been more useful if you could pick the color and pick them back up. I spent so much extra time wandering around trying to figure out where to go, and some levels were somewhat complicated with lots of back tracking. Some levels were timed bomb disposal missions that disgusted me so much I stopped playing for a week. Not only was there a time limit for the level, but every individual bomb had its own time limit to get it to the disposal point. Marking the path with beacons was essential as there was very little margin for error. For 1 bomb that margin was so tight that I failed it 3 times, but at least you could survive with full shields. The blue bar was the shield and was restored by pick ups, but it annoyed me that the amount restored varied wildly. Some were duds that barely restored anything. The red health bar caused death and was only restored by continuing after dying. Continuing fully healed and set all ammo to a moderate amount, which ruined the sense of scavenging as much loot as possible. Though that would apply if I could save and load. I died a lot once I got past the early game for 4 reasons. 1 was the damn time limit levels. 2 was the mutant enemies, who rushed into melee for shocking amounts of damage. They were often set up corner camping from multiple angles at once so I had to be slow and methodical. The vertical turn speed was not fast enough to deal with speedy ankle biters so it was often a frantic mess. It was best to crouch to their height, but that made it more likely to be killer by 3, the cyborgs. Many of those enemy types shot rockets that were extremely difficult to avoid. The first enemy type with rockets at least went into a crouching pose to show that a rocket was about to be shot. The others just randomly shot them in between their normal fire, with most rockets moving too fast to avoid and all were dark and difficult to see. This led to very inconsistent combat where I suddenly took massive damage or fell over dead without seeing what killed me. Compare this to Doom where the projectiles were brightly visible and slow enough to react to. And 4, these cyborg enemies often spammed their rockets after I left line of sight. This made them even more difficult to attack but even worse was all the times I died when safe behind cover. Damage seemed to randomly go through walls and doors, and a walkthrough confirmed that both enemies and the player could hit through some walls. I consistently died at 1 stage where there was a pedestal surrounded by barriers with a turret. If I failed to kill the cyborg quickly he would end up friendly fire destroying the other stuff and it was like that created a massive wall penetrating explosion. The game was also fond of spawning new enemies in behind you when there should be no way for them to be there. This was not Doom with magic teleporters. The closest thing to bosses were a spinning reactor core type thing that I just shot rockets at from outside the room. The video went in to press buttons that revealed the core but still took just as many rockets to destroy. Then 2 late levels had waves of cyborgs. Many of the levels were duplicates and there was no satisfying climax. Instead I was left with the feeling that I never want to play this again.

I would probably give it a 6 if not for the awful timed missions. I did like the dark cyberpunk atmosphere that reminded me of the playstation Alien shooters and Doom 3, though I had to up the emulator brightness as the game was too dark. I also liked the guns. But the rest of the game was lame, if not outright bad. Clunky controls, cheap deaths, confusing navigation, lack of secrets, unneeded repetition, pointless story and shoddy design drag this game down to

5.2/10