The game sounds great, with its off-the-shelf spy flick score reacting well to events in plot and action. The voice acting is, mostly, of a decent quality and the environmental sounds, churning machines, wind movement and echoes are all faithfully recreated. Incidental and action sounds blend together well with the organically-shifting music to create a game that sounds a million dollars. In many ways, the perfect game for the blind...
...which is lucky because you'll be blindsighted through out most of its span. This is all thanks to Nintendo's Wii Remote. I like the Wii Remote. Everyone does. Because it's great. But sometimes, it just sucks and this is one of those times. The problem being, you control the camera with the Remote… all the time. This required me to point it straight at the screen for about ten hours and it really pissed me off to do so.
I yearned for a dual-analogue stick as I constantly forgot that I had to manage the exact camera position at all times. The camera control is dull and slow meaning you often end up pushing it too far off screen resulting in a complete loss of input. But the real problem is having to actually point with your right hand all the time. It's miserable, it's uncomfortable and it serves only to impressively and surprisingly reinvent
Splinter Cell's Achilles Heel.
As you'll likely know, the game has been dogged with camera issues from the off. The Wii version of
Double Agent, although offering the highest level of actual visual control, is the worst game to deal with in this respect as it's over-demanding to a truly astonishing degree. After a few hours, you realise you've not missed anything, there is no way to change it and your heart (along with the game's review score) sinks. Imagine playing a game but having to have one hand almost still the whole time. Then imagine that while remaining almost still, you have to manipulate a primary function of that game to even make it playable with tiny adjustments to your hand's position.
The game does hold up well but still suffers from that 'by-numbers' feeling so much of the stealth genre is blighted with. I'm not, as a rule, a big fan of trial-and-error gaming. I understand that it has to exist to an extent but it wrankles when intuition is not rewarded, especially when it's not even given a chance.
There were many points in the game when I was faced with a situation, having to overcome guards usually, where what to do was a complete unknown. So I tried one thing, got killed. Tried another thing, got killed. Tried another and it worked, I was able to progress. The problem being I was given no hint as to which course of action provides success. In this respect,
Double Agent as with many games of its ilk, falls.
Putting these flaws aside, there is a very good and entirely competent videogame hiding beneath the surface. UMS has thrown some co-op missions into the multiplayer mode which, on the face of things, sound perfect. Then you look at the glorious online functionality of other versions of
Double Agent and the Wii feels like a poor relative. Indeed,
SCDA as a stand-alone product is a great game offering as long as you don't mind a few ropey textures, wrist-cramps to shame those of any pubescent male, and the odd glitch. The fact is that it's probably the least attractive version of a great game.
SPOnG Rating: C
I really wanted to love this game. When I realised this was going to be impossible, I wanted to enjoy it to the fullest. The controls are so bad as to actually become painful after an hour or so. Painful in the sense of experiencing actual physical pain that will perfectly accompany the pain you feel in your heart at not having dual-analogue controls. The formulaic gameplay is par for the course, the graphical issues are easily overlooked. The bottom line, literally, is that if you have a Wii, you're likely to have another console, and if you have another console you look into picking up a great game that on the Nintendo machine, falls down due to stripped out functionality and an ill-fitting control mechanic.
