Take 'Em To The Woodshed - (Re)Discovering PS1 games: Codename Tenka

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Last night I found my old CD wallet And started looking through some of my old CD's and wondering what the hell I was thinking with some of my past music choices. As I got deeper into the book, I found about 15 PS1 games - all scratched to shit - that I forgot that i even had. Metal Slug X, Castlevania:SOTN, Smackdown! 2, Monster Rancher, and Street Fighter EX + Alpha rounded out the cornicopia of forgotten mid-90's gaming goodness. Some had manuals, some were just manuals, and some didn't work at all. I started to remember why I bought some of these, and I gotta tell ya, not some wise choices there (San Fransisco RUSH... I'm looking at you ) One game in particular caught my eye, and although not entirely bad, it shouldn't be considered a masterpiece by any means...

 

 

"Codename: Tenka" by Psygnosis. I still have the "Tips & Tricks" magazine where I first saw the preview of this game along with, I believe - I'm really too lazy to look, Syphon Filter.

 

 

You gotta remember, this was 97/98 when I bought this. My gaming choices were made based on the sparse amount of Video Game Commercials, and blurry screen shots in magazines. We didn't have the internet at my house so I didnt have access to Videogames.com or even the abysmal AOL video game reviews. However, based on that, I was persuaded enough to pay $50 at electronics boutique for this.

 

The cut scenes were surprisingly well-done. In a time where fully rendered CG FMV cutscenes was really coming into its own, these looked remarkably good. Normally, PS1 game FMV fell victim to shitty compression and encoding, resulting in low frame rate and really bad pixelization. The movies in Tenka "moved" very smooth, but made no sense. Apparently, you are undergoing some sort of experiment in a hotel room (???), when someone comes in and cuts the power, letting you out. When you start the game, you're in that (seemingly) same hotel room, only now your armed with a side-grip equipped weapon.

 

 

Graphcially, I guess this game was supposed to be the pinnacle of what the PS1 could do at the time, but the first few levels (which, coincidentally, is as far as I went before writing this review) look very bland, and the textures suffer from that "warping" (see second screenshot) that is so prevalent in ALL PS1 games. I'm assuming that in an attempt to reduce the amount of slow down and activity on-screen, the HUD is kept simple. One the sccreen are two circles. The larger of which is surrounded halfway by a shield meter, and the smaller one is - through process of elimination - your health. The larger circle eventually becomes a radar through power-ups collected from defeated enemies. Your ammo supply is displayed on the gun itself, so the game doesn't leave you hanging in terms of health management and whatnot. The game does have a tendency to be a little dark, and coupled with the textures, someone could easily get lost in the first level, which is *supposed* to be INTRODUCTORY. There are some nice touches though - like when the slide on your weapon pulls back when you fire.

 

Tenka plays like your standard PS1 shooter - clunky but somewhat smooth. By today's standards, the control is atrocious, what with the advent of dual-analog controllers and all. There's never really any indication of where you're supposed to go, you're really just wandering aimlessly until you find a not-so obvious switch or a color-coded key to open a door you may have come across a while before.

 

Overall, this game is still pretty enjoyable - I plan to play some more of it before I fall asleep tonight. This is all I'm gonna write about this game, as that copy of "ONE" is calling my name. I think that's gonna be next.

 

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