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Review: SpyHunterReviewed By: Andy Coyne Review Computer: 1GHz G4 iMac, 768 MB RAM, Mac OS X v10.2.6 Review Date: August 28, 2003
"Why do I do this? Three reasons: the pay is good, scenery changes, and they let me use explosives." This quote from the movie Armageddon perfectly explains why I love the game SpyHunter (except the part about being paid). SpyHunter is a powerful remake of the 1983 arcade classic known by the same name. Incorporating several changes from the older version, this game is focused primarily for explosion loving teenagers, but is appropriate for all ages despite its "Teen" rating. The game has you driving your way through 14 exciting, fast paced levels, completing objectives and destroying enemies in an attempt to stop an evil villain from taking over the world. Imagine this: There is a growing threat to the world. Daemon Curry, the president of Nostra International, has a diabolical plot to take over the world. Using his facilities all over the globe, he plans to launch four satellites into orbit that he hopes will cause his lifelong goals to come true, in that "fire will fall from the sky, rivers will turn red with blood, and a war unlike any the world has seen will unleash the Four Horsemen unto earth." For 22 years, he has been planning for his attempt at world domination, and now, with an army of assassins at his disposal ready to enslave humanity, he is ready to set his plan in action.
This release of SpyHunter is a remake of George Gomez's arcade hit from 1983. This game was extraordinarily popular, integrating a new steering wheel interface and a classic soundtrack that is still known among many gamers. Changes that have been made from the 1983 version to the present version include more offensive and defensive weapons, and a change from top-down view to 3D perspective. The entire game is played from within your extraordinary vehicle, the G-6155 Interceptor (covered later). Needless to say, I loved driving at speeds of 150 mph plus and blowing things up with a heavy arsenal of weapons (perhaps that's why my parents keep on saying that I will never get my license as long as they are also on the roads...). Sadly, this game's plot line is more pathetic, improbable, and incomprehensible than a Bond movie. It is, however, slightly more child appropriate than Bond in that there are no Bond chicks or sexual innuendo of any sort. Oh well. This is a plus for the concerned parents, but a disadvantage for the teenaged audience on whom this game is focused. The best word I can think of to describe this game is "chaotic." Between running over Uzi carrying motorcyclists, downing helicopters with guided missiles, plowing through chickens and smashing through garage doors, this game is definitely not for the faint of heart. Before you start playing, you will definitely want to set the keyboard controls to something with which you will be comfortable and will remember because, once you start playing, there is no time to look down at your keyboard or controller. I feel the preset controls for these kinds of games are awful and need major adjustment. SpyHunter does support game pads and joysticks, and recommends the use of them. In addition, at least one non-keyboard controller is necessary to use the Two-player mode (more on that later).
The arsenal of offensive weapons available at your disposal from the Interceptor is intimidating, even from behind the steering wheel. Your first available weapons are machine guns, which get upgraded throughout the rest of the game. Next, you get missiles, upgradable to guided and then to launch four at once. Near the middle of the game, you acquire the EMP, a cannon used to disable your enemies and their big weapons. Lastly, you get the Rail Gun, which locks onto a target and blows it (and all enemies close to it) up. The Interceptor's defensive weapons also kick ass--despite the fact that I almost never used them. Either way, you start with the typical oil slick, used to cause pursuing cars to skid out. Later, you get the smoke screen, which covers the air behind you with a cloud of exhaust (just like the old big-rigs that are still driven for seemingly one reason--to pollute). Lastly, you get the rear flamethrowers, a massively powerful weapon with depressingly short range. In addition to the weapons, three other gadgets were available at your disposal. The first are the "trackers." These tracking devices shot out of your vehicle and latched themselves to whatever they are shot at. The second gadget is a scanner--a green screen that covers a circular area on your monitor, revealing hidden lasers. The last gadget in your car's arsenal is the turbo boost (can you guess what this does?). Two pieces of advice for the turbo boost: only do it on a straightaway and only do it when it is completely or almost completely charged. Lastly, two oddities about the Interceptor. First, when you are in hovercraft mode, your boat has one source of propulsion, the immobile rocket engine on the back of the craft. However, you are able to go in reverse. That means that you can go backwards with no propulsion. Hmm.... Second, your car has the inexplicable ability to maneuver and change velocityÑin mid air. Now, I haven't taken physics yet, but I find it highly improbable that any car could do that. Wait a second. Why on Earth am I questioning the logic of a video game!?!? Anyways, back from my moment of gaming doubtitude. The game is focused on single player play, consisting of 14 levels that take you around the world in an incomprehensible and unexplained path from country to country. No plot line is given, no story line is revealed, all you can infer is that you have a lot of frequent flyer miles or get really cheap gas (obviously they aren't getting the gas from California), cause you travel a a lot.
