CounterSpy - Review

It's April Fool Day! What better time for a new review?   A few years ago when I was signed up to PlayStation Plus I download a game called CounterSpy, a cool espionage style game that looked really stylish.  I started to play it, got distracted by something else and forgot to go back to it until recently when I wanted to play a handheld game.


Hmm, spring rolls.  I like and don't like them at the same time, what I mean is that I like the look and idea of them but each time I eat them I feel underwhelmed.  Either the vegetables taste soggy or the meat just lacks a certain something.  Despite this I find myself gravitating towards them every now and then, perhaps I am on quest to find a really tasty one - I don't even know myself.  Playing CounterSpy I found myself asking was I just trying to like it or had I finally found something a tasty springroll?

Story

The game is set during the Cold War, the worlds two warring superpowers: The Imperialist States and The Socialist Republic are trying to launch a successful nuclear strike, on the Moon.  You are an Agent of Counter, your mission is to stop the nuclear strike on the moon at all costs.


The story feels like a cross between Man From U.N.C.L.E and the Mission Impossible TV series.  It's all very tongue in cheek and never take itself too seriously.  A great example of this are the handbooks that can be collected throughout the game, with funny titles like 'how to fall after being shot with a tranquilizer'.  Overall the story is not very complex but it doesn't really need to be in this case as the focus is on the gameplay.

Visuals

The opening animation sequence reminded me of Pixar's The Incredibles, which was awesome as I really liked that movie.  Sidenote, can't wait for the sequel this summer.  The game has a Film Noir look and feel about it.  The visuals manage to be both simplistic and stylish which is hard to do.  The start of each mission sees you infiltrating a military facility, the background will sometimes show missile silos, helicopters, tanks and especially on the Socialist Republic missions you get to see snow which helps set the mood.


Overall one of the strongest parts of this game is its visuals and proves you can be both simplistic and stylish.


Music

The score suits the game perfectly, it features a jazzy sound combined with the style of music you would have heard from espionage shows from the sixties like Mission Impossible and Man From U.N.C.L.E and of course the James Bond movies.  The composer for the score is:


Jesse Harlin an American composer, programmer, and performer who created Dunderpate Music.  He has worked for Lucas Arts on titles like The Force Unleashed, Republic Commando, Star Wars III: Revenge of The Sith along with working on the music for Mafia III.


I love listening to video game soundtracks and was really looking forward to listening to this one, unfortunately, I could not find anywhere to listen to it or buy it from.  It seems it was released as a limited LP a few years ago and there a few tracks online but that's it.  My favorites pieces that I could listen to were: 'Espionage A Trois' and 'Title Menu'.


Overall a good soundtrack that I would have really liked to listen to in its entirety but it is what it is.

Gameplay


Onto the meat!  The game is a 2D side-scroller for the most part, which on occasion will have you change to a 2.5D perspective which I did find sometimes to be fairly jarring.  The gunplay in earlier missions is straightforward enough with few issues, as the enemies increase later on the targeting can be a little slow and popping in and out of cover isn't always as smooth as it should be, again some of this is due to the perspective.


The gameplay, for the most part, is pretty good, you have the option of going stealthy or loud but the rewards are definitely better if you choose the former.  The best way to achieve stealth in CounterSpy is to perform silent takedowns, take out any cameras and use your silenced pistol (called the diplomatic pistol) on other enemies.  If you decide to go in guns blazing be prepared that the Defcon level will drop from five to one pretty rapidly, you will need to kill enemies quickly and ensure you don't get killed, if you do the Defcon level will drop by one.  Whatever Defcon level you finish a mission on is where it will start next time you begin a  mission, making future missions harder.  The level can be dropped by finding officers and pointing a gun at them until they surrender.


When the game first loads up you are informed that the levels are randomly generated and that each experience is new.  It is a cool concept but after trying all the missions multiples times I found they repeated pretty quick.  In some cases, the room you enter had nothing in them, for relatively short missions this seemed strange especially in the later levels.  The randomly generated levels massively affected the loading times which could be really frustrating at times.


At the start of each mission, you buy more ammo and purchase weapons and formulas.  The weapons and formulas can only be purchased once you have collected all the blueprints.  The items you unlock will carry over to other playthroughs.  My personal weapon of choice was the Diplomatic Pistol, a great name for a silenced pistol.  The formulas were good but had to be purchased every mission which was a bit of a cash drain, my favourite was the armour piercing bullets which was better for some of the later cameras and enemies.


Overall some good gameplay that could have been great with just a few small changes.




Final Thoughts


How did I feel after just over fours?  Not bad.  The story was a little silly which was fine, the visuals were impressive, the music was perfect for the type of game it is.  For me, the biggest issue was the gameplay, loads time and level designs could have been improved if the randomly generated levels element was removed, along with the cover system and targeting improved.  Overall not bad but not great, this one gets 3 out of 5

Mafia 3 - Review

I don't want to start off this review negatively (meaning I almost definitely am going to) but when Mafia 3 was announced I was not very excited.  Why?  Well, I was just not convinced Louisiana was a great setting for a Mafia game.  When I think of Louisiana, I think of the Dixie Mafia rather than the traditional Italian Mafia.  It's might sound strange I would dislike it for that especially considering I really like the TV show Justified which centres on exactly that.  Outside of that, the game was not exactly stunning looking for a Triple-A title,  based on all that information you might be wondering why I played it - I was waiting for Halo Wars 2 to arrive.


