Spy Hard
Review
Counterspy,
Dynamighty (PS4)
Abstract: Counterspy is a unique game with an interesting take on Cold War
espionage. The side scrolling stealth gameplay looks and plays great, but is
mixed with frustrating shooting gallery sections and a gameplay loop that gets
repetitive. Roguelike elements add an interesting flair to Counterspy, but bring about some frustrations of their own.
Gorgeous Pixar-esque visuals and an energetic brassy soundtrack make Counterspy a sumptuous visual and
auditory package, and create a fully realized and immersive world to play
within. Small tweaks to the Roguelike formula and decreased emphasis on gunplay
would have improved the final package, but I am happy to have tried Counterspy out and excited for what
Dynamighty will do next.
The
Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2014 was the fist time I heard about Counterspy. Christian Spicer, co-host of
one of my favorite gaming podcasts, ‘DLC’, stumbled upon this game during his
time at the Indie Megabooth there. His excitement for the game permeated a lot
of his DLC E3 talk, and quickly put the game on my radar. Counterspy appeared the be the coalescence of so many things I
liked: it was a stealth game with a gorgeous Pixar-esqe art style that
incorporated elements of the Roguelike genre—more on all of that in a bit. Other
titles kept me away from Counterspy
for a bit but, following its inclusion on PlayStation Plus’s complimentary
games lineup for March, I knew it was finally my time to try it out.
The first
title released by the San Francisco-based studio Dynamighty, Counterspy made its way to PlayStation
platforms in August 2014. In Counterspy
you play as an elite agent working for the secret intelligence agency,
C.O.U.N.T.E.R. The game is set during the Cold War, and you are tasked to gain
precious intel from the two competing world superpowers: the Imperialists (i.e.
the US) and the Socialists (i.e. the USSR). Your end goal is to identify the
location of a nuclear launch facility and prevent nuclear escalation. Counterspy made me feel like James Bond
in all the best ways. You sneak into underground facilities, stealthily take
out your enemies, use your special gadgets to open locked safes or destroy
security cameras, and more. The world is vibrant and exciting, perfectly
encapsulating the era of espionage and the space age. I greatly enjoyed working
counter to both superpowers—your goal is not to help the Imperialists to defeat
the Socialists, or vise versa, but rather to prevent either of the power hungry
entities from ending the world through nuclear fallout.
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| Preventing nuclear escalation whatever the cost. |
To
accomplish all of this, you move your spy through underground military
complexes to find the precious intel that will bring you, and the agency, one
step closer to preventing nuclear winter. Counterspy
is a side scrolling stealth platformer, with a couple big gameplay twists. Most
of your movement will be through these 2D environments, hiding behind boxes or
bulky computer terminals, silently taking out guard patrols and searching for
intel. If you get detected while exploring the guards will raise the alarms. If
these alarms sound for long enough, or if you are killed, the DEFCON level will
rise. Once the DEFCON level reaches its max the superpower in which you are
infiltrating will launch a nuclear missile, unless you can race through the
level and access the launch computer to stop it. So stealth here is key, which
perfectly fits the theme of Counterspy.
Progression in the game is dictated by how much intel you can collect. Each
level you play will have a certain number of hidden intel items to gather.
Eventually, once you have collected enough, you can take on a special end level
and defuse the nuclear bomb. As you move through the levels, you’ll quickly
notice Counterspy’s first big
gameplay twist. In certain areas, the background of the 2D screen will open up
and become an arcade-like ‘3D’ shooting gallery. Your character can stay behind
cover and shoot into the screen,
where enemies move around in a quasi-3D environment. The sections become
increasingly important as you move later into the game, as it gets quite hard
to sneak past the large group of enemies. The shooting galleries demand quick decision-making
and precise aiming, as enemies left alive for too long upon knowing you are
there will raise the alarms. Blowing away large groups of enemies can be fun
but, as I’ll describe a little later, can be problematic when considering the
mechanics and stealth intent of the game. Counterspy’s
second big gameplay twist is that it is contains Roguelike elements. Let me
explain.
