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| | Features | Immersive third-person shooter with RPG elements: Take control of Aya in real-time, over-the-shoulder combat, and fight back the Twisted with an arsenal of upgradable weaponry. Make use of Aya's unique genetic makeup by customizing her with skills and abilitiesStrategic combat with the Overdive system: Outnumbered and alone, Aya must rely on the Overdive system to tip the balance in her favor. Instantly take over the body - and equipment - of any friendly combatant on the field, and dive into the Twisted to destroy them from the insideRich and suspenseful story: Manhattan is under siege by the grotesque and horrifying Twisted, and humanity is powerless to stop them. Aya Brea, from the popular PARASITE EVE series, returns in this gruesome nightmare as mankind's last hopeImmersive, high-resolution visuals: Experience Aya's terror through the most stunning CGI cutscenes and cinematic events ever seen on the PlayStation®Portable
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| | Description | Hideous creatures descend on Manhattan. Ground reports from the squad tasked with containing the pandemonium refer to these life forms as "the Twisted." An investigatory team known as the CTI is formed within the year. The Overdive system emerges as a means of opposition, but only one viable candidate exists - Aya Brea. A gift as she awakens from a lost past on this, the occasion of her third birth. | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 7.0 inches | | Product Width: | 4.1 inches | | Product Height: | 0.6 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.77 pounds | | Package Length: | 7.0 inches | | Package Width: | 4.1 inches | | Package Height: | 0.6 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.05 pounds | | Release Date: | March 29, 2011 | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 44 reviews |
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| | Game Information | | Platform: | Sony PSP | | Media: | Video Game | | Item Quantity: | 1 |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 44 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 23 found the following review helpful:
 Creative, Intense, Flawed Apr 19, 2011
By Z. Brictson
Square Enix's return to the Parasite Eve franchise turns out to be an action-packed PSP title, though perhaps not what every fan was hoping for.
Premise:
It's Christmas Eve, the year is 2012, and citizens are optimistically pacing the snowy, holiday streets of Manhattan when chaos suddenly erupts. Giant tentacle like structures burst from the ground, terrorizing the city as they rise to eventually form twisted spires arching toward the sky. The assault on Manhattan has begun, and Aya Brea returns to face a new foe - the Twisted.
The perspective of the game begins behind that of the CTI (Counter Twisted Investigation), whose secret weapon is none other than Aya Brea, a woman with the ability to dive into the souls of other organisms, and with the help of the CTI technology, she can dive into organisms in different time periods as well. Aya in the 3rd Birthday, however, isn't the heroine fans will remember her as. Her memories are clouded as a result of a dramatic incident, and it has left her character much more vulnerable and frail sounding as compared to the previous games. As she battles the Twisted, the monsters that have infested Manhattan, she gradually comes across familiar faces, putting together the mystery of her past and the origins of the Twisted one step at a time.
Eve games have proven to host interesting concepts in their narratives, and the 3rd Birthday is no different in this regard. It's a shame then, that the cutscenes that progress the game's story are largely mediocre, plagued with awkard dialogue and weak interaction between characters. The essence of time travel that involves a good portion of the game isn't spelled out for the player all that well, with a measly date stamp at the beginning of each mission being the only guide post to go by -- so it's fairly easy to forget what time you are in and why it matters The stilted conversation between characters makes understanding a seemingly complex story quite difficult - and with the ending actually being quite interesting, it's unfortunate the game couldn't carry itself more properly.
Combat:
Unlike its predecessors, the 3rd Birthday is a shooter above anything else, with only a light dose of RPG based elements to fool around with. However, some creative mechanics make the game much more interesting than a standard shoot-em-up.
Fundamentally the game is fairly fast paced lock on shooter, with the most basic (yet very crucial) dodging and cover mechanics. Beyond that however, the game revolves Aya's ability to dive into the souls of others, called Overdive. In the majority of battles you encounter, you'll be accompanied by a group of U.S. soldiers, and while they do their part in the shooting, they are much more useful as targets to dive into.
