PsychoToxic places gamers in the shoes of heroine Angie Prophet who is faced with the daunting task of saving mankind from impending Nuclear Armageddon. The year is 2022, the place is New York City. Angie Prophet... half human, half angel... is the only one who can defeat the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, an evil character from ancient Babylon. Throughout the game, Angie comes to an understanding of her role as civilization's savior, discovering a series of unique abilities, such as invisibility, the slowing of time and the infiltration of other's dreams all of which aid her progress.
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Is not THAT bad. The story is silly because of the acting, but it has that 00s shooter charm. The level design is actually the best part of the game and gets pretty creative, too bad the game itself is janky.
If you don't mind janky games and like wacky ideas, you may find things to enjoy in this game. Just don't go expecting a 2004 game to work properly in a modern OS without some workarounds.
If you don't mind janky games and like wacky ideas, you may find things to enjoy in this game. Just don't go expecting a 2004 game to work properly in a modern OS without some workarounds.
This is one of the most broken games that has ever been made, and this is mostly due to the fact that the developer ran out of funds to polish the game after the publisher were on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. Combine that with the fact that the game had a development team of around 7 people, and you have a recipe for disaster.
For starters, if you try to run this game on Windows 7 or higher, it will refuse to even load up. This is because every time a cutscene has to load, you'll be met with an infinite black screen. So if you remove all of the cutscenes from its folder, the game will work like normal, but even then, the game crashes all the time, and it's actually impossible to even finish it for most people, which I'll get into later. The game works fine on Vista, but any operating system other than that will require you to remove the cutscenes from the game.
[STORY]
The crazy thing is, the concept of this game is really interesting. The story of this game actually gets my attention, but it's ruined by just how awfully it's presented. The character models look like shit aside from the protagonist, the graphics are ugly as fuck, the voice acting is a disgrace, the pacing is all over the place, there are countless exposition dumps, and it just doesn't make any sense sometimes. Not to mention the levels barely correlate with the story, nor are they connected to each other, which just makes the story even more confusing than it already is. One level you'll be in a research facility, but then the next level is in either Hell, or in a stage that looks like a Looney Tunes cartoon shooting at cartoon characters with little explanation, I'm not kidding. And then the next level after that will be semi-open world in Central Park with insane amounts of backtracking. This game is just batshit fucking insane, it reminds me a lot of the Postal games.
The level design is like this because the developers did not want all of the them to look similar to each other, so each stage was designed differently in tone, and I can kind of understand that, but that just makes the tone of the game a jumbled mess, it's just incredibly inconsistent.
[CORE GAMEPLAY]
This is a First-Person Shooter, and just like the story, the core gameplay mechanics are busted. The hit detection is wonky, and the AI are totally braindead. They stand in one spot and just let you riddle them with bullets. And if they're holding a melee weapon, they charge at you head-on with no sense of logic. Sometimes they'll do a cartwheel... to dodge bullets. Very smart indeed.
The AI can go from braindead to physic cybernetic beings that know your exact positioning at all times, because the moment you turn a corner, they automatically shoot at you with insane accuracy.
The game also has a leaning mechanic, but not only can you lean only if you're against a wall, but you can't actually shoot while leaning, so what was the point of adding it in?? Instead, the leaning is used to see who's around the corner, as if the game was supposed to have stealth mechanics, considering the fact that you get a pistol and an SMG with suppressors.
The game also has supernatural abilities similar to Remedy's Control (PS4, 2019) such as self-healing, invisibility, slow-motion, and a shield. But there is are two major problems with this. The first problem is that you can only use these abilities in limited quantity, because they don't recharge. Instead you have to find items in the stage to use them more, but they're rare throughout, which means you have to conserve them, but you're never gonna know when you have to use them, which means that you will restarting a stage a lot either because you are forced to, or you are inevitably killed. It's trial and error and it's repetitive.
The second issue is that the balance of these powers are shot to shit as well, and some of them just break the game entirely. The healing is almost pointless, because it's a waste when you have to use it because the AI can just laser you as soon as you are in their line of sight. The invisibility is pretty much broken because enemies either never see you or they'll still see you regardless, so again, trial and error. The slow-motion is borderline pointless, because it creates an insane blur effect that will make your eyes fucking ooze blood. Also, if you die while the slow-motion is active, the game will crash. Always.
The shield is also pointless because you can't see enemy gunfire, nor is there any feedback to it getting shot, so you'll just be wasting your power meter because you don't even know if you're getting shot.
[GAME BREAKING BUGS]
So if you even manage to get the game to run, it is buggy as fuck. There are issues like camera clipping, sound effect bugs, weapon misalignment, falling through the map and dying in some areas, the FOV is absolutely appalling, enemies getting stuck standing up when they die, and there are constant amounts of crashing. It crashes sometimes when you try to load a save file, it crashes when you die while in slow-motion, it can crash during cutscenes, etc. And you wanna know the worst part? The game is unbeatable. Well, for most people, and this is where it gets interesting.
So what do I mean by that? Well, there is a stage later on in the game where as soon as it starts, you die. There is no way to get past it, because even if you use the console to fix this bug, you will get met with an error window called "Open GL Error: #436." There is no way to fix this bug, and there is no way to skip this level. Period. End of story. It is ultimately because of a software breaking bug where the DRM would read the copy of the game as pirated and you can't continue, and it is an issue that persists even to this day. There are copies of the game where the bug does not exist, but those are insanely rare. The only way to fix it is if the developer were to terminate the DRM entirely, but that never happened, because the studio disbanded many, many years ago, so many copies of the game still remain unbeatable. However, you can still watch the rest of the game on YouTube. This is a game that I came across randomly on YouTube and I wanted to research it and then play it myself. Yes, I'm not joking, I played this game. I still own a desktop with Windows Vista. You can find copies of this game on eBay for like $10, but the copy I own is unfinishable.
