Spy Fox 3: Operation Ozone

"Wanted:evil powerful animal with whacko plan to conquer world,flawed by hubris,tendency to leave important items,info around. Report to Spy Fox 4."

Spy Fox 3 strays into a different danger zone than Spy Fox 2; instead of overdoing some verbal jokes, Spy Fox 3 relies heavily on visual humor and bashing entities that deserve it. The fashion industry takes a huge hit here, with Poodles Galore, make-up queen and, literally and figuratively, a female dog(with the female dog boots to go with) trying to destroy the Earth's ozone layer. Not content with just giving a wad of dough to George W. Bush and his pals, she wants results immediately and installs a giant aerosol can in the sky that will spray the Earth's ozone layer away. Once it does, everyone will have to buy her sunscreen or die. Unless of course Spy Fox is there to help, along with his assistant, Monkeypenny, and Dr. Quack and his spy gadgets. Spy Fox 3 is definitely disconnected enough from the first two except for the characters and the three notes when you do something right. The resulting ideas make for a game that is not quite as fun as the first two but still a must-have for Spy Fox fans.

The game starts off in a bathroom, and with all the other satire that seemed planned I was worried that Spy Fox might go the way of that other guy in a white suit, Larry Laffer. But on opening the stall door I heard Spy Fox inform me the water moved counterclockwise, so we were in the northern hemisphere. What refreshing cluelessness--Spy Fox is at its best when it pretends it'll get dirty and doesn't. After a few more clicks(there's a very good physical clue) I found the way out to a bowling alley where Poodles Galore was waiting in the lanes. The first challenge in the game is to rescue the polymer scientist Plato Pushpin from her clutches(he's inside a pin,) after which you gain access to your spy car which lets you flip between four continents in your quest. Pushpin asks you for four items to make a congeal pill to stop the aerosol can's destructive effects, and the rest is up to you, with occasional help from infiltrator Roger Boar. The item variety between games is not so great(only two possible items have different paths: different foods and underwater items, and one item you need is a number) and there's a lot more reliance on breaking codes that are found the same way every time even if they are randomized, but the game is still well worthwhile.

Traveling around the world allows radically different environments, and Spy Fox looks good in all of them. Three have been stereotyped before, and one moves the plot conveniently: African desert, busy North American street, South American jungle, and Asian inland lake. It wouldn't be Spy Fox if the enemy base weren't immediately near by, and that is the case here. You can even see Poodles Galore without visiting the other three sub-locations, although you don't have the dialogs Spy Fox had with Napoleon LeRoach. Yet when Spy Fox gets on with his quest he will find exotic places such as Chicle-Pichu(a treasure trove of Chicles, one item always needed for the congeal pill) and a prickly pear garden guarded by an X-Ray machine and a beekeeping cove in the desert. But although the exotic locations are fun, the main one is clearly the best. The bowling alley features a mini-game(too bad it doesn't keep ten-frame scores,) a jukebox, and a make-your-own-bowling-shirt puzzle. There's even a choice of late-night diners(pizza or donuts) based on the game path, and a donut-stealing cop Spy Fox magnanimously brushes off('Well, we're on the same side,') along with a Cookie Scout who gets Spy Fox to sell some of her cookies to trade for her megaphone.

The spy gadgets are still a strong part of the game, too. Humongous does not seem to run out of puns as you have a can of laughter, a duck blind(to get past 'malicious mallards' guarding important objects,) a bun grenade you rip the top off and chew if you're hungry, a special alloy tin cup for listening through walls, and a weird bird called a 'grappling granny.' You can even leave them lying around at the place where you'll need them, freeing up an inventory space for it. Spy Fox tends to drop and break the one-use items, which is practical for you and makes Spy Fox seem that much more disorganized.

While it's always been easy to point and click your way to get where you want quickly in the Spy Fox series, with helpful arrows everywhere(the credits have been fantastically revamped to go with the third Spy Fox theme song,) the plot has become too facile in places. For instance, you receive a code word at one point, step into the next location, get a call from Monkeypenny on your communications watch for the obligatory poorly-disguised spy(one pops up in each game) to contact. From the spy you get the item to decipher the counter-code, no puzzle in between. While this is the less sensible part of a more complex two-part puzzle, it's really better as an introductory puzzle. And the game could have put your informant in more random places. Also, with how the items pop out slowly now, it's also an ordeal to look through your inventory once you start collecting items.

Yet plot aside, the humor is still there. There's no extension of the slightly overused 'S.M.E.L.L.Y.' puns of Spy Fox 2, and Spy Fox is still the quintessential straight-man for all sorts of jokes. Whether he's talking to the spastic Dr. Quack or suave Monkeypenny, you know you are controlling a guy who acts straightforward most of the time only because he's not good at anything else; heck, it's the ingenious devices that do most of the work for him, and the jokes he tells Monkeypenny would be painful in the real world. You suspect one week ago he 'graduated' from Knock Knock jokes but unfortunately he doesn't have quite the same range of devastating puns on completing a puzzle that he had before. To make up for it there's the vague company-wide promotion when Spy Fox folds an origami spy-gadget incorrectly(a character from another point-and-click appears,) and the different backgrounds make some new weird exotic clicking points. Then there are the intentional logical disconnects; the bowling alley scene has people running in the most senseless directions, and when Spy Fox drops in a swamp it is actually farther back to where he was than across, and pedestrian walk signs feature tails. Moments like this are when Spy Fox is at its best, and even when the puzzles are a bit simple the special effects can come to the rescue. For instance, Spy Fox must choose between bizarre hairpieces to get past one door, and there's a combination lock where you scroll among words and not numbers. Poodles Galore also provides respectable slapstick comedy with her fashion maven persona and her reflections on her rise to power(one after each item Spy Fox finds,) but it's been done, and the game does well not to rely on that.

Spy Fox 3 fell short in some of the areas that I thought the first two games in the series had under control(slightly forced plot, generally different paths to the end, ease of navigation, and fully clever items you find) but the places you visit and the new satire style help the game to complement the others. In all the only technical improvements might be that they allow you to play jukebox songs from the bowling alley on the CD and give less easy access to the hint file. Spy Fox himself gets away with a little silliness in rescuing the world--heck, he even gets an award if he fails to capture Poodles Galore. Humongous should, too, but I hope they can bring back the original creativity and that the new direction they've made was not out of necessity. There are things they seem to have down and that you forget you are impressed with after a while; the plots and characters are always original, and even the mini-game on Spy Fox's watch is fun again(imagine! Radioactive Trash Collector--a simple take-off on of Asteroids that's actually fun!) So I wouldn't mind the world being in jeopardy again for a tough, polished Spy Fox 4--with Poodles neutralized, I suspect the next bad guy at least won't raise the risk of sunburn, a personal pet peeve of mine.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/02, Updated 07/29/02