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| You will be scouring every nook and cranny for precious intel. |
A
‘Roguelike’ is a genre of video games characterized by procedural level
generation (levels are assembled by randomly combining pre-designed level
pieces) and permanent death (your progress into the game resets upon dying). The
genre got its name from the 1980 game Rogue
that featured turn-based strategic gameplay with the now characteristic permanent
death and randomization. Roguelike elements have reemerged in gaming in a big
way recently. Hugely popular titles like Spelunky,
Rogue Legacy and The Binding of Isaac all contain the core tenants of the Roguelike
genre in combination with other classic gameplay stables like platforming,
twin-stick shooting, or Castlevania-like
combat. In all of those games, and in Counterspy,
the player starts with nothing. In Counterspy
you make progress as you move through the randomized levels, acquiring new
guns, power-ups, and the all-important intel. Randomization means each level
you play is, in theory, unique, which brings a certain freshness to each play
session. If you die enough to raise the DEFCON to maximum, resulting in the
launch of a nuclear missile, it is game over. This gives the player two
options. You can continue, which is unique to Counterspy among its other contemporary Roguelikes, which will
allow you to take on the same scenario as if you hadn’t lost. The other is to give
up and end your game. If this option is chosen you lose all your intel &
money gained and weapons purchased. Fortunately you do not lose everything, as
some progress like power-up formulas and weapon blueprints carries over between
play throughs.
I really
enjoy contemporary Roguelikes, like Spelunky,
so I was excited to try out Counterspy.
Unfortunately for the Counterspy, its
incorporation of Roguelike elements is not entirely successful. Short play
sessions are incredibly important in Roguelikes. Because death results in a
reset of your progress, you really want to keep the playthrough of the game short.
For example, Spelunky can be beaten
in 20 minutes. Counterspy with its
incremental sense of progress (acquiring intel), on the other hand, takes a
couple of hours to beat. As you might imagine, it feels a lot worse to lose
hours of progress than it does to lose ten to twenty minutes. Of course, like I
just mentioned, Counterspy does
give you the option to attempt the level again if you ‘lose.’ This sounds
great on paper but, in my experience, it is an imperfect solution. As you play
through the game, unless you are perfect, your DEFCON level will rise. Some of the tougher levels
can result in a death or two, easily raising the DEFCON to near maximum. When
you lose and then continue, your world stays exactly as you left it—high DEFCON
level and all. This puts the player in such a bad place. It requires you to
expertly navigate the usually quite difficult level because any small slip up
will result in a nuclear launch sequence being initiated, and another game
over. This forced me to restart the game because it was just too frustrating to
have to perfectly clear the level; I was stuck in a bad place with no other
options. This is not the only issue that arises with the Roguelike nature of Counterspy, though. Stealth is vital to
your success in Counterspy. You know
what makes being sneaky difficult? An enemy directly in front of the new room
door you open. And this can happen a lot because of the level randomization
present in the game. The stealth elements in Counterspy are so satisfying too, which makes it all the more
frustrating when the randomly generated level puts a guard in a perfect
position to see you, shoot you, and raise alarms before you can do anything. Perhaps
this is something that could be tweaked in the level generation algorithm, but
it certainly was still an issue when I played Counterspy in March 2015. Neither of these frustrations are the
absolute worst, but they add unnecessary frustration to a genre of games
(stealth) that are inherently frustrating at times. The last issue is minor,
but worth mentioning. The total level ‘parts’ in Counterspy felt too small so that, despite being random, many
levels felt the same and had very similar layouts. I would have liked to see a
little more diversity in the level generation.
