Many many years ago Spy VS Spy first appeared on home computer systems and consoles in the age of 8 bit entertainment. Offering a charming and amusing distraction as players tried to out wit one another. The premise was to steal a select number of objects and make you way to the level exit before the opposing spy. In order to hinder your opponent’s progress you could employ a number of trap devices to catch out the unaware and send them to a grizzly death. Now Spy Vs Spy has been dragged out of the cupboard and stuck on the shelves for a whole new generation. But on this evidence it really is a shame they bothered.
The single player aspect of Spy Vs Spy has our chosen agent making their way through a number of bland levels searching out objects, causing chaos, and engaging in 3D platforming antics. Why oh why was this ever made? The PS2 of all consoles really did not need yet another mind numbingly dull 3D platform-come-adventure game, even though the console is saturated with bland titles dare we say Spy Vs Spy sinks to even more uninteresting depths than most before it.
After playing the game for ten minutes we had already seen more than enough to make us fall asleep as wave upon wave of complete dullness battered against our heads in an ever repeating motion. After pressing through ever more dreary levels it was clear there is absolutely no enjoyment to be found. To make matters worse, not only are the levels dull but without a proper map you are sometimes left wandering around looking for where to go next (although there are helpful arrows that appear at times). Truly the feeling of wandering around a level with no clue where to go, just wishing you could find the exit, save the game and turn the thing off is one of the most depressing and desperate things the human mind is capable of feeling.
At least the controls are decent enough with characters being easy to move and the task of setting traps and weapons never feeling tricky. In game graphics, though uninspired, are fairly solid and colourful - if a little generic. As such, the game does not suffer from being ‘broken’, which in a way is even more shocking. If a game is over ambitious and suffers because an aspect is not implemented at least then you can have some idea as to where the vision was heading. Here everything seems to have been implemented competently from a basic perspective. The problem is that there is absolutely no imagination in anything. It's almost as if the developers really could not be bothered to make the game in the first place.
Multiplayer fairs little better, indeed when returning to the title and tossing a coin to see whether to play single or multiplayer all we could hope for was that the coin would somehow explode in mid air and kill us. Along with the new locations a selection of the original games rooms are available now in bland 3D. The action could be taken online or via a system link but trust us- you really won't want to. This title has to be in the running for the least enjoyable multiplayer experience of all time- wander around open something, put trap in, wander around, open something, put trap in, repeat until you die of boredom. Every aspect is just so bone crushingly soul destroying its enough to bring you to tears at times. There are a few modes such as death match, last man standing etc but when every thing is so mind numbing it hardly matters.
In conclusion there is absolutely nothing to recommend about this game. Even the Twenty pound price tag at launch is not enough to justify interest in it. There are certainly far better platform titles available (even Vexx pushes it close) and there are certainly far better multiplayer titles available as well. We advises never going near this uninspired dullard of a game, no matter how cheap you may find it in coming months. In closing all we can say is that this could well be one of the most truly awful games of the generation.
2/10
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