Spy Hunter Preview
We a take long hands-on look at the Spy Hunter update from Midway and Paradigm.
Despite our initial apprehension about the potential quality of Midway's upcoming Spy Hunter remake, our recent prolonged exposure to it has yielded some pretty favorable impressions. While mention of the game's title definitely brings back memories of the original's sleek sit-down cabinet--complete with U-shaped wheel--spending time with the modern iteration makes it evident that Spy Hunter is definitely a worthy experience in its own right.
At its core, Spy Hunter is a car combat game, sans the element of competition. It retains the constant pace of the original, but it very deftly adds the level of complexity required to make a classic remake relevant. From a design standpoint, it's not unlike games like Ace Combat--behind the wheel of the G-6155 Interceptor, you'll tackle a diverse series of missions, including seek-and-destroy scenarios, the (heavily) armed escorting of defenseless vehicles, and everything in between. Its control scheme is definitely more suited to its interesting brand of "driving adventure" than, say, a Twisted Metal or Vigilante 8 game's would be--it's far less complex and entirely focused toward disabling enemies significantly weaker than you.
All your weapons are mapped to the shoulder buttons, as are the commands that allow you to cycle through your arsenal. Per the original blueprint, you have both offensive (machine guns and rockets) and defensive (oil slicks and smoke screens) devices at your disposal, and a set of shoulder buttons is assigned to each--L1 and L2 for cycling through your weapons and defensive devices and R1 and R2 for using them. Acceleration and braking are assigned to the X and square buttons, respectively, while hitting the triangle button calls up your high-tech rearview display. If you hit the X button twice in quick succession, you'll activate a handy turbo boost, though it takes several seconds to refresh between uses. The circle button seems to be a catch-all key, of sorts. In one of missions in the current demo, it deploys tracking bugs, and we suspect that it may used for a different function in every scenario, but its ultimate function has yet to be determined. The left analog stick is used for steering, and, when it's pressed in (L3 style), it also allows you to cycle through targets when you're armed with missiles. Finally, as per the original, the Interceptor is able to do its thing on both land and water. When you hit the water, it instantaneously transforms into a waterborne version of itself--in real-time, no less. The vehicle's controls are for the most part identical in both forms, though the responses the controls yield in water are suitably more deliberate.
One of Spy Hunter's major additions to the original formula is its use of a secondary extraction vehicle (SEV) as a dominant gameplay device. Essentially, a smaller vehicle within the Interceptor emerges when a certain damage threshold has been reached. As the Interceptor itself has two forms, so does the SEV. On land, it's a sleek motorbike, of sorts, while on water, it transforms into a sharp little Jet Ski. These secondary forms are a whole lot weaker--but also a great deal zippier--than the actual Interceptor. As you may have guessed, however, littered throughout the environments are red trucks that suit you up and rearm you, so your time in spent in the SEV's should just be transitory.
At this point, the control scheme is in very good shape. Everything reacts responsively, and the sense of control is, for the most part, amazing. The car occasionally seems to swing pretty wide when small swerves would have been more appropriate, but we have faith that everything will enjoy the requisite amount of tweaking before the game's final burn.
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