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| The side scrolling stealth sections in Counterspy are a blast. Not shown here, actually being stealthy. |
Let’s take
a half step back and talk about Counterspy’s
gameplay, Roguelike elements aside. Playing Counterspy
is a mix of solid fun and glaring frustrations. To start, the 2D stealth
elements in Counterspy are a blast to
play. It felt great to slowly walk up behind a guard and break their neck, or
to shoot a guard with a tranquilizer dart, watch his companion go inspect the
sleeping body, only to be tranq’d right on top of him. Counterspy also gives the player a lot to explore. I had a great
time searching for hidden safes through blocked off ventilation shafts, getting
me one step closer to unlocking a new gun for purchase. Speaking of guns, all
of them were fun to use. I mainly relied on my trusty tranquilizer gun and
silenced pistol, but it was also fun to mess around with the assault rifle,
shotgun, and the dart gun that turned enemies against each other. Where the
gunplay, and Counterspy itself,
failed was in the ‘3D’ shooting gallery sections. There is really no good way
to do these sections efficiently or stealthily. They turn you from this super
sneaky secret agent into a guns blazing movie spy. That might have been nice in
a different game that had a more focused gun system in place, but ultimately felt
slow and awkward in Counterspy. Many
of these sections were tough to avoid, too, as guards very easily spotted you
trying to sneak by. The enemies in Counterspy
generally all have too much health as well, making it tough to stay stealthy
because you cannot always achieve quick kills. Finally, Counterspy’s gameplay loop, while satisfying at first, quickly
becomes repetitive. Part of this arises from the sameness of the levels, and
part arises from being forced to engage in similar shooting galleries as you
move through the game. Sections in which total stealth was more viable would
have gone a long way to reinvigorating the gameplay loop and making Counterspy more compelling to pick up
and play whenever.
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| I enjoyed the idea of the shooting gallery sections, but loose gunplay made their frequent inclusion a chore to complete. |
One thing
that Counterspy really nails is the
balance of risk and reward. As you move through each level you a presented with
a slew of difficult decisions. Should you go out of your way to grab the intel
or money from a safe, even though opening it might alert guards, losing health
in the process? What is the best path the go about taking out all enemies,
keeping in mind any wrong move can result in a death and subsequent increasing
in the DEFCON level? Is it worth attempting to navigate your away around a
group of enemies, knowing full well that if you’re spotted you’ll need to take
them all on? These kinds of choices come up all the time and make playing
through the game tense and interesting. But Counterspy
gives you even more decisions to make. At the start of each level you can
choose to infiltrate either the Imperialist or Socialist military base. On the
level select screen is an indication of what is present within the level: how
many pieces of intel, weapon blueprints, power-up schematics, DEFCON level, and
military officers are present (whom you can hold at gunpoint to lower DEFCON). So
even choosing which level you want to start weighs risk and reward. Do you want
to rush to collect as much intel as possible, even though your DEFCON is
higher, or go to a level with fewer intel that has an officer you can use to
lower your DECON? Or what about a level with a small number of intel items that
contains several weapon blueprints? What if one level has lots of intel and
power-up schematics, but your DEFCON is at nearly max level? Making these
choices is consistently fun, and something I would generally like to see more
of in games.
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| Move past these guards to get to a safe? Or clear them out first, using up precious ammo in the process? These kinds of decisions were fantastic. |
Perhaps Counterspy’s greatest success is its art
and aesthetic. Dynamighty has a fascinating mix of talent on their team, and
among them are several former Pixar guys. Counterspy
takes obvious inspiration from their Pixar talent with its colorful and
cartoonish visuals. While playing through the game I got serious ‘The
Incredibles’ and Team Fortress 2 vibes.
A fun, poppy brass soundtrack worked effortlessly with the striking visuals to
create an almost unparalleled sense of space and belonging within the world. I was the secret agent that those old spy
novels talked about. Counterspy has a
terrific almost cell-shaded look, which made me feel as if I were playing in
some Saturday morning cartoon. A brutal cartoon, for sure, but a cartoon
nonetheless. Counterspy’s menus are a
perfect continuation of this aesthetic, too, as each one is filled with 1950’s
and 60’s iconography that really evoke the Cold War generation. I honestly
cannot say enough about Counterspy’s
gorgeous visuals. It certainly makes me excited for how future Dynamighty games
might look.
Overall, Counterspy is a game I am pretty mixed
about. The game is gorgeous and usually fun to play, but there are frustrations
in almost equal number. The mixed critical reception is indicative of this. If
you can see past the frustrating quirks, Counterspy
is a beautiful and imaginative side scrolling stealth game. Because so much is
successful in Counterspy, I would
recommend checking it out to decide for yourself. And hey, it’s currently free
on Playstation Plus. I’m certainly glad I got to try it out, and will be on the
lookout for what Dynamighty has in store for the future.
Counterspy
3/5
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