GamersInfo.net

The notion of being a spy, being able to single-handedly infiltrate an installation has always appealed to me. I think Deus Ex, at least for me, was the last game that mixed a good feeling of exploration, tactical takedowns, precision movements and eavesdropping to complete objectives and progress through your mission. This was the reason I was so excited to play Death to Spies — not because you can knife people in the head! But ... that is a perk.

Death to Spies is a single-player, third-person perspective game in which you act as a Russian spy. During the course of the game, a superior officer sits you down and gets you to walk through many of the missions you have been involved in prior to this meeting. Before and after each mission, there is a video sequence giving you some history on the background and what is to happen. I found this feature rather useless; and, to be honest, while the script might be considered decent it could be considered equally horrible. It was very difficult to tell what really was going on, and why? The voice acting. Long and monotone conversations make you completely uninterested in what is going on and what happens to the characters; you simply get lost in a sea of words. At times, a guard or someone will enter the room and begin to talk; although, they must have just recycled one of the two main actors voices, because they all sound very similar, just very poorly done. It doesn't help that the video had stale settings, character models clipping objects and characters that kinda moved like they were doing the robot dance; Russians shouldn't robot dance.

Be warned right now that Death to Spies is not a first-person shooter at all. You cannot jump around and use your machine gun to pwn 40 German soldiers and show off your mad skills or any other of those l33t things you may do. The main character is a bit slow and sluggish, aiming your weapon is skillful, and takedowns are precise and quick; additionally, image and noise management is paramount to your survival. You must be patient, wait for the right timing and patrols to pass, then maximize your safe time in an area while you silently take out the enemy.

Before most missions, you are able to select your starting gear, and you best choose wisely. Select from backpack types to a variety of grenades, smoke bombs, chloroform, lock picks, first-aid kits, mines, explosives, binoculars, pliers, knives and your ammo weapons. You are able to hold a pistol and either a submachine gun, rifle or sniper rifle. There are usually half a dozen of each weapon class and ammo clips you can choose from. The problem with that is that I really have no clue what the models are, including their power, range, origin or anything. Basically, I always picked whatever had a silencer on it. The missions vary from assassinations to collecting data or top-secret information, freeing prisoners, or finding the mole in your own network — they vary greatly in strategy.

Luckily the gameplay of Death to Spies isn't as poorly done as the videos. The spy portion is very well-thought out, and the game at every moment relies on a large number of factors and conditions to determine who can see you and who can detect you. One of the primary factors is your appearance; wearing the default Russian uniform in a German encampment is most likely going to get your shot at quickly, so finding a German one is better. Now you can only take another's uniform if you haven't damaged it. Basically you need to make perfect headshots with guns or knives, or strangle, chloroform, or just melee by hand. The blood from a headshot seemingly has no effect on being suspicious or not. There are multiple grades of uniforms, from various soldiers, officers, drivers, doctors, scientists and wardens; the higher rank you obtain, the fewer enemies will question your identity. However, once you are discovered in that uniform and the alarms sound, it is toast, and you'll always be recognized if you are wearing it, so you can't wreck a special uniform and get through the rest of the level easily! Equipping a non-German rifle also will cause get you discovered, along with a backpack, as well as actively equipping a number of weapons like knives, non-German pistols, choke cords, grenades and more.

In addition to your appearance, there are many actions that can make you appear very suspicious, and if you don't stop doing them fast, you'll be fired upon — like picking a lock or looking through key holes, sneaking around and being spotted, pointing a weapon at anyone, or transporting a body around. All of these have varying levels of severity, and of course, at the very edge of an enemies eyesight, their suspicion doesn't raise too quickly as they can't make out what you are doing; but do it right before them, and you will have almost no time at all before things go bad. But how can you know if an enemy can see you? Or if they are capable of seeing through your disguise? The map! In Death to Spies, the map is your most-used tool, and the game would be next to impossible without it. Every enemy is shown on it, along with a color indicating if they will call you on your uniform or not. Their sight range is defined, with two tiers of regions, one for instant identification and the other that will raise suspicion over time if you are in it. You can zoom in and out and plan out levels with your map before you even start.

Sound in Death to Spies is very important. It is at times your best friend and your worst enemy. Most of the actions you perform make sound: Grenades, mines and explosives almost always will alert large numbers of guards and sound an alarm. A machine gun or rifle will draw many of the guards' attentions, with running and doors opening having even less noise. A lot of sounds are visible in radius form on your map, sometimes helping you plan out a move. Sound can be your worst enemy when the sound of you hiding bodies in a warehouse while the guard outside the door hears you and comes to take a peak. It becomes hard to shoot him when you have a body in your arms. It can be your best friend when you plant a body on the end of the warehouse, quietly move to one side of the door and whistle (or make a variety of other noises), and as the guard walks in, you close the door behind him and knife him in the head! I have this thing for knives in Death to Spies ... I, uh ... like to throw them at people's heads. You can thrown glass items, whistle, run or do a bunch of things to make noise, so you need to decide when and when not to make a sound; kill silently, or kill loudly? Maybe you want to lure that one guard over and get two for the price of one.

