This review contains spoilers
This game probably made a few WOOHP villains.
Gone are the GBA days where you have semi-fun mini games loosely based on episodes from the show, hello nonsensical stories using screencaps from the show with the worst gameplay I have ever had the misfortune of playing on a DS game... ever.
I'm not quite sure how to describe this game, but I think a good way to start is imagine a 2D platformer where your fingers never touch the face buttons, and the combat consists of something akin to a touchscreen rhythm game without any of the rhythm. The platforming and puzzle solving is very light, which is fine since I wasn't expecting the game to be hard at all, but I also wasn't expecting it to be this gruelingly tedious.
In this game, you play as all 3 spies, of course, and all of them have their own "unique" gadgets. Sometimes Alex will get jet boots so she can double jump, sometimes Sam will get a gadget so she can open doors with terminals out of reach, and sometimes Clover gets a questionable gadget such as a butterfly that lets you see slightly off screen. Why wasn't this a feature to begin with? Another gadget they can use are ones that temporarily freeze enemies. I am so glad they implemented something like this because even they knew the combat would get boring fast.
Backtracking to what I said about the combat... it's awful. It utilities the stylus and touchpad and is just tapping, swiping, rubbing, or mashing a few bubbled numbers in a particular order. Sometimes the detection is so jank (especially with the rubbing types) it doesn't even work properly. I'm convinced this game had no QA testers because if it did this entire mechanic probably would've been scrapped lol. Perhaps comparing this game to Mario earlier was unfair, so I am going to compare it to the previous 2 Totally Spies games. The combat during the platforming segments were simple. Jump and maybe grab a few ledges with an objective, use the attack button when someone got in your way. It was that easy and it worked, and I genuinely believe this game would have been so much better if it didn't rely so heavily on the touchpad. Every enemy encounter past the first 5 minutes will have you bored and opting to avoid combat at any chance you get (thankfully there are 2 gadgets that's whole purpose is to avoid combat). Although even that isn't guaranteed to work as well as one would expect it too. It doesn't eliminate the enemy, they just freeze them for like 5 seconds. There's a weird bug where jumping near an enemy only makes you hop, but I don't think its a bug, it was probably intentional. What probably wasn't intentional was having it slow down your jumping even when an enemy was frozen/blinded. Tell me why there are so many instances in this game where it lines up several enemies in one row, as if the game expects you to waste your time with the unfun tapfest they call combat.
But this is a Totally Spies game, they don't fight their way in all the time there has to be a stealth option, right? Well... no, not really. You can switch from their spysuits (I refuse to call it a catsuit), to a disguise outfit that is rarely used. You could probably count on your fingers how many times this disguise feature is actually used in the game. The music sometimes changes and you need to switch to your disguise. Then you... slowly strut your way past an individual enemy, and tap a button on the touchscreen when they get too suspicious- you know what this game should've been called instead? "Totally Spies 3: Totally Tapping". Anyway this feature is useless because again, its only used a handful of times and doesn't work on enemies you can fight. It's literally just a thing that ruins the pace of the game and slows you down. Which sucks because the outfits are kind of funny. I found it slightly humorous switching to the disguise outfits during the boss fights.
Not much to say about the level design. It's a platformer sort of. A bare bones one but one nonetheless. You go from one end of the screen to the other; broken apart by checkpoints, thankfully. There are puzzles in some of the later levels but they're not that hard and you, regardless of age will figure them out at a glance so that's fine. Just use the gadgets and don't quit the game because of how dull the combat is and you'll beat the level in no time. When you lose all your hearts you get sent back to the title screen but there are at least frequent checkpoints so its not that bad, just slightly annoying.
And on the topic of hearts, I found myself intentionally dying as a means of convenience sometimes, haha. When you continue, you get back your enemy freezing items in full, but you only spawn with 3 out of your max hearts. Replenishing HP in this game is mind boggling to me. There are 2 types of hearts. One that replenishes your HP, and one that increases your max HP. Which one do you think is more common? If you said one that increases your max HP, you probably coded this game because that is exactly right. No, by the time you complete the game you have 50 hearts on screen. You max out at 10, and only 10. Yet for some reason, the game keeps giving you max HP hearts, levels after you've already maxed out. I kid you not, after the 2nd mission and you need replenishing hearts, forget about it. The next heart you see will be one you cannot use. Why did they do this? Did they not think by the time I'm in late game I wouldn't have the maximum hearts? Did it ever occur to them that maybe, I need to REFILL my HP rather than max it out some more? When you continue from a game over you only get 3 anyway. So for that reason I just insisted on dying, not even caring about the HP in this game.
This game is just an anomaly to me. I understand this is shovelware, targeted towards kids but its strange to me how they turned decent games (imo, 1 and 2 on the GBA) into one of the worst games I've played on the handheld. It's nothing like the first two, and it tried to be different so badly that all it succeeded in doing was giving me hand cramps.
This game belongs in the WOOHP holding cells for a very very long time.