The objectives are not difficult to complete. The complicated part is finding the necessary things to complete the objective. You just need to watch very carefully for any hidden or partially obstructed path to follow, since they almost always are the secret to finishing an objective. Annoyingly, the trails are way too hard to see, and to find them you are forced to re-play the level over...and over...and over...and you get my point. By far, the biggest problem with the objectives is remembering what the objectives are. For example, remembering that you need to blow up five vans, collect four satcoms, and deactivate four bombs becomes surprisingly difficult. Fortunately, in the pause menu it shows all of your objectives for that level and whether they have been completed. Unfortunately, it doesn't show how much of a certain objective has been completed (ex. How many trucks you've blown up). In addition, your on-board computer will constantly say, "Objective failed," without telling you what you did wrong, and the pause menu doesn't always help clarify what's wrong. All of the levels are planned out very much like a race in that there is a start and a finish, and, other than a few shortcuts, only one way to go. They have you zooming through cities and down rivers, completing the objectives, dodging artillery, and blowing up enemies whenever necessary or desired. Each level has a time limit, though they are rarely short enough to cause any difficulty (unless you are unlocking the cheats explained later). In most of the levels, either a weapons van or boat will be stationed somewhere along your path. If you enter the boat/van (drive into the open back of it), the invisible people using the invisible machines and spare parts will completely repair, replenish and repaint your vehicle in one second. I'll bet the NASCAR people would love to get their hands on that technology. The level ends when you pass through a section of road conveniently marked off by green lights, and a cut scene will follow showing you boarding another weapon boat/van. The fourteenth level ends with you blowing up the main NOSTRA base into lots of little pieces simply by deactivating bombs. Hmmm.... Anyway, don't quit the game yet, there is still more for you to do. Now that you have beaten every level, the cheat grid will now be open. The cheat grid is a list of cheats that you can turn on and off; some of them available by default, others only after you beat a level in a defined amount of time (including all of the objectives). The cheats include things like night vision (TERRIBLE) and a differently colored Heads Up Display.
The two player function has three unique mini-games, all of which end when you reach the finish line. Throughout the levels, you can use the weapons available on that level to disable, slow down, or destroy your enemy to benefit yourself. The first two-player game is "Spy2 Head to Head," which is simply a race to the finish. In "Globe Trotter," the second multiplayer mode, the objective isn't speed but to collect as many satcoms as possible. The last game, "Chicken Hunter," is a game devoted to killing more chickens than your opponent before you cross the finish line. The biggest problem with the two-player games is that you can't just use two keyboards; either you and/or your opponent must use a game pad or joystick. Using my 1GHz new iMac, the in-game graphics were decent: enough detail to make it look fairly smooth, but they contained nothing special and the explosions generally looked poor. Fortunately, I experienced no time lags, and the occasional badly animated fireball wasn't enough to distract me from blowing up any canoes in my path. The treats of the game were the animated sequences. Before the first level and after every following one there was a sequence, usually of you escaping from the bad guys once again. My only complaint was that, occasionally, parts of the car looked very flat and camera movement was sometimes jerky. Other than that, they were extremely clean and well made. In many places, they were comparable to Blizzard's (the company that created games such as Warcraft and Diablo) animations. Definitely worth recognition in this review. Midway (the company that developed SpyHunter) is currently creating SpyHunter 2. I have three main requests for that game: first; come up with a better plot line, second; have the plot carry throughout the game, and third; show me the plans for the Interceptor so, when I become a multi-millionaire, I can hire someone to make me one.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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Pathetically, it has taken all of this time for the authorities to figure out that Nostra is a corrupt company that must be stopped. IES (International Espionage Services) has created an elite force known as SpyHunter to deal with the growing threat. You are Alec Sects, a former fighter pilot recently trained by the FBI to be an effective part of the SpyHunter team. Your weapon of choice is the G-6155 Interceptor, an incredibly awesome vehicle loaded with both offensive and defensive weapons, an on-board computer named Leonie (with a voice annoyingly similar to that of the computer voice known as Agnes) and the ability to transform into a hovercraft when on water and a motorcycle when running low on armor. Your job is to travel the world completing objectives and destroying enemies in an attempt to save the world from a forced apocalypse.
By far, the greatest and most important part of the game (from a gamer's standpoint) is your vehicle, the G-6155 Interceptor. SpyHunter's Interceptor is much better than any Bond vehicles I've seen in games such as these, truly giving you the opportunity to efficiently terrorize people from within your vehicle of mass destruction. The Interceptor is faster, stronger, better equipped to vanquish your enemies, and has morphing abilities. On land, it is a car, but when it enters the water, it becomes a hovercraft. And when it accumulates too much damage it becomes a smaller, hard to hit motorcycle/jet ski (depending on whether its in water or on land).
Each of the levels has one main objective and several other minor ones; the main objective is required to beat the level, but the other ones are required to progress to later levels. On the regular missions, the objectives consist of blowing up massive amounts of machinery and vehicles, disabling objects with EMPs, placing tracking devices on vans and boats, collecting "satcoms" (satellite communications), and my least favorite objective--avoiding civilian casualties. However, two of the levels are test drives of your car, and take place on a racetracks set up just like a regular driving test...only with machine guns and turbo boost. On those levels, the objectives consist of things like avoiding cones and flying certain distances on jumps.
Throughout the game, as you dodge explosives or whatever else you happen to be doing, you must constantly be watching the Heads Up Display (HUD). The HUD spans across of the top of your screen and shows all of the information necessary about your present state in that level. The HUD shows seven things: current defensive weapon and quantity of it, time remaining to finish level, damage meter, amount of turbo boost, current speed, current offensive weapon and quantity of it, and a rear-view mirror showing when you have an enemy on your tail.