I really, really wanted to experience this game after watching people play and talk about it, so in a sick sense of curiosity, I wanted to play this game myself just to see how bad it really was. And yeah, this is definitely one of the worst games I've ever played, but the development team did have a ton of fun making this game despite all of the hardships, and they did move on years later to assist in game development for AAA companies such as Square Enix, so that's cool. A good ending for a game that saw the light of day but never reached its full potential.
For starters, if you try to run this game on Windows 7 or higher, it will refuse to even load up. This is because every time a cutscene has to load, you'll be met with an infinite black screen. So if you remove all of the cutscenes from its folder, the game will work like normal, but even then, the game crashes all the time, and it's actually impossible to even finish it for most people, which I'll get into later. The game works fine on Vista, but any operating system other than that will require you to remove the cutscenes from the game.
[STORY]
The crazy thing is, the concept of this game is really interesting. The story of this game actually gets my attention, but it's ruined by just how awfully it's presented. The character models look like shit aside from the protagonist, the graphics are ugly as fuck, the voice acting is a disgrace, the pacing is all over the place, there are countless exposition dumps, and it just doesn't make any sense sometimes. Not to mention the levels barely correlate with the story, nor are they connected to each other, which just makes the story even more confusing than it already is. One level you'll be in a research facility, but then the next level is in either Hell, or in a stage that looks like a Looney Tunes cartoon shooting at cartoon characters with little explanation, I'm not kidding. And then the next level after that will be semi-open world in Central Park with insane amounts of backtracking. This game is just batshit fucking insane, it reminds me a lot of the Postal games.
The level design is like this because the developers did not want all of the them to look similar to each other, so each stage was designed differently in tone, and I can kind of understand that, but that just makes the tone of the game a jumbled mess, it's just incredibly inconsistent.
[CORE GAMEPLAY]
This is a First-Person Shooter, and just like the story, the core gameplay mechanics are busted. The hit detection is wonky, and the AI are totally braindead. They stand in one spot and just let you riddle them with bullets. And if they're holding a melee weapon, they charge at you head-on with no sense of logic. Sometimes they'll do a cartwheel... to dodge bullets. Very smart indeed.
The AI can go from braindead to physic cybernetic beings that know your exact positioning at all times, because the moment you turn a corner, they automatically shoot at you with insane accuracy.
The game also has a leaning mechanic, but not only can you lean only if you're against a wall, but you can't actually shoot while leaning, so what was the point of adding it in?? Instead, the leaning is used to see who's around the corner, as if the game was supposed to have stealth mechanics, considering the fact that you get a pistol and an SMG with suppressors.
The game also has supernatural abilities similar to Remedy's Control (PS4, 2019) such as self-healing, invisibility, slow-motion, and a shield. But there is are two major problems with this. The first problem is that you can only use these abilities in limited quantity, because they don't recharge. Instead you have to find items in the stage to use them more, but they're rare throughout, which means you have to conserve them, but you're never gonna know when you have to use them, which means that you will restarting a stage a lot either because you are forced to, or you are inevitably killed. It's trial and error and it's repetitive.
The second issue is that the balance of these powers are shot to shit as well, and some of them just break the game entirely. The healing is almost pointless, because it's a waste when you have to use it because the AI can just laser you as soon as you are in their line of sight. The invisibility is pretty much broken because enemies either never see you or they'll still see you regardless, so again, trial and error. The slow-motion is borderline pointless, because it creates an insane blur effect that will make your eyes fucking ooze blood. Also, if you die while the slow-motion is active, the game will crash. Always.
The shield is also pointless because you can't see enemy gunfire, nor is there any feedback to it getting shot, so you'll just be wasting your power meter because you don't even know if you're getting shot.
[GAME BREAKING BUGS]
So if you even manage to get the game to run, it is buggy as fuck. There are issues like camera clipping, sound effect bugs, weapon misalignment, falling through the map and dying in some areas, the FOV is absolutely appalling, enemies getting stuck standing up when they die, and there are constant amounts of crashing. It crashes sometimes when you try to load a save file, it crashes when you die while in slow-motion, it can crash during cutscenes, etc. And you wanna know the worst part? The game is unbeatable. Well, for most people, and this is where it gets interesting.
So what do I mean by that? Well, there is a stage later on in the game where as soon as it starts, you die. There is no way to get past it, because even if you use the console to fix this bug, you will get met with an error window called "Open GL Error: #436." There is no way to fix this bug, and there is no way to skip this level. Period. End of story. It is ultimately because of a software breaking bug where the DRM would read the copy of the game as pirated and you can't continue, and it is an issue that persists even to this day. There are copies of the game where the bug does not exist, but those are insanely rare. The only way to fix it is if the developer were to terminate the DRM entirely, but that never happened, because the studio disbanded many, many years ago, so many copies of the game still remain unbeatable. However, you can still watch the rest of the game on YouTube. This is a game that I came across randomly on YouTube and I wanted to research it and then play it myself. Yes, I'm not joking, I played this game. I still own a desktop with Windows Vista. You can find copies of this game on eBay for like $10, but the copy I own is unfinishable.
I really, really wanted to experience this game after watching people play and talk about it, so in a sick sense of curiosity, I wanted to play this game myself just to see how bad it really was. And yeah, this is definitely one of the worst games I've ever played, but the development team did have a ton of fun making this game despite all of the hardships, and they did move on years later to assist in game development for AAA companies such as Square Enix, so that's cool. A good ending for a game that saw the light of day but never reached its full potential.