GAME RELEASE 'Psi-Ops' psychics almost go there

Game designers should have made psychic powers more dominant.
By VICTOR GODINEZ
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Midway's new "Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy" brings some amazing innovation to the increasingly formulaic third-person shooter genre.
If the developers had been a little bolder, this could have been a masterpiece, but "Psi-Ops" is pretty cool nonetheless.
The game is out for PlayStation 2 and Xbox; I tested the PS2 version.
"Psi-Ops" ($49; suitable for ages 17 and up) puts you in the boots of a standard futuristic American warrior but with a twist: You're as comfortable with telekinesis as you are with a machine gun.
You can use your mind to lift enemies off the ground, spin them in the air and toss them against crates and walls. You can also use Mind Control to hop into the body of your foe, which comes in handy when you want to take a jaunt behind enemy lines.
Mind Control lets you briefly play as the enemy character, and you can flip switches, blow up bad guys who don't know you've possessed their comrade and force your entranced enemy into suicidal acts.
And, of course, you can go nuts with pyrokinesis when you just want to watch things burn.
The excellent physics engine highlights the destruction.
Bad guys crumple and sag when you throw them around with your big brain, and metal boxes and crates tumble and dent as they should when you slam them around with your telekinetic powers.
Or you can hop on a crate, levitate it and enjoy a magic carpet ride.
Too much reality
The psychic powers are so much fun that it's a shame the game forces you to use your regular firearms so often. It's almost impossible to take out more than one bad guy at a time with your mind powers, and you generally end up in mindless firefights when there are more than a handful of enemies in your way.
It would have been great if you could lift five or 10 bad guys, twirl them around the room and smash them together.
There are frustratingly few items that you can manipulate with your telekinetic powers. Tearing open doors and heaving giant trucks across a level would have been a blast.
Too many missions can be accomplished without using your powers at all.
And sadly there's no online play. Multiplayer psychic death matches seem like a no-brainer.
Still, "Psi-Ops" is tremendously fun even in the regular single-player missions, and perhaps Midway or someone else will come up with a sequel or similar game where there's more focus on the psychic powers.