You can dive at any time as long as a living ally is in the battlefield, even if you are dying and the game over screen is about to pop up, you can dive into a nearby soldier. As you take the place of your new host, you naturally leave the former behind you. Doing so can get you out of hazardous situations at key moments, give you a better strategic position, put you into someone with more health, and of course, allow you to use whatever weapon your host was carrying - this includes taking control of powerful vehicles such as tanks and helicopters. There may be a feeling of guilt in abusing other people's bodies like this, but reinforcements eventually replace the fallen soldiers should you run out.
Aya also has the ability to dive into enemies and implode them from the inside. This attack does massive damage and is essential in taking out some of the tougher forms of Twisted. To successfully engage in the attack however, you must first pummel the enemy with enough consecutive fire power to bring up the overdive prompt. Fast firing assault rifles or powerful explosives are among the best ways to bring up an overdive opportunity. Probably the best method, and a more respectable use of your teammates, is the Crossfire ability. Instead of emptying a clip into an enemy by yourself, you can charge up a lock on to a target and once full, order all squad members to focus fire the target to bits - outright killing most weak enemies or quickly creating an opportunity for you to dive into them.
Finally, a super move called "Liberation" can be periodically activated after you've battled enough, allowing Aya to rapidly shoot energy from a pair of handguns along with granting her lightning fast movement. It's a very handy tool in getting your head above water in the game's many difficult firefights.
The game really doesn't have a great variety of enemy types, and all though they put on some intense encounters for you to face, the game can feel a bit repetitive when "new" enemies are merely re-colored, stronger versions of previous missions. The few types the game has however aren't pushovers though - some enemies have devastating melee attacks, projectiles that must be dodged, some can swallow you whole on the spot, and many have multiple forms that make them hard to penetrate. Amongst making your way through these encounters, you'll be required to destroy enemy spawning points, blast down walls, plant C4, and dodge traps - suffice to say, the game requires your full attention.
While the 3rd Birthday is challenging, it's sometimes frustratingly so because while the enemies demand great use of reflex and overdive use, it's the camera and lock-on feature that are often the biggest obstacles.
Primarily, the camera suffers in the game's many corridor encounters, where you are often up against several powerful creatures and have little way of keeping track of what's behind you. As you frantically try to realign the camera, projectile attacks will abuse you from your blind spots and often times you'll be left guessing blind in terms of what's after you.
The lock-on feature then suffers from battles with many enemies on the field. The game is so fast paced and dodging is so key to survival, that finding your target again amongst a dozen will be more lethal to you than any enemy. There's a nifty hot key to target what's closest to you, but should you be targeting a specific enemy and need to drop your aim to run somewhere, dodge something, or dive somewhere else, well -- good luck finding that target again.
Boss battles are surprisingly fresh feeling, each one asking for different approaches in order to achieve victory, and luckily these do not suffer from any camera or lock on issues when compared to the game's frantic firefights.
RPG Elements:
Despite the focus on intense firefights, the 3rd Birthday is still a light RPG on the side. Killing enemies awards experience points, making Aya stronger with every level, as well as currency that can be used on upgrading existing weapon load outs or buying new ones.
The game features handguns, powerful revolvers, assault rifles, grenade launchers, and other special weapons for you to enjoy. Upgrading guns has some thought put into it, as each features a number of improvable characteristics. Often times, for example, you'll be forced to choose whether you want a weapon to have more Power, or if you prefer Impact instead. Power flatly increases the gun's damage, while Impact makes for quicker overdive kill set ups.
Should you feel underpowered, you are free to revisit any previous mission and rack up more XP and money, and even go for a higher mission ranks or achievements that not only give you more substantial rewards, but may unlock more weapons and extra goodies as well. With a great deal of unlockables including cheat codes, weapons and costumes being left after beating the game, there's reason enough to go and shoot up the story again should you be able to stomach replaying the same missions again.
