The first SpyHunter game was a solid
game, Point of View did a fairly good job of revitalizing the series for the 21st
century; so it was disappointing when SpyHunter 2 from Angel Studios was less
than stellar. So here we are, the third developer doing the third SpyHunter
game, but will Terminal Reality have any more luck with the franchise?
The first and most noticeable
feature of the game is that it features The Rock, because he’s doing the movie
of the same name set to release next year. So, here we’ve got a movie-based game
that comes out a year before the movie and it’s not hard to see that an extra
year of work would’ve done this game some good.
The story is a non-essential,
run-of-the-mill affair, where you play as a James Bond-wannabe named Alex Decker
who is, in turn, played by The Rock. As it should be expected, SpyHunter is all
about the car, but Nowhere to Run is also all about the Rock and these two
things do not mingle well. The Interceptor (that’s the car’s name, yes, it has a
name) missions are easily much more fun than The Rock’s generic third-person
action missions. As the driving of the Interceptor, you’ll be dealing with
fast-paced action that’s mostly fun. You car is armed to the teeth and these
missions will make good use of your weapons. All the classic SpyHunter weapons
have returned, from the smoke screen and oil slick to the trusty machine guns
and missiles. For those pesky enemies at your side, you can hit B and spikes
come out of your tires, which will make short work of any enemies who dare try
and pass you. One complaint about the driving modes is that moving is too
sensitive, making dodging obstacles more trouble than it should be. The
vehicle-based parts of Nowhere to Run are pretty good, offering good variety for
weapons and for the “shape-shifting” ability of your car to change into a
motorcycle or jet ski.
So the vehicle parts aren’t too bad,
but it seems that the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t apply
here. For some reason the addition of being able to go on-foot was included and
no shocker here, it stinks. Playing as The Rock, I mean Alex Decker, should be a
lot more fun that it is, but it just simply isn’t. Aside from being boring and
generic, it’s very slow and offers nothing new or captivating to attempt to draw
you in. You start off with no weapons, so you’ve got to resort to melee combat,
it’s a good thing that you’ve got that muscular ex-wrestler physique. The A
button grabs the enemies and you can also throw them (crummy rag-doll physics
will follow), B allows you to roll, X punches and Y is a stronger punch (which
is very satisfying, due to the nice crunch it makes), which can be held to stun
the enemy and allow you to hit any of the four face buttons for a wrestling
finishing move. Since the AI is so absolutely brain-dead, you can do a stun
punch and a finisher pretty much all the time. If you get bored of your melee
combat, there are your usual assortment of guns, including pistols and machine
guns. The gunplay is all right, although shooting anywhere, but the head offers
no indication of a hit and it takes a bit of time to take someone down with body
shots. Clicking the right thumbstick offers a slightly more zoomed in form of
aiming, but movement slows to a crawl, so it’s something that definitely needs
to be used sparingly). Unfortunately, also like the vehicle modes, the aiming is
too sensitive, it’s either too fast or too slow, but with the awful AI, it
shouldn’t present much of an issue.
Nowhere to Run has barely passable
graphics, The Rock looks like The Rock, but everything else is mediocre. Poor
quality textures and ugly, generic level designs run rampant throughout the
game. It’s not a terrible looking game, it’s just about as generic and average
as you can get. The sound in the game doesn’t fare much better, Alex Decker’s
one-liners are just plain lame and the sound effects are music are also generic.
The majority of the voice acting is wooden and uninteresting, making you want to
skip the cutscenes even more.
Generic,
boring, average, mediocre, all are fitting words to describe the mostly
uninteresting adventures of Alex Decker. The driving parts aren’t as well done
as they were in the first SpyHunter game, or even the classic arcade one for
that matter. The on-foot missions are a waste of time, offering nothing even
remotely intriguing about them. One nice feature is that the game is forwards
compatible with the Xbox 360 (it was before it’s release, so I guess that’s
something to be proud of), so you can now play one of the most average games in
upscaled high-definition – please try and contain your excitement.
I know
Terminal Reality is capable of better, both BloodRayne games had much better
third-person action than this and they didn’t have a superior driving mode to
fall back on. SpyHunter: Nowhere to Run definitely needed more development time,
because as it is, it’s just another generic action game, only this one has The
Rock in it.
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Review Scoring Details for SpyHunter: Nowhere to Run |
Gameplay: 5.7
Vehicle combat is fairly nice for the most
part, albeit a bit too twitchy. However, the third-person “The Rock” mode is
like the inclusion of guns and other playable characters in a Sonic game, it’s
just a bad idea that hurts way more than it helps.
Graphics: 6.0
It’s average, just plain old, boring
average. Nowhere to Run doesn’t look visually appealing in any way and the
generic environments don’t help either. Aside from the pretty good looking model
of The Rock, everything else is a just a notch above bad.
Sound:
6.3
Wooden voice acting, cheesy one-liners and
generic sound effects and music, yep, more average work plagues the sound
department.
Difficulty: Medium
Some parts can be challenging, but there’s
nothing here that’s too challenging and retrying doesn’t hurt you, in fact, it
does the opposite as your health increases slightly if you die.
Concept: 5.2
Why, oh why did they add such a lame
on-foot mode to a SpyHunter game?! Not only did they include such a lame mode in
a driving game, but also it’s something that you end up having to trudge through
way too much of. I also fail to see the logic of bringing out a movie-based game
with no sign of the movie around.
Overall: 5.5
SpyHunter: Nowhere to Run can be summed up
in one word; average. It’s not a bad game, it’s not a great game. It has some
bad ideas and some good ideas and they’re all executed in a mediocre fashion.