Generally speaking, being a spy is just too cool. The game is set up so that you will encounter many different scenarios and be able (if you choose) to use countless strategies to eliminate your enemies — from slickly slicing a throat, strangling someone quietly, chloroforming someone and then kidnapping their body, or using precision headshots with pistols to take down multiple close targets. At times, you develop this smooth spy sense and feel all slick about yourself.

A big negative for me was that I found this game extremely difficult. Well, maybe it isn't that difficult, but you will have to save and load countless times to get anything to really work. There is a combination of bugs and sluggish controls that really end up blowing your cover endlessly, and when you blow your cover, most times it is impossible to make it out alive. Sometimes you are discovered because of what must be a variety of bugs. There were many instances in which I had hidden all my bodies in private offices or in areas completely inaccessible to enemies, but bodies were discovered. Nobody was even in that area! I've had alarms go off randomly without warning and been fired on multiple times, and in each case, just reloading from your save game and performing the exact same actions leads to no alarms. It can be frustrating and even confusing at times.

The sluggish controls are by far the most annoying and irritating part of the game; it actually ruins what should be a great game. So I have to pull off this combo of killing three enemies in a room, but if I get an alarm pulled, I'll be trapped, so it is definitely out of the question to screw up. One guard by the door and a nurse and guard in the center of the room, no problem.. I stand behind the guard near the door and wait for the perfect moment. The other guard and nurse turn their backs, and I slit his throat, then throw my knife into the other guards head ... it went right through it ... damn, reload. This time, I slit his throat, hit the guard in the head, draw my silenced pistol and fire at the nurse (who isn't very far away) and miss. Reload. Same thing, hit the nurse, but somehow every guard outside the building has found out. Reload. It is a combination of bugs, a genuinely difficult game (which is a good thing) and then very sluggish controls that amount to hair-pulling frustration. Maybe if your character was capable of adjusting his aim in the significant pause between firing/throwing and when you actually tried to fire, things would be much more reasonable.

Each mission you perform is scored in five categories. The combat score you want as low as possible. This is a measure of how much you use noisy weapons; unfortunately there are some situations in which a good chunk of action in an isolated area is a wise move, but you'll get penalized for this. Aggression is how much you kill. There are times you really can bypass killing most of the level, but major penalties occur if you kill civilians. Keeping your aggression score low is tough at times, because you really want to pop those annoying civilians. Noise is a very sensitive rating. One alarm, and you max out; one grenade or any substantial use of machine guns will give you a 100 percent as a score. Too bad you need to keep this score low as well. Professionalism and Precision you want as high as possible. Precision is your accuracy; missing is definitely bad, and using close-range knives or choking has no negative effects. Again, sometimes you just want to kill, not get a headshot, so your score might suffer. Professionalism is basically rating how you kill. Going out with grenades and explosives is not very professional, but cutting throats, chokes, stuns and bullets to the head are. All the scores are based on factors like the uniforms you wear, difficulty settings and much more.

The graphics in Death to Spies are nice, but there are some problems with objects clipping, characters falling through solid objects and just poor character models/animations. Indoor and outdoor items look great. It is just the characters that tend to suffer in quality. The videos are hastily done and uninteresting, as I already mentioned. The music is nonexistent, but you really don't want music here; you need to hear and be heard while you play. The sound effects, and most importantly, the sound levels seem to be right on. The game really could have used voices for the guards; the entire time I was playing, I kept making up little conversations in my head about what they'd say. They turn their head for 15 seconds or so, and the next thing they know, the guard down the hall is gone, and there is me standing there all suspicious. I mean, you'd think that after he was gone for 30 minutes or so they'd think something was up, right? Maybe it was better there were no voices, because the little scenarios I made up were pretty humorous — at least for me.

Death to Spies at times doesn't seem like a spy game at all, and that probably isn't a good thing. Most of the time I thought I was figuring out puzzles and combinations: First kill guard A then B, and hide them here, and then work my way from the more northern guard, or something like that. I spent so much time reloading the game from the slightest slip up that it felt more like hitting the undo button constantly. They have done a great job of factoring in almost all the details (at least all of them within reason) about being a spy and really have done an incredible job in capturing the feel, frustration and danger of the situation. It is the most realistic play experience I have had to date, from weapon recoils, crouching and laying down to hide. And your inventory management — the developers didn't go easy or spare any detail. However, the sluggish and awkward controls make you so very clumsy and inaccurate that you are constantly failing your objectives, and this DOESN'T make me feel like a spy at all.

I really wanted Death to Spies to be more fun, and it was for quite a bit. But the loading constantly for the same "mistakes" over and over just got annoying. In the end, I ask myself: Did Death to Spies do what it was supposed to do? I don't think I can say yes. However, if you love a challenge (especially on the even harder settings) or love to methodically eliminate enemies, Death to Spies might be up your ally. It is by no means a bad game. In fact, I quite admire how they have designed it and all the little details that fit into the game so perfectly. There are just a couple of annoyances that really ruined it for me.