A more subtle element to the game's customization is the use of OE (Over Engergy) chips, often acquired when diving into enemies. At save points or when back at base, these chips can be placed on a board and give way to useful passive abilities such as boosts to defense, restocking ammo after overdiving, and chances to unleash powerful attacks. Placing chips on the board can raise the level of pre-existing ones, or randomly create new ones. Malignant, or negative chips can appear as well, so some caution is required as you play around with Aya's DNA.
Presentation:
The 3rd Birthday stands amongst the best looking of PSP titles, with cutscenes looking very clean, and character models that look particularly impressive. Enemy designs all fit a well thought up theme, and the term Twisted accurately suits them. Aya's "armor" even takes real time damage as well, and her already torn jeans can be fried almost completely off if you take a hard enough of beating. Fan service or a strategic game element, it may be appreciated either way.
In-game battle runs smooth which is great given its fast paced nature (save for rare instances of slowdown during massive firefights), and load times are light after a quick data install.
The environments you pass through are often impressive, outdoors in the snowy streets of Manhattan especially, but they quickly become repetitive instances of grey corridors and the grimy, boring habitats of the Twisted. The small barriers for taking cover behind look out of place at times, making certain battlefields feel cheap and superficial.
The soundtrack features some great, melancholic piano pieces that fit the mood of the game well, along with some respectably intense orchestrated music for bigger encounters. Sound effects in general don't push to impress, but the screams of enemies and the sound of the weapons all sound satisfying enough.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday rises to impressive heights in its combat, bringing elements that make for a challenging and well layered shooter. There are many issues bringing it down however, including frustrating camera and lock-on controls, repetitive instances of combat, and a poorly executed plot. Plenty of extra content to unlock may be enough reason to dive into this PSP title, but it stands as a crucially flawed, yet creative attempt at reviving the franchise nonetheless.
Narrative and Characters
Aya has reason enough to have a changed, weaker character in the 3rd Birthday, but the other introduced characters prove to have little to no depth, failing to maturely execute a complicated plot that asks for much more than stilted dialogue and weak cutscenes.
Combat
Delightfully creative, demanding, and fast paced, the game's combat features well thought up encounters and shining boss fights throughout. Enemies are well designed, but a lack of variety eventually saps some enjoyment moving from firefight to firefight.
Control
Camera and lock-on issues significantly hamper much of the game's combat. Keeping track of where enemies are and attempting to lock on to the proper ones end up making the game's controls more lethal than its enemies.
Aesthetics
Pretty cutscenes, a solid audio and a smooth playing game help make for a richer experience. Character models look great but environments quickly become drab and repetitive.
Love it or Hate it:
There's little to love here in terms of characters or plot. If you are new to the franchise you'll have trouble understanding what's going on. If you're a fan, you'll have trouble understanding what's going on and probably be offended in the process. That and the very action focused approach to the game makes the 3rd Birthday a tough recommendation to make to previous fans.
The Experience: 6.9
15 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Decent game, but hardcore PE fans are sure to be disappointed Apr 03, 2011
By buyingstuffalldaiiii
So, I've been looking forward to this game ever since the initial previews for it came out. The original Parasite Eve was one of my favorite games of all time, and I couldn't understand why Squaresoft wasn't pursuing a sequel to the series. In fact, I bought a PSP just so I could play this and Final Fantasy Tactics. So let's get down to it.
If you're a diehard Parasite Eve fan, this game is somewhat of a letdown. First of all, the story is horrific and has absolutely no relevance to the prior Parasite Eves. Now granted, Squaresoft stated that this game isn't intended to be a sequel of any sorts, but if that is the case they shouldn't have used Aya Brea as the protagonist. The story is some cobbled together mumbo jumbo about time traveling via Aya's psyche or some such nonsense. I'm not going to go further into it because there's not much to say. It's just really bad. The horrible voice acting doesn't help at all either. Maeda is now some kind of borderline retarded lecher instead of the super awesome Japanese sidekick he used to be. Even worse, Aya Brea is the most annoying main character I've ever seen. She's the most passive pansy of a hero I've ever seen, and not reminiscent at all of the Aya from the Parasite Eve franchise. She constantly looks like she's about to cry, and most of the time she spoke I just wanted to drop kick her in the face.
