The Spy Who Shot Me Review

The Spy Who Shot Me is a throwback first person shooter inspired by classic FPS from the 90s where players take control of Agent 7 as he fights against an evil empire call S.C.U.M..

As mentioned, The Spy Who Shot Me is an FPS where you’ll go from level to level completing various objectives in order to move to the next level. As with any games of the genre, you’ll be picking up a variety of weapons such as shotgun, grenade launcher and machine gun. You’ll also be able to use grenades and knives; both of which are limited.

Our protagonist can also run and jump to avoid danger and do a wee-bit of platforming to get around some levels. Running becomes critical/necessary as some levels will have timed objectives meaning you’ll need to run (blindly) to a specific point before the timer runs out. I say blindly because there’s no map to rely on.

Each level is designed in the same way. Run around finding giant 7 icons that acts as door openers. More often than not, that’ll trigger new enemies to spawn for you to shoot. Levels also has secondary objectives such as rescuing (and in this game you do this by shooting them) prisoners for example. Which is a nice incentive to explore the linear levels.

The Spy Who Shot Me’s visual make it standout as a throwback classic from the 1990s which is a nice change in a era where gamers clamor for more realistic stuff. Sometimes a classic experience hits the spot just right. Each area is uniquely themed to offer a variety of level to explore to avoid monotonous repetition. The soundtrack is quite barebone and forgettable. Voiceover work is pretty mid. While I understand this is somewhat meant to be a parody, it’s just not funny; whether it be sarcastically or ha-ha funny.

The game’s main problem is in its controls. They feel off and half responsive. I had to constantly go back in the menus to adjust the sensitivity. It feels like even by putting the sensitivity at zero, if you hold down the joystick it still goes too fast. The controls also make it impossible to shoot precisely at enemies or even big red explosive barrels. It’s easier to control a drunk character in GTA V or Saints Row than play this. The other problem is that there’s no pause button. Yes you can go into a pause menu, but the game doesn’t stop. Meaning if you’re surrounded by enemies and press “pause”, you’re dead.

The Spy Who Shot Me is an exercise in repetition. Given that checkpoints are few and far between, you’ll find yourself replaying the same sequence given the a bit overkill damage output from enemies on Normal. Even with 70-80% of HP, a single up close blow would kill me. In all fairness, GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 (no not the Xbox remaster) plays better than this. Unless you want to torture yourself or craving (poorly represented) 90s gameplay, The Spy Who Shot Me is an easy pass and pick up Turok 3 Shadow of Oblivion Remaster instead.