Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars Review

The announcement of Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars was one that largely slipped under the radar of most people; a sequel/update to the previously released tech demo/freeware game Cellfactor, created to show off the Ageia PsysX card capabilities.

Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars Is an arena based FPS akin to Unreal tournament and indeed running of the unreal engine. However there are some twists from the normal FPS mechanics which are manifested as PSI powers which can be utilised to defensively or offensively to give you that edge.

In Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars you chose from 3 Classes: Bishop, Black Ops and Guardians all with strengths, weaknesses and different ways of playing:

Guardians are your gun-toting super androids, bigger heath and the ability to dual wield two weapons from the selection scattered around the arena.

Bishop are the super psycho kinetic warriors able to utilise PSI powers and the weapon pick-ups from around the map in their own psychic way. Fairly weak, but quick and agile.

Finally Black Ops are your human hybrids of the two above classes, a psychic commando if you will.

The use of PSI powers within the game is a bit of a change of scenery from your every day arena shooter. Depending on the class they give you the ability to: fly, teleport, stun, shield yourself and most importantly rip up objects from the environment and hurl then at opponents. Your psychic powers do have limits and will drain whilst you are using them however unlike your health they do regenerate slowly as soon as you stop using them.

The game itself is actually pretty short, with 30 different missions (10 for each class) which get a little more difficult with each stage allowing you to play through each of the different 4 game types (Capture the flag, Assault, Team and Regular Deathmatch) with different conditions for winning on 7 different maps, either on your own or with AI controlled bots. Now this is great to get to know the capabilities of each class, and the general layouts of the maps, however as I’ve previously stated, it is pretty short, an Fps fan will breeze through all the challenges fairly quickly. But playing through them unlocks different rewards which can then be used to customise your character to your style of play e.g. slower Psi power drain or faster running speed.

Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars was clearly released for the multiplayer market with such a short campaign and an ability to support up to 12 players online. The really big issue with this is that the game didn’t have a massive push to market; seemingly few people on the whole knew a lot about the game or it’s released and it wasn’t heavily publicised. Hence in this reviewers experience online games are hard to come by a lot of the time which is a shame.

Conclusion

All in all Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars is a pretty generic FPS with a bit of a twist to it. It just seems out dated. If it was released maybe 4/5 years back on PC I think there would have been a bigger audience and community. At an 800 Ms price point it does seem pretty good value, but to be honest only if you are an FPS fan and are happy with playing entirely offline.

The Lowdown

Gameplay - 6.5: Generic Run-and-Gun FPS with a psychic twist, fairly standard arena style play. Almost nonexistent online community and pretty simple AI

Graphics - 7.5: Nothing mind-blowing here, the arenas are pretty uninspiring, but the graphics are what you would expect of a PC fps from 4/5 years ago. However considering it is an Arcade game not too shabby really.

Sound - 7.0: Again, generic FPS Sound.

Value - 7.5: 800 points is a really good price for this however the value dramatically drops once you realise no one is playing online.

Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars Via Xbox.Com