As for the gameplay, it's actually not bad. The controls and movement are very fluid and intuitive. Unfortunately, the movements are controlled by the analog and the camera is controlled by the D-pad. This wouldn't be an issue, except for the fact that the camera is god-awful. While most guns have an "Auto-lock" feature, the few guns that don't are a pain to use because the camera will not adjust automatically. This is exacerbated by the fact that the game wants you to utilize cover whenever possible. It's just painful when your facing the enemy behind a wall, and trying to aim without an autolock gun freaks the camera out and has you stare directly at the ground while a horde of Twisted are coming at you. In certain scenarios, there are enemies attacking you from multiple directions. The way the camera works, it's borderline impossible to dodge all the attacks because you're essentially forced to tunnel vision in one direction. Ultimately though, the game is actually quite fun outside of a few meaninglessly frustrating battles.
As for replay value, they really copped out by going the "New game++ route." I always hated the idea of a New Game+. Making you replay the game repeatedly to unlock features doesn't constitute true "replay value." There's a difference between making you want to come back to the game, and simply making you play the game over and over from the beginning. Since the game itself is very short (<5 hours), I feel like they cheated and artificially wanted to extend the game length using this feature.
Ultimately, this game deserves a 4/5. On its own, its certainly a fairly decent game. However, upon playing it I was infuriated by the fact that it really had nothing to do with Parasite Eve whatsoever with the sole exception of the fact that the main character's name is Aya Brea. Square Enix went out of there way to take advantage of their fans by tricking them with their nomenclature. If you want to play a semi-decent shooter with excellent graphics, you'll be impressed. If you love and miss Parasite Eve and were hoping to get get your fix with this game, sorry but you're going to be sorely disappointed.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 A Depressing End to a Great Series Jan 19, 2012
By H. De Groat
The Parasite Eve series was one of my favorites for the PS1, so when The Third Birthday was previewed in Game Informer, I was ecstatic. I grabbed it a couple of weeks after its release, to the seeming disappointment of the guy behind the counter. I should have paid more attention to that- it turns out this really wasn't Parasite Eve at all- just a glossy, contrived sci-fi shooter that Square decided to have stomp all over a good IP. It's pretty, don't get me wrong, but pretty does not a solid game make. The gameplay, while not terrible, felt done to death and the storyline didn't do much to make me keep going. The enemies are repetitive, and the bosses, while intriguing, fall flat. Square Enix needs to rethink its game-making strategy a bit- pretty is nearly irrelevant if the game isn't fun.
15 of 21 found the following review helpful:
 Everything it Should Have Been (and Nothing I Expected) Apr 04, 2011
By BlackMind
-I'll 'try' to keep it short.-
First and foremost, I'd like to say I enjoyed laughing at all the mediocre/negative reviews I've read on this site in regards to Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday. Some complained about how this story doesn't 'hold the grail' of the previous two Parasite Eve games; well it does. Just from an angle you would've never guessed. Other's noted how the main character comes off as 'weak and useless'. Even that plays a part in the storyline. All in all....
...you guys don't know what you're talking about.
Regardless, being created by Square-Enix, The 3rd Birthday has many similarities to Final Fantasy: Crisis Core.
The battle mechanics are simple:
PE3: Aim, Shoot, Hide, "Overdive" (jump from body to body), and "Liberation" (invincibility mode)
CC: Lock-on, Attack, Block, use "Materia" (equipable magic, skills, etc.)
The customizable DNA Boards are very similar to how Materia was used:
PE3: You have nine slots to place DNA in, each adding an ability to your character. When you overlap two different types of DNA, they can mutate into a new (and random) DNA strand
CC: You have base Materia that you can fuse with one another to create stronger forms of that Materia, or new ones all together.
