The 3rd Birthday is the third game in the Parasite Eve series but decidedly not Parasite Eve 3. Unlike the other games in the series it is primarily a third person shooter, rather than an action RPG, although it still has a lot of RPG elements. The story also doesn’t really resemble the series in any real way besides the fact that the main character is Aya Brea… and she even starts out with Amnesia, and so I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started the 3rd birthday because I was basically expecting an updated version of the other games in the series.

The story in The 3rd Birthday is kind of like if Twelve Monkeys, or Quantum Leap were a monster/disaster movie. The game starts out depicting creatures called the Babel essentially ruining New York city. A few years after the destruction a team called the CTI is formed, and they induct Aya Brea because they find that she has the ability to transfer her soul into other peoples bodies, which they label “overdiving”. The CTI soon develop a device that can shoot her soul into peoples bodies in the past… and using these methods, they plan on fixing the future. Which might sound kind of out there, but I thought it was awesome.

The battle system is a pretty standard third person shooter with the overdive system incorporated into it. So you are essentially placed into a battle field and you inhabit soldiers bodies and send them into combat with Aya Brea’s consciousness.  While inhabiting peoples bodies you use their HP, and if they die before you overdive to the next soldier, you would die permanently. What I liked the most about this system is that you are essentially running people to their deaths… and they even draw attention to this fact by having one of the first cinematic sequences depicting Aya Brea overdiving into the body of a little girl right before she is grabbed by the Babel and killed. Which, makes me want to mention that this game is slightly gory… especially for a game put out by Square-enix.

The true strategy of the battles came from overdiving into different bodies and positioning them in ideal spots, or attacking enemies from behind… Which is an awesome concept, and it was decent in execution, although I think they were afraid of making the game too complicated so more often than not the game told you where you needed to be, or there was only one other body to overdive into, and so there wasn’t that much strategy to it. Therefore I would really like to see them make another game like this, and maybe have it focus on balancing the strategy.

The reason that I liked the original Parasite Eve was that it was a simple action RPG that was mostly focused on telling a story… and it took a little under 10 hours to play through, so it was essentially like an interactive movie. And while I was hoping the 3rd Birthday was a similar action RPG, I was glad that it introduced this cool new third person system, and I was pleased to see that it was nearly as focused at telling a story… Unfortunately I think the original PE did a lot better job at setting a creepy mood and being cinematic… I think this is mostly because third person shooters have to focus so much on action, and it doesn’t help that it’s on a portable system. Overall I think the original game did a much better job at telling a story, but this game definitely took the cake at being innovative… And it actually did a good job keeping the same approximate playtime as the first game, which is good for a gamer that doesn’t have that much time to play video games… But it has a lot of replayability as well, for instance, it has multiple difficulty settings, a new game plus feature, costumes to unlock, and plenty of upgrades.

The RPG elements in the game came from regular leveling up, leveling up weapon skill, upgrading weapons, and lastly, a chip system where you install abilities into your DNA… Which sounds complicated and therefore doesn’t merit an explanation… I guess.

The game runs smoothly, and there aren’t very many load times. (even though I didn’t install it.) The graphics are good, and I have very few complaints about the controls other than saying a few of the guns are difficult to aim with. As stated earlier it is a pretty standard third person shooter. You have the ability to carry up to four main weapons at a time (one for each direction on the d-pad) and you can throw grenades. There are plenty of weapons to use separated into different categories, Handguns, Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Special Weapons, and Grenade Launchers. The game also implements a special meter that you fill up as you attack enemies called the liberation gauge. After you fill up the meter you can turn yourself into a super solider for about fifteen seconds. In liberation mode you dodge every attack, teleport around, and shoot high damaging energy bullets from your gun. Probably the coolest combat feature though was the ability to overdive into weakened enemies killing them from the inside.

To wrap it all up, I will now attempt to compare the Parasite Eve games to eating breakfast… I think The Third Birthday was great, although it didn’t feel very expansive, like when you get to the end of the game it leaves you wanting more… Kind of like a bowl of lucky charms…. Whereas the original Parasite Eve, while having a similar playtime and possibly even taking less time to tell the story, somehow managed to feel like eating a big bowl of thick oatmeal while your mom is in the kitchen cooking you a delicious vegetable omelet… To sum up, both games are a part of a balanced American diet, but The Third Birthday definitely feels like something you want to eat while you are in a hurry to get you through the day, but Parasite Eve will make you consider skipping lunch. The Third Birthday, 8 out of 10 cartoon character plastic breakfast spoons!
You can buy The Third Birthday from Amazon Here!