The spy who shot me Review
^click above for video review!^
Sometimes you just need to blow off some steam and the Spy Who Shot Me from Retro Army Limited had me covered. On Steam, no less 😉 This brief but enjoyable romp reminds us of the best things you remember about Goldeneye and Timesplitters and other similar franchises: lighthearted humor, surprisingly decent gunplay, and horrendous checkpoints! Let’s get stuck into why this one is worth a couple brief but eventful hours of your life! “smashing!”
IT’S A SHOOTER, FIRST PERSON SHOOTER
The Spy Who Shot Me is an obvious Bond parody and stars Agent 7, who’s name is apparently just 7, Agent 7 as he explains. He’s a haughty, wisecracking Archer type and he’s an utter joy to watch, as are the likeable and much more PG 13 versions of Bond standbys. Your superior is a man called Mother, and your coworker Agent 6 often supplements you in the field but usually ends up using ridiculous genderbending costumes to blend in or winds up getting captured. Seeing where and how he’ll pop up is a fun little running gag. Even the Bond babe you meet is treated with care, as instead of being used for eye candy, she speaks with 7 seductively about the possibility of…beachside chess? Charming! And she pops up in subsequent levels just to say something quirky. I had a smile the whole time I played and when the game pushes your skills a bit with its difficulty, this light tone will definitely help allay any gamer rage you might otherwise be simmering with.
Our story setup is one of that allows for all the good tropes you’ve seen in countless spy flicks, and here we have the forces of MI-69 (cuz why not) battling the villainy of S.C.U.M., who as Agent 7 says, “all look alike.” There’s a simple story here that takes you all over the world in a variety of shootouts and vehicle sections and has a fun twist at the very end. Because the game is only a couple of hours long I’ll leave the story for you to experience first-hand so let’s into gameplay and level design.
The gunplay initially has a loose, kind of cartoony feel of a lightgun shooter or Goldeneye/Timesplitters but the more I played, the more I was impressed with the sound effects and feedback. While there’s not really any stealth beyond the first person you whack in an area that alerts the rest, the pistol silencer sounds so cool and secret agenty you’ll just want to equip it over the standard pewpew mode. And the shotgun just slaps; oh, that chonky sound effect! Overall, you’re a lot more of a hitman than a stealthy spy here but that’s okay because the guns feel good to shoot, almost Quakey in their effects and the feedback you get from your enemies falling before you. Your enemies aren’t particularly interesting to fight as they sort of pop-up like haunted house creatures with a Beavis and Butthead “heheh” every time they see you and have a nasty habit of firing around corners or through geometry if you’re near a doorway, but that’s fine since the game is more interested in you being precise with your shots than overcoming big brain AI.
Graphically, you’re getting a blocky N64 or Ps1 pointy polygonal aesthetic (show Lara Croft) that captures the nostalgia of days gone by but also looks polished. There are pretty funny repetitive and silly looking animations too. The level themselves repeat many assets as you might expect from a small developer but also one trying to replicate the look of old school games. Locations include classic spy locations like a swanky, remote hotel, a boat in harbor, underground bases, and an ice level you’ve seen in so many Bond games or in a classic N64 title like Shadows of the Empire (which we will be reviewing here one day as it’s an old favorite). Spy Who Shot Me has a weird level traversal mechanic in that you’ll often into blocked off areas and have to go down winding side paths to retrieve a 7 token that will unlock that area for you so you can backtrack and then move forward. It doesn’t make any real world sense but it does compel exploration of the whole space. It’s still a fairly linear affair overall but that’s fine, since this a game about shooting first and foremost, about getting as many headshots as you can or trying to use the power of the shotgun or the bolt-action rifle to get double kills and things of that nature.
That being said, waving a gun around isn’t all you do. Several vignettes let you take control of a speedboat, ski down slopes, or take part in mandatory timed obstacle courses. These are a little janky, especially the speedboat section that requires you dodge mines but also not run aground where you’ll get stuck and take inexplicable friction damage before blowing up and having to restart the whole thing. This was the only section where the controls and the general length of the section with no saves became a bit tiresome but ultimately it wasn’t too bad.
On that note, I should mention that levels often have very dubious checkpoints. Some short levels have a midpoint checkpoint and some have none. And not all sections once finished, even if they display a mission briefing screen about your clear time or how many side objectives you completed like blowing up computers or rescuing civilians, you can quit out “too early” by the game’s standards and come back to realize you must replay several sections again to get a hub point where the game saves your progress. Generally, I didn’t stop unless I saw this repeated cutscene of the London skyline and then Agent 7 here chilling out in front of headquarters, but even that isn’t always there to signpost progress so it’s a bit of a crapshoot.
This shouldn’t come up a ton as the game is short enough you’ll probably beat it in several sittings but if some of the tougher sections are wearing you out and you want a break, it can be frustrating to come back and realized you inadvertently quit sooner than the game liked and have to replay fifteen minutes or so to get back to the frustrating part. It is to the game’s credit though that when it does push you outside your comfort zone that the gameplay is fun enough and speedrunnable enough that I kept persevering through some tough sections till I got through and felt pretty satisfied that I figured out the trick or mastered the weird vehicle controls.
So that’s the Spy Who Shot Me: it’s short, sweet, and very charming. The gunplay’s surprisingly decent, the levels and character models are nostalgically rendered and pleasing to look at, the voice acting and humor is great fun, and it’s honestly just nice to play something that doesn’t lean on good memories to be fun. I never owned a N64 or a Playstation growing up but I do remember cluelessly wandering around icy levels dying to 3 or 4 other Oddjobs played by my cousins and friends. The fact that this game faithfully recaptured a one off 20 plus year old memory is quite a feat and I think you’ll get a kick out of too. Plus it’s crazy cheap on Steam and often goes on sale for as little as 2 dollars, so check it out!