(in both concepts, the Materia/DNA can be leveled)
And Mission-based 'Free-Roam' mechanics are used again:
PE3: You can wander around the Base and interact with characters and such, but to go on a mission, you have to initiate it via NPC/Computer. Then you wander around the level.
CC: ....same.
Sounds like a straight-forward game right?
Wrong.
This game throws you in ridiculous situations where you have to cook up a strategy on the fly. The weapons you use (there's lots. most are customizable too), where you locate the people you Overdive into, and the structure of the battlefield can determine how many soldiers/civilians are saved and whether you die or not. As you progress through the game, newer creatures appear, further complicating things on the battlefield (considering some are harder to defeat unless your holding the right weapon or discover a physical weakness).
Aside from that, there is a New Game+ mode, along with unlockable costumes, cheat codes, weapons, and difficulties. I can talk about this game forever, but it's best you play it and see what it has to offer 1st hand. To those of you who enjoyed Crisis Core and the previous two Parasite Eve games: you will not be disappointed.
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Following the Reviews Wasn't Necessarily True Jun 10, 2011
By D. Bernat
Initially, I wasn't sure about this game. Everybody said the story was awful, the gameplay was rough, and that the main character was just annoying. Mostly, I disagree.
For me, I've always been interested in the Parasite Eve games, but I had never had an opportunity to play them. From the research I did when I was interested in the PSX games, I understand that this story has nothing to do with the previous Parasite Eve games. I don't even know who all of the Cameo characters are supposed to be in relationship to Aya. This is the first time that I met them.
From the get-go, I was very impressed with the game. I actually felt like the controls were sufficient and the gameplay was very fun. In the grand scheme of things, the gameplay is probably really repetitive. It actually doesn't feel that way. That's probably because the environments are constantly changing and the enemies are differing slightly as you go. One big issue people have had with this game is the difficulty. I saw those complaints and decided this game should be one I start out on Easy. This was a good idea. In that mode, it was still challenging but I didn't feel like I was going to get a migraine because of it.
The story is actually very interesting to me. It's based around this invasion of creatures called the Twisted. They emerged from beneath the Earth and popped up everywhere across the globe. Aya was found shot, covered in blood, and in a wedding dress around the same time that the Twisted emerged. They find out that she has the ability to send her Psyche into other people and can use their bodies. They then create a machine that can send her Psyche into the past.
That's about the gist of the beginning. There are only 6 episodes in the game, and playing through them takes about an hour long. I think it's the first 3 chapters that you play in the past, then you play in the present (2013) for the last 3, with a little more time in the past in a bit of the last chapter.
In the first three chapters, the given circumstances of the timeline are completely changed. Something significant is completely changed from the last chapter. That was really fun to try to keep up with. It was also incredible to receive the story. The cutscenes were just awesome. There was a lot of detail, the occasional weird line of text, and new questions for you as you go along. It feels more like an action-mystery game than say, a survival horror. In fact, it never feels like a survival horror. It rarely attempts to be creepy because in the time or two that they do, it doesn't pan out. Actually the creepiest part of playing the game was listening to awkward Maeda. He's a stuttering Japanese man who seems nervous, but not too nervous to talk to Aya like she's some object.
A lot of people say that Aya is whiny and weak-willed. I disagree. I believe that she wanted to help people out, and then I believed that her reason for going out there was because she needs to find out who she is, and she just so happens to find out more and more as she engages with the Twisted. I thought of Aya as a caring individual who would fight to protect others.
Unfortunately, she's highly sexualized. As you play, her clothes rip more and more until she's left with scraps. Yeah, her butt-cheek will be visible. It's a bad idea because this is a PSP game. While their graphics were awesome, you'll never be able to make people appreciate the sexiness of your three-dimensional sprite.
