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Is it someone’s birthday? Probably, but not here – The 3rd Birthday is actually a follow-up to the Parasite Eve series, from way back in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was originally going to be released as a mobile phone title but around 2008 during the Tokyo Game Show it was confirmed to be released for the PSP instead.

To begin with the main story may be a little confusing for a few people, but it shouldn’t take long before you know what’s going on. The game is set around December 24th 2012, in Manhattan on Christmas Eve. Strange creatures known as ‘The Twisted’ show up from the middle of nowhere and strange roots known as Babels start showing up all over the place and attacking humans. One year later, an investigation group called CTI (Counter Twisted Investigation) is formed.

One of the members of the CTI, Aya Brea, was found lying blood-soaked in her wedding dress outside of St. Peter’s Cathedral back in 2010 just before the Babel’s and Twisted began appearing. Aya has no memories of her past or what happened during the day of her wedding, the CTI discover that she’s capable of transferring her soul from body to body. CTI develop an Overdrive machine which can go back to the events of 2012 during the events when the Twisted and Babel’s started to appear in the city.

Gameplay: The gameplay in previous Parasite Eve games is a mix between standard RPGs and survival horror games like Resident Evil, but the gameplay for the 3rd Birthday is slightly different, though still quite easy to get used to. It’s more of a 3rd person shooter this time around, but with RPG elements. Combat plays out in a similar manner to other 3rd shooters like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. You can use the L Button to hold down and target-lock on to your enemies; and use the R button to fire your weapon. You can use the Square button to reload your ammo or you can hold Square and use the directional pad to select you weapon. Most of the weapons that you will use are hand-guns, sniper rifles, machine guns like the AK-47 and occasionally a laser gun.

There is an ability called “Overdrive” which is where you can jump from body to body from other soldiers, if you are near to a certain death you can jump into another person’s body. Teammates can be ordered either to target specific enemies or to defend themselves in combat; if enemies are weak you can jump into them by pressing triangle to destroy them from the inside.

Another thing that you will be using a lot will be OE Chips – you can add and fuse these chips together for abilities and augments. It is a little random but easy to get used to later as you progress through the game and on top of that you’ll be gaining more abilities and skills which be an added incentive to master the system.

Graphics and Sound: The 3rd Birthday does have some really good visuals and CGI cutscenes. Most cutscenes throughout the game are pretty breath-taking, from character animation to the large enemies that you’ll see in the game. Environments are highly well detailed throughout the city of Manhattan in 2012, it’s very impressive seeing the Babel roots shooting from the ground and grabbing a hold of the city. The city’s underground catacombs are also very well detailed.

The camera control can get a little fiddly at times but it’s not that much of a problem for the bulk of the gameplay. Occasionally you might get a little frustrated by the number of enemies that you’ll see on the screen, though all of this depends on what difficulty you play the game on. Square Enix really have done a good job keeping things in order with regard to the game’s presentation and excellent cinematic graphics. You can Data Install the game which will take around 214 MB for your PSP memory stick; or if you own a PSP GO it’ll be around 1.2 GB for your the entire download.

The soundtrack is well composed and you may even hear one or two Christmas songs in the background during one or two cutscenes during the game.  The voice acting is more of a mixed bag – most of the voice acting does a decent job but occasionally it puts you off what is otherwise a highly enjoyable 3rd person shooter.

Overall: You may be surprised how relatively short The 3rd Birthday is; it can take around 5-6 hours to beat, but  outside of the main story you can still get a good few hours of shooting much stuff as you like and jumping through body to body through random soldiers and ripping enemies in half. There’s also plenty of unlockable stuff to collect from costumes, cheats and secrets to unlock.

It may be an odd game, but it’s excellent nonetheless. It helps to have played the earlier Parasite Eve games, but it’s not necessary, and The 3rd Birthday has a lot of solid, fun gameplay to offer PSP owners.