Counterspy is just pure and simple fun. It's not overly complicated but it does what it does very well. It's set in the cold war and you have to stop America and Russia launching nukes in the moon as you're in some third party spy agency. The idea of the game is you have to collect information on what they're planning, then when you have enough of it, thwart their nuclear launch. There's more to do too, collecting weapon blueprints, upgrades, gathering other information for money (and boy do you need to get some of that to at least refill your ammo). You get to choose which side you raid each time too, American or Russian, with varying advantages and disadvantages to each. Each mission is about 10-15 minutes long so you can play it in bite sized chunks if you wish and you're never far away from your next upgrade.
The art style is great (as you can see above and may or may not agree with) too. There are cover based shooting bits (you know my thoughts there from last week), but they only happen a couple of times a mission and you can sneak past these bits anyway if you're good. The most interesting part though is the Defcon level. See that number top center of the picture? That's the number. You may also see that the meter is pretty full. Do that and it'll go to 2, fill up 1 and that's it, you're found, you have to run to the end of the level and abort the launch before it's too late and game over (don't worry, there's continues (thankfully (also I should point out that they have a different level for each side and how you do on one side won't affect the other)). You can fill the meter by being spotted and guards will phone it in, filling the meter, or if you die it jumps straight up to the next level. The only way to lower it is to make enemy captains surrender, which means you have to kill everyone else around them with hurting them, and point your gun at them, then they'll lower the level. There's 5 levels, you start at 3 but as the early levels are inevitably easy you can get it down to 5 quick, but then when you get later in the game, for example, you have to think if you want to take on the mission for the side you're at defcon 1 with, but there's 4 officers on site so you could lower it, or do I go for the other side where they're at level 3, but there's no officers around, add in to this decisions on weapon parts and how much information is available at each site and picking which base to go for each time becomes a mind game in itself.
Still with me? Good, I think I made that sound more complicated than it actually is. I've only got a couple of gripes, like you can't invert the aim mid mission (this made my first mission go terribly), you can't swap out your original pistol from the weapons wheel (despite the fact I spent loads of money on a shotgun before the last mission and then couldn't fit it in my arsenal) and sometimes on the later missions, you'll walk through a door into a room full of enemies, only for one just to be standing there facing the door, then they all open fire at you, how are you supposed to sneak around that?
They are minor gripes though really, I thought this game was great.
So, the other game this week was Dying Light. This is a game I was convinced to get by a friend so we could play co op together, and after days of berating me for having ordered it online and it not having arrived, since it's arrival not one second of co op has been played (and yes, annoyed message, this is for you).
Anyway, it's another one of those free roaming hordes of zombies games that Dead Rising did so well back in 2006, but since it's 2 sequels, the Dead Island series, State of decay and many many more I've got weary of them, but I thought why not, it's something to play on the side. The problem is, I can't be arsed. The game is all about doing side quests (completely clashing with the constant phone calls telling you how urgent them main story mission is whilst you're out fetching a someones lost satchel with a press report in it) but they're all go to a location and fetch something. The fun is supposed to come in the parkour that you use to get around everywhere, but you're guy gets tired too easily, Sunset Overdrive had the travel down, but there isn't even fast travel in here, making far away missions a chore, plus he's just so unlikeable. He's secretly working for some faceless organisation and even though he moans about the horribleness of destroying everyone meds and allowing them to turn in to zombies just to meet some guy, he still does it, just cause he's told (pretty sure that makes him a war criminal).
There's not really enough control either, like, I've got a Hammer here, I want to bash him round the head, but for some reason you seem to be shoving it in his chest. I wouldn't mind so much but it's set to be so long, and I keep dying from falling off things, losing some survivor points and not being able to level up faster, surely the point of the parkour is that it would be quick and fun to get around, not that you have to stop and consider every jump, as I seem to die every time I have to travel a relatively long distance because I fell off something. Also, an night it becomes way harder (hence the name) and these nearly unstoppable zombies come out and hunt you down, fortunately I've figured a way around this, don't go out at night.
Maybe I'll carry on playing Dying light, maybe I won't, what I do know is that Ori and the Blind Forrest and Hotline Miami 2 are both out this week and I've been looking forward to both of those.
Completed
Transistor
Worms Battlegrounds
Saints Row 4: Gat out of Hell
Wolfenstein the new order
The Swapper
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
Apotheon
Sonic Adventure 2
The Order: 1886
Shovel Knight
CounterSpy
Underway
Dying Light
No comments:
Post a Comment