Then there will be plot-twists that are just dumb. Actually, I was okay with the plot twists as the story went along, but I hated the end scene. Everything is perfectly shaped to fit together into the story until the end when they explain how the twisted were created, how Aya lost her memory, and how to change the past to save the future. Well they forgot to answer one glaring question: that of the true catalyst that started the whole continuity of the game. Why did the officers in uniform EVER show up and start shooting? If you have the opportunity to play this game, please ask yourself that. There was no explained reason, no previous tiff, no Kill Bill assassination for running away. The officers just shoot. And if you were to try to explain it from the information they give you, it won't be logical. So something that seemed incredibly intelligent and put together makes a wreck of itself in the last ten minutes. I've never been so appalled by the ending of a story before. I hated making myself sit through the end credits.
Luckily, most of the story is appetizing. Gameplay is augmented by what is called DNA boards and weapon customization. Both are great concepts and feel very simple to understand, but they do have their short-comings. The DNA board doesn't have a tutorial, but you can actually unlock more abilities for Aya by playing around with it. It was kind of fun trying to fit things in like a puzzle so I could strengthen my character. It got a whole lot less fun when I realized I had spent ten minutes on just a couple nodes, re-trying the combinations so the nodes would be a higher level. Right before working on the other nodes.
Weapon customization is fun the first couple times you open the menu, but quickly gets disappointing and frustrating. The controls or layout of how you choose your weapons and how you customize them just don't feel right. It feels like a lot of work trying to gather a lot of information from a lot of different places. The other frustrating thing is that there are so many weapons in the game, but you'll only unlock maybe a fifth of them in your first playthrough. On top of that, each customization costs money, and a lot of it. Each weapon can be customized with anywhere from 8-20 pieces. The first pieces cost say 1000 BP. Then the second row of pieces costs 2000-4000 BP. So to fully customize each piece, you must unlock them through hours of gameplay, unlock the customization, and then spend 15-30,000 BP on each weapon. You earn about 8,000-12,000 in an hour of gameplay. The cost is SO high that you end up focusing on only a couple of weapons for the run-through, and then the weapons stop doing nearly enough damage.
I wish they could have come up with simpler ways to handle those two elements because I ended up spending a VERY significant amount of my time in these two menus rather than in the gameplay they were supposed to augment.
The other thing I want to mention is that the difficulty really comes from the controls in certain situations. The majority of the game, you automatically lock onto an enemy with the L button. When you snipe, or grenade launch, or tank, suddenly all of your movement is taken away. Aiming with a sniper is AWFUL. The crosshairs move so slowly that it feels ridiculous trying to ever hit the target. Which is weird because the game encourages sniper usage in so many places. If you use the sniper, you can hit weak spots which cause massive damage. Also, the bestiary tells you where the weak spots are. This is all well and good, but the crosshairs move really slowly while the enemy is moving fairly quickly. You also only have about 10 shots. When you try to snipe, you'll almost never hit the weak spot, and then you're a sitting duck while the twisted comes and knocks you on your back which, by the way, resets the crosshairs, so you have to do all of that searching all over again.
Well, I'm the kind of person who can talk about how bad things are very easily, but talking about the good doesn't happen quite as easily. This game I played almost non-stop for two days straight. I hated the ending, but went right back in and played for another two hours. The gameplay was so fun, that I don't know if I've ever been so enthralled by a game. Also, the graphics are extremely fantastic. The game has great strengths and great weaknesses. It's too bad that they couldn't have made this a true continuation of the previous two games in the series for those of us who might have been interested in seeking out the old games as well as for the fans. An oversexualized game like this feels like fan-service, but it's really doing your fans disservice by not honoring the continuity of the previous entries in a series. By the way, Square-Enix, half of your games feel like carbon copies of each other, and the other half, your name was Squaresoft. I'm really starting to think that Square-Enix has not in recent years been truly deserving of the praise they hold.
I can also tell you that where they ended it the first time through pretty much guarantees that there won't be a number 4. Bummer.
See all 44 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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