Spy Hunter

"Very dissapointing ..."

I didn't even buy this game (thank god), but I did rent it for a few days. That time was more than enough to give this game a thorough review.

Gameplay: 8

You are a Spy. Your objective is to stop a company from destroying the world using four satellites called the Four Horsemen. The evolves around you racing around stages in your awesome Interceptor. The car features machine guns, missiles, and oils slicks. There are other weapons, but those are the basics. When your car hits water, it turns into a boat. When you're about to be destroyed, a little scooter comes out for ejection. Each mission is basically the same. Destroy this, destroy that. Minimize civilian casualties. I find the last one near impossible, because they find every possible way to get a civilian killed when you're chasing something. Frustrating.

The most annoying part is that you must complete ALL the objectives within one run. I don't know this for a fact (I didn't have my memory card in), but it seems to be the case. Doing the main objective is easy, but the secondary ones are the hard parts.

Locating SatComs will drive you insane. Most of the time they're so well hidden that you'll run out of time before you could possibly find them.

The enemy A.I. is fairly poor, and all they do is drive around in front of you so you can kill them. The hardest parts are the water missions with mines and such.

Attack helicopters are useless, and the Attack Jets bounce around in the sky. Up and down, up and down. Major glitch there. Not even Harrier Jets could do that.

Graphics: 7

Impressive. Your car looks very realistic, and very good. Enemy Interceptors also look very sharp. Other than that though, everything seems kind of choppy. The enemy pickup trucks are one good example of choppy.

The framerate is fairly smooth, although it dips quite a bit when missiles are exploding all around you.

Sound: 9

This I like. The Spy Hunter theme is perfect for the game and makes it 10X better. I love the music, and I'm sure you will, too.

Replay Value: 5

There is none. Period. You do the missions, you complete enough objectives from one to do the next, and you're done. There is nothing else to do.

Multi-player: 7

Extremely bad. In order to even play multi-player, you MUST complete ALL of the objectives for a single-player level to play multi-player on it. Killing each other is extremely tough, and the race for SatComs is determined who jumps out ahead in the first few seconds. Very frustrating. No challenge at all, much less strategy.

The Final Word

The hardest part about the game is merely staying alive. The music is great, the Interceptors are well detailed, but everything else in the game is below average or worse. Only like 14-16 levels round out this game, and two of them are training levels. You can't kill your friends (or attempt to) on multi-player unless you fully beat the level on single-player.

Rent or buy? You want to rent this. Not worth your $50 by a LONG shot. Go rent it for $3 or something.

Final Score: 7
(Not an Average)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/02, Updated 03/26/02