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If there is one thing I have learned from The 3^rd Birthday is that if I see Aya Brea walk into a room I am occupying, I need to find the nearest exit and fast, as most likely, bad stuff is about to go down, and most of the observers around the area are going to end up dead or worse.  If you are a gamer though, you are going to find a bundle of fun in this PSP title, as long as you are willing to put in the commitment that The 3^rd Birthday demands from you.  It is tough, challenging and a formidable title for you on the PSP, but it ends up being a very rewarding experience with perseverance.

The 3^rd Birthday starts off with a tremendous opening video that shows poor New York getting completely decimated by an opponent that we only know as “The Twisted”.  We see this version of New York get hit at the end of 2012 and the city is completely laid to waste.  Moving forward a year, we now have Aya Brea, who has a complete lack of memory, helping a special operations team called CTI (Counter Twisted Investigation Team) by using a unique power called Overdive, which allows Aya to go back in time to change the events in the past, and hopefully eliminating The Twisted infection before it can take over.  Sure, it sounds convoluted, and the plot can be very ham-fisted at times, but if you are willing to take the time to understand everything that is going on between the story and the volumes of information that you are presented with via the mission computer, briefings and more.

Combat is the main focus in The 3^rd Birthday, with Aya Brea being sent back in time to combat The Twisted.  However, she does not come back as herself; instead, she is transported into the bodies of soldiers in the 2012 time period.  From here, she will use a host of guns, grenades and heavy weaponry to dispatch all sorts of different Twisted type, from basic grunt types that go down with a clip of ammo, to huge beasts that will nearly fill up the screen of the PSP.  Gun play is fast and frantic, with the shoulder buttons used to lock on to enemies and shoot them.

While that does not sound all that impressive on its own, it is when you factor in the Overdive system that combat really starts to shine and come into its own with The 3^rd Birthday.  With Overdive, you can transport yourself into any of the soldiers on the battlefield.  At first, I thought it would just be a gimmick to gameplay, but it shortly becomes the de facto battlefield practice, to set up a soldier in a location, use some fire to distract a beast, and then using Overdive to attack the same beast from a flank.  The Overdive feature adds a surprising amount of depth to gameplay in The 3^rd Birthday, as you find yourself using it whenever possible, and believe me, it will be needed when you start to find yourself completely overwhelmed in the larger battles.  It can even be used to finish off opponents, as an icon will appear over the enemy when it can be used, leading Aya to jump in and explode them from the inside.

This presents itself with the biggest complaint I can find with The 3^rd Birthday and that is because of the scope of some of the battles, you end up fighting the controls on the PSP.  It is not a lack of the game, but losing a second analog stick ends up being a real killer when you face up against a horde of enemies.  It becomes very difficult to get oriented in the right direction, and you will find yourself watching death animations many times as you are swarmed with enemies that you cannot keep up with, even using Overdive liberally.  It is not bad, but shows the limitation of the platform that the game is shoehorning itself onto that becomes the main problem.

I did enjoy the fact that the development team took great strides to make sure that those, like myself, that had not been exposed to the prior Parasite Eve games are not lost in the story, with the inclusion of all the extra backstory info that is available.  I found myself reading the copious volumes of information that were in the bios and it really helped make sense of the story, even with its convoluted twists and turns.

As with prior Square Enix published titles, The 3^rd Birthday is astounding to look at on the PSP, with rich visuals and little lighting and particle effects strewn about at every turn.   For a system that is really starting to get long in the tooth when it comes to hardware, there are games that still stand out, and this is definitely one of them.  All the characters are well rendered, and, throwing back to the prior games, damage to Aya is still handled by her clothes slowly disintegrating over time.  Not quite sure how that works, but hey, who am I to question a long standing tradition in the series.  Cut scenes are beautiful, and liberally sprinkled throughout the game, adding more development flair to the title.  The voice work is also well done, and there is a surprising amount of it throughout the game.

Beyond the frantic battles, I would say that the only other issue is that I would have rather seen the title in a full PS3 release rather than a PSP release.  I love the fact that Square continues to be a proponent of the PSP, and the title is a quality release, but it just seems that will such a focus on third person shooting mechanics, it would have been better featured in a controller oriented experience, rather than a confined handheld.  Sure, I can output my PSP to the big screen, and The 3^rd Birthday does output very well, but I yearned for that second analog stick for camera movement over the D-pad.  Again, not a heavy knock against the game, but something that kept kicking into my brain as I was playing.

The 3^rd Birthday provides a deep, fast paced, yet tactical combat experience, that is filled with challenging combat at every turn.  It does have a steep learning curve, and you will struggle with the controls from time to time, but it is easily one of the better PSP experiences you will find this year.  The 3^rd Birthday gets 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out The 3rd Birthday and other Sony PSP reviews at Test Freaks.