Spy Drops - Spiritual Metal Gear

 

@Rainy Frog
All Rights Reserved 

Hi! Welcome to a new review, this time a new fresh off the oven stealth game.

To be honest I never was a big fan of metal gear on PSX, my first real full playthrough of something of the saga was Snake Eater (MGS3) and most probably expect a review of Delta in the future (Konami give me a hand here please)

What I'm trying to say is that this game  emphasis more on the first and second mg solid of the PS1 and beginning of PS2 era.

This means that my opinion won't be a comparison every two steps, because I don't  have that nostalgia factor for the best or not, so let's begin.

The initial zone reminds me a lot of MGS 3 first landing zone

TLDR:

Pros

Interesting Story

Fun Gameplay (Details on the review)

Graphics Are Greatly Representative Of PS1 Era

Scripted Missions Are Really Good

Upgradeable Stats

Cons

Procedural Missions Aren't Great

Maps Tends To Be Very Repetitive 

Big Empty Zones

Gun Gameplay Is Barebones

Controls Aren't Very Intuitive 

Stealth Is Very Limited 

Janky Animations

Only play on portable (Switch)

Chronicles Verdict:

Mildly recommended

The game looks awesome in my opinion,  remembrance of those classic origin era of 3d graphics on the PS1, it takes a bit of time to acquittance but I enjoyed them, just as a note, play it on switch if you want to and as a recommendation, on handled, looks amazing but on bigger screens like dock mode , it's a bit hard to see.

You can crawl below some things but not on every logical one like tables.

The Gameplay:

The cycle of gameplay reminds me a lot about the psp metal gear ones, smallish maps with missions to do and return to the start point to extract.

We can move around, duck jump to crawl and fight with a 3 hit combo that instantly knock out most human enemies, we cannot crouch walk, a fatal flaw in this type of games (at least I didn't learn how).

On the combat we can use weapons like pistols and automatic rifles, explosives and stealth knockouts, but the most important, the stick to walls to pass some small spaces and see around.

The camera is wonky, I won't sugar coat it 50% of the time I was being found by my running around but the other 50% the camera was crazy and I was sticking out while fighting with my camera to see something.

The list is giant but not lose view of the bar on the upside right corner, it will come handy later

We can see on first person view too but it isn't to useful, it controls a bit bad and that it's in my opinion the worst sin of the game, the controls are of the PS1 era too, good for nostalgic fans and not so good for people like me, but opinions.

Procedural Missions:

Let's start one of the most important aspect in a game in my opinion, how exactly the gameplay cycle works.

First of all we have 4 or 5 scripted missions, depending on some opinions on the first and final one but in my opinion are 4, major important missions to do and the procedural aspect of the game.

The procedural maps are a list of missions that change from time to time and are mostly basic objectives that comes with a level of difficulty and some are timed, need special items or are simply more dangerous enemies around.

Destroy key targets, implant spy decides on soldiers, destroy vehicles, rescue prisioners are some examples.

I personally avoided the prisioners ones because the AI tends to broke a lot and sometimes made the mission impossible because they refused to use a door or pass a certain way as you see on the image.

Enemies and their use:

We have patrolling soldiers, mini tanks, cameras with machine guns and laser sensors, basic but works.

The problem starts with the low difficult, every star means a bigger map but sometimes those are just big empty zones that you need to transverse to find the exact same soldier that you saw on the beginning but with a mark on the minimap.

We have a lot of equipment to unlock, from better guns to actually stealth equipment but to be honest the maps or enemies don't evolve that much to justify the use of a different approach than running around.

The soldiers are used to unlock the next big boss, a bit of underwhelming because every soldier is the same and you just have to farm a bit, in my opinion is a couple of hours of mindless farm to get a good and fun mission in my opinion.

Remember the image of the intel bar, every time you are near a soldier alive (knocked out works fine but not dead) you can use the brilliant technology called "dream catcher" to gather information straight up from the mind of those who oppose you.

Every time you finish all the intel you need (playing procedural missions in the inter) you will have access to one of the heads of the syndicate in a more complex and scripted mission, in my opinion the big highlights of the game.

I won't spoil anything but I was a bit bored of the procedural and the simplified missions but those missions worth the while, they are fun and actually advances the plot, the only turn off are that the voices aren't that great but the gameplay shines a bit more, as the design of levels too.

The minimap also needs a bit of work because it's not reliable but you can play fine without it

In Conclusion:

I won't say that I didn't had fun with it, the problem is that you have to play through at least 10-20 missions to fulfill the requirements to fight a "leader" at least is what it took me, take in account that some missions last from 5 minutes to 20 or 30 if the difficult is higher (difficult = bigger map).

Also you slowly fill the bar by scanning soldiers, so if you get to some of the advanced areas with less soldiers and more mini tanks and turrets, then the grind become a bit harder.

Is one of those games that if you click with it, it's awesome but for me the antique and hardly comfortable controls and the procedural missions that in paper sounded awesome but on practice felt hard, is hard to recommend it to everyone.

It has great potential for a sequel with the improvements from Mgs 1 to twin snakes, a bit of twerking with the procedural missions and controls, an enemy AI a bit more in the game, even with the same gadgets, and could be great, the potential is there, at least that was the vibes I got from it.

Yeah.... I wasn't good at it 

I reviewed this game through a review copy for Nintendo Switch 1, thanks for trusting us!

Thanks for reaching the end! 

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