Gone are the GBA days where you have semi-fun mini games loosely based on episodes from the show, hello nonsensical stories using screencaps from the show with the worst gameplay I have ever had the misfortune of playing on a DS game... ever.
I'm not quite sure how to describe this game, but I think a good way to start is imagine a 2D platformer where your fingers never touch the face buttons, and the combat consists of something akin to a touchscreen rhythm game without any of the rhythm. The platforming and puzzle solving is very light, which is fine since I wasn't expecting the game to be hard at all, but I also wasn't expecting it to be this gruelingly tedious.
In this game, you play as all 3 spies, of course, and all of them have their own "unique" gadgets. Sometimes Alex will get jet boots so she can double jump, sometimes Sam will get a gadget so she can open doors with terminals out of reach, and sometimes Clover gets a questionable gadget such as a butterfly that lets you see slightly off screen. Why wasn't this a feature to begin with? Another gadget they can use are ones that temporarily freeze enemies. I am so glad they implemented something like this because even they knew the combat would get boring fast.
Backtracking to what I said about the combat... it's awful. It utilities the stylus and touchpad and is just tapping, swiping, rubbing, or mashing a few bubbled numbers in a particular order. Sometimes the detection is so jank (especially with the rubbing types) it doesn't even work properly. I'm convinced this game had no QA testers because if it did this entire mechanic probably would've been scrapped lol. Perhaps comparing this game to Mario earlier was unfair, so I am going to compare it to the previous 2 Totally Spies games. The combat during the platforming segments were simple. Jump and maybe grab a few ledges with an objective, use the attack button when someone got in your way. It was that easy and it worked, and I genuinely believe this game would have been so much better if it didn't rely so heavily on the touchpad. Every enemy encounter past the first 5 minutes will have you bored and opting to avoid combat at any chance you get (thankfully there are 2 gadgets that's whole purpose is to avoid combat). Although even that isn't guaranteed to work as well as one would expect it too. It doesn't eliminate the enemy, they just freeze them for like 5 seconds. There's a weird bug where jumping near an enemy only makes you hop, but I don't think its a bug, it was probably intentional. What probably wasn't intentional was having it slow down your jumping even when an enemy was frozen/blinded. Tell me why there are so many instances in this game where it lines up several enemies in one row, as if the game expects you to waste your time with the unfun tapfest they call combat.
But this is a Totally Spies game, they don't fight their way in all the time there has to be a stealth option, right? Well... no, not really. You can switch from their spysuits (I refuse to call it a catsuit), to a disguise outfit that is rarely used. You could probably count on your fingers how many times this disguise feature is actually used in the game. The music sometimes changes and you need to switch to your disguise. Then you... slowly strut your way past an individual enemy, and tap a button on the touchscreen when they get too suspicious- you know what this game should've been called instead? "Totally Spies 3: Totally Tapping". Anyway this feature is useless because again, its only used a handful of times and doesn't work on enemies you can fight. It's literally just a thing that ruins the pace of the game and slows you down. Which sucks because the outfits are kind of funny. I found it slightly humorous switching to the disguise outfits during the boss fights.
Not much to say about the level design. It's a platformer sort of. A bare bones one but one nonetheless. You go from one end of the screen to the other; broken apart by checkpoints, thankfully. There are puzzles in some of the later levels but they're not that hard and you, regardless of age will figure them out at a glance so that's fine. Just use the gadgets and don't quit the game because of how dull the combat is and you'll beat the level in no time. When you lose all your hearts you get sent back to the title screen but there are at least frequent checkpoints so its not that bad, just slightly annoying.
And on the topic of hearts, I found myself intentionally dying as a means of convenience sometimes, haha. When you continue, you get back your enemy freezing items in full, but you only spawn with 3 out of your max hearts. Replenishing HP in this game is mind boggling to me. There are 2 types of hearts. One that replenishes your HP, and one that increases your max HP. Which one do you think is more common? If you said one that increases your max HP, you probably coded this game because that is exactly right. No, by the time you complete the game you have 50 hearts on screen. You max out at 10, and only 10. Yet for some reason, the game keeps giving you max HP hearts, levels after you've already maxed out. I kid you not, after the 2nd mission and you need replenishing hearts, forget about it. The next heart you see will be one you cannot use. Why did they do this? Did they not think by the time I'm in late game I wouldn't have the maximum hearts? Did it ever occur to them that maybe, I need to REFILL my HP rather than max it out some more? When you continue from a game over you only get 3 anyway. So for that reason I just insisted on dying, not even caring about the HP in this game.
This game is just an anomaly to me. I understand this is shovelware, targeted towards kids but its strange to me how they turned decent games (imo, 1 and 2 on the GBA) into one of the worst games I've played on the handheld. It's nothing like the first two, and it tried to be different so badly that all it succeeded in doing was giving me hand cramps.
This game belongs in the WOOHP holding cells for a very very long time.
kogomasaharu
1 month ago