A further example of speed bumps during game play is the need to remind your agents to do their jobs. If an agent unlocks a door, you then have to tell them to resume movement. Smooth.
Endless hallways make up the world of I-Spy. |
Next on the list of pain is the mission planning screen. Most of the options in the planning screen text windows are as useless as those to be found in-game. Either something confusing and untoward happens and is quickly over, or I am sent directly into a mission I know nothing about.
And that is I-Spy's greatest weakness. You never know where you are or what you're doing. Sure, it tells me I'm stealing Item X from Company Y. BIG DEAL. If I don't have an inkling of where Item X is, or how Company Y is protecting it, it's no fun to be looking for it. It starts to feel a good deal like how I imagine the experience of breaking into a stranger's house and looking for money would. You know it's there somewhere. Just keep going from room to room checking under every item, because you'll find it some day.
Because of your lack of any real mission briefing it is entirely possible to get focused on a stupid side-quest, thinking it is the Real McCoy. During one mission, my agents infiltrated the Berlin Institute of Technology, and encountered a force field that activates when it senses body heat. Instant mission objective: find a way to lower the agent's body temperatures so they can pass through the force field. I managed to cool one agent down by having him stand in a high powered freezer for several seconds. Voila! He could then walk through the nasty force field. Then the coolness stopped, both literally and figuratively.
Now that Mr. Agent was on the other side of the force field, I couldn't get him back. I also quickly realized that this was why they only let me freeze one agent. Like they teach us in grade school, somebody needs to be on the side of the force field with the off switch -- otherwise you're SOL.
A guard performs a fatality, pulling out your still-beating heart. |
So, I set off through the Institute, looking for a way to deactivate the force fields. At first I was worried about guards and security cameras and other force fields, but now that I look back on it, I feel a bit silly. For you see, there were no guards and no cameras, and the only other force field I encountered was seemingly in place to trap the agent who had frozen himself and snuck past this ingenious piece of technology.
It is entirely possible to screw the pooch so badly in these situations that after an hour or so of retracing your steps, you realize that you've blown the mission and need to start over. Of course, should you accidentally send an under-prepared agent into a room with an armed guard, you'll be starting over anyway. Once again, the designers are daring you to play their game.
I could go on and on, ranting and raving about the things I don't like. I could go into the dull environments with their sub-par textures. The instruction manual that is more confusing than helpful. The character animation that makes me long for the realism of the Atari 2600. The Super Nintendo techno music soundtrack. The French guy who mumbles "Oui" and "What is zee mat-eh?" every five seconds, like clockwork. But I'm not going to go down that path.
I'm going to stop it now and remember the good times I had with I-Spy. The times when I was sure that once I overcame the nasty learning curve, and got the hang of things, that life would be good and I-Spy would rock.
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