Parasite Eve (PlayStation) Review

Basically a video game adaptation of Hideaki Sena's novel of the same name, Parasite Eve is just another stereotypical biohazard-type science fiction tale, where its lone protagonist gets tangled in a situation when something dangerous has "awoken," and she is the only one who can defeat it. Enter Aya Brea; a young police rookie, and an unimpressive, frail, blond girl, who, for some reason (ooooooh! Mystery…), has some mysterious powers that shield her from the strange mutated animals that roam the streets of Manhattan, and their powerful boss, Eve.

Influenced by the concept of 'Mitochondrial Eve,' (by the way, fans of biology: The Seven Daughters of Eve… read it now), the concept behind the plot is that the organelles known as Mitochondria, have reached an evolutionary step that enables them to take control of a body's cells, and manipulate that said body to their will. Pretty neat? Unfortunately, this turns out to be a mish-mash of pseudo-science, with the answer behind every "why?" being "because mitochondria!" similarly to Metal Gear Solid 4's nanomachines.

The fact that the plot is poorly constructed and has little basis on actual science doesn't make it a bad one. What makes it so is that, unlike, for example, the Resident Evil franchise, it takes itself waaay too seriously, and, as a result, feels… silly - and not the "good" kind of silly. Furthermore, and again, compared to the Resident Evil series, it lacks the required character that could make it stand out - the big bad corporation, the colourful characters, the iconic enemies and locales, the b-movie-ish charm, and so on.

Similar to its two main sources of inspiration, this has 3D characters moving on pre-rendered backgrounds… and both are boring, with the later sometimes making it hard to understand what you are looking at, or, even worse, navigate around the place. The monsters themselves are more weird than scary, or at least grotesque, and the adventure is filled with tons of low-quality or unimpressive FMVs for the sake of FMVs. As for the music, while it's nice and all, it feels as if there are only two tracks here - the slow, snooping-around one, and the faster, tension/danger one.

Moving on, this is a pretty basic, and extremely linear RPG… No, really, it almost feels like a rail shooter! That's not a bad thing on its own, though. Many titles, from Metal Gear Solid, to Uncharted, had a more cinematic, and thus, linear, approach, and the same could happen here, IF the plot was more interesting, IF the animations (both in-game as well in cut-scenes) weren't as freaking slow, and, most importantly, IF the actual game wasn't as poorly made. There are numerous small flaws in here, but Parasite Eve's biggest one lies elsewhere…

So far, this is a subpar attempt at cashing in on the success of Capcom's flavour of survival horror - it has its genuine moments of fun, but it ain't something special. The thing that takes the biscuit, though, is its Final Fantasy-like battle system… and it's a shame because it could, without a single doubt, be its saving grace. Simply put, it's a modified version of Square's semi-turned-based ATB (Active Time Battle) mechanic, which lets a character make a move once a recharging meter fills, adding a layer of urgency, since enemies won't simply wait an eternity for the player's decision.

What makes this version more interesting (in theory), is that the protagonist can move around the place while a battle goes on, effectively making it possible to avoid attacks. Furthermore, since Aya uses ranged weaponry like handguns and rifles, her accuracy is affected by her distance from the enemy, thus, she must choose between getting too close or dealing decreased damage. Even better? Instead of random encounters, monsters appear only when entering certain rooms, therefore, searching around never becomes a boring array of unnecessary fights.

Sadly, and while battles initially show potential, as the journey towards the end continues, the flaws start to show. For starters, avoiding damage gets almost impossible later on, with most "arenas" being too tiny to move, as well as certain attacks being hard to "read" and understand where to stand to avoid them. Generally, strategy gets thrown out of the window, with all but the boss encounters being nothing more than easy, and extremely tedious speedbumps of no importance. Long story short… the game is boring.