I like Chips but I am not as pushed on French Fries, depending on what country you are from & how you view each of those things it may sound confusing.  I see French Fries as potatoes cut into thin strips, fried lightly in oil & cooked with a lot of salt.  Chips are potatoes cut into chunky shapes & cooked heavily in oil.  While playing Mafia 3 I had to ask myself was eating French Fries or Chips?

The game is set in 1968, in a version of New Orleans.  You play as Lincoln Clay who has just returned from the Vietnam War.  Clay returns home to his adopted father Sammy & his brother Ellis.
Before Clay left for war he, along with his family were part of the Black Mob.  All Clay wants to do is be a good man, get a good job & leave his bad ways behind.  Unfortunately Clay is too loyal for his own good & quickly falls back into bad ways to help his family.


One of the strongest parts of the game is definitely the story.  It's not just simply the story but also the method used to tell it.  The introduction is told in flashback format which I really liked.  The part I really loved was the documentary style story telling.  I found it interesting listening to different people's take on Lincoln Clay,  the characters showed real emotion when speaking on camera.  I felt this, along with the story helped make the world & characters seem more real.


As always I won't spoil the story for you but I will say two things; first I was shocked & excited that there are multiple endings you can pick, two after the credits role this a little extra story which was just epic.

Visually speaking the game is very underwhelming especially for a Triple-A title,  I would not go as far to say it's awful but all the same it's not great.   While I know a game is a lot more than just what it looks like I do feel it let it's self down in a big way because of it.   When it came to look of the main characters they looked quite good but world itself seemed dull & almost out of focus. The documentary scenes looked quite well & I loved that it looked purposefully grainy to make it seem like old footage.  A friend described it best to me, the games looks like it is 8-10 years old.  If Mafia 3 was released back in 2007 visually it would have been considered to be really good but nowadays it just isn't really acceptable, especially from a bigger studio.  But I digress & will move onto some of the better aspects of the game.


The soundtrack in the game is split into two parts; the score & the music, both are equally brilliant. I will start by talking about the score, the two composers responsible for it are:


Jesse Harlin - who is a composer for Lucas Arts & has worked on; Star Wars Republic Commando, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith & Force Unleashed.

Jim Bonney - who worked on; BioShock Infinite, Mortal Kombat Armageddon & Perception.


The music is a blend of Cajun, Blues, Rhythm & Zydeco.  It fits the setting of the game well & I found it hard to pick any fault with it.  My favorite pieces included:

New Bordeaux
No One Is Untouchable
Boy Becomes A Man
Crush N Shuffle
Devil In The Woodpile
5 Years, 3 Months, 18 Days
Hard Fought & Hard Won


The second part of the soundtrack featured many great artists & songs from the era, some of my favorites were:

Animals - We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Canned Heat - On The Road Again
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising
Elvis - A Little Less Conversation
Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues
Ottis Redding - Sitting on the Deck of the Bay
The Avengers - Paint It Black
The Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil


Overall a pretty much flawless soundtrack featuring work from some great composers & artists.  Well worth a listen even if you don't plan on playing the game.

Right, on to the meat - the gameplay (also I really want some meat).  Lincoln Clay is a big guy & moves like one, this may come off sounding like a bad thing but it isn't.  By having him move realistically it makes him feel more powerful, you can really feel the benefits of this when using melee attacks.  The game may lack a few thing things but violence is not one of them, it is intense, frequent & awesome.  Taking down enemies feels good especially if you go for the more brutal attacks.  The guns for the most part felt good & the cover system worked well, some cover was also destructible which helped make the gameplay more intense.


There is good selection of cars & for the most part they behave as they should.  I generally found myself using a sports car to get around as they were fast & handle very well. The boats were okay but I tried to avoid using them most of the time as I found they did not handle very well.  Being honest though there is not a great need to use them if you focus on the main story.


Wiretapping is a feature in the game which was a cool idea but the novelty wore off quickly, the only real benefit of doing it is to find collectibles.  The collectibles include;  Album Covers, Communist Propaganda Posters, Hot Rod Magazines, Playboy Magazines, Repent Magazines & Vargas Paintings.


The city is vast & you can't take it all on by yourself so you need some help.  Enter Bourke, Cassandra & Vito.   Each time you take over a racket or district you get to pick who will run them.
Each character offers you something different for giving them a racket or district,  I found myself favoring Vito a lot of the time as I liked what he offered the best.  It is important to keep all three happy otherwise...well I will let you find out.  Each Under Boss provides you with kickbacks which you can increase further by performing some very repetitive missions.  Money as a whole seemed a little pointless in the game as once you had one or two good weapons & upgraded your car there was nothing else to really spend it on.  It would have been nice if you could have invested some of your earnings into something like real estate.


The story missions were often quite fun but the racket missions got old fast,  I wished there had been a little bit more variety with them. Some missions take place at night but if you are driving to the mission during the day the game quickly transitions to night & looks really cool - it's only something small but I liked it.  While the gameplay was pretty good I found that the game crashed way too often for my liking, the only bonus is that the games auto saves fairly regular so I never really found myself losing much.





So how did I feel about the game overall?  I was going to say the game was meh because of the disappointing visuals & some of the missions were repetitive but after some contemplation I have decide to say it was a good game.  I still much prefer Mafia 2 overall but I feel both games shared the potential to be more if only they had just tried a little harder - maybe Mafia 4 will do the series the justice it deserves.