Game 438: Spy vs. Spy - The Island Caper

 

The spies are at it again! Mutually shot down over a volcanic island, only one of them can complete the mission - to recover a lost missile - and escape by submarine, leaving the other marooned.

As the missile comes in three parts and they are scattered around the island, there's a good chance the other guy will locate one or two of them, and you'll need to find a way to relieve him of it. Booby traps are the way to go, but this time, they must be crafted from materials recovered on site - vines, sharp sticks, coconuts, and jet fuel.

As with the first game, I played a few rounds of the original Commodore 64 version (via VICE) with "R," and found The Island Caper a general improvement from the first game, though not without some issues. It's certainly a less confusing game - this time there's no question about whether you possess the missile parts or not, though you still need the manual to clarify some of the finer control points - the one-button, context-sensitive interface has different actions for "bury," "drop," and "put away," and some of the traps can be complicated to set up, especially snares and punji pits.

There are seven islands to play on, in ascending order of size and complexity, but the largest still felt a bit too small, so all of the recorded matches were on it. I play white, "R" plays black. I won most of the matches, but the last one ends in a dramatic volcanic eruption stalemate.

 

The spies are tougher than before, with long health bars and health regeneration, but this time, dead means dead. The island's natural hazards, quicksand and sharks, are more damaging than almost anything your foe can do to you.

 

Combat is crap, and that's actually a good thing, because it encourages using traps! It takes forever to kill your opponent with a cane, and it's not too hard for a losing opponent to evade and regenerate. Even if you find a gun, you'll probably run out of bullets before your foe dies, unless he was low on health to begin with. Booby traps, on the other hand, don't always kill, but they do always cause your opponent to drop what they were carrying. And if you can grab it and flee, you're well on your way to victory. If you can correctly guess which side of the island the submarine is moored at.

It's a better designed game than the first one, but it's still a bit limiting. In most games, both spies are going to locate at least one missile part - then what? You could track him down and kill him in combat, but the game really doesn't want you to do that except as a last resort. You could bury your missile pieces and place a bunch of traps and wait, but if both spies do that, then you're deadlocked until one of you breaks, and whoever does that will have to contend with their own traps. Finding a gun can turn the tide in favor of aggression, but it's not a foolproof strategy - the gun is rarely enough to kill, it tends to jam, being full of sand and all, there's no way to draw it when the enemy is already in sight, and searching for it gives your opponent plenty of opportunity to trap your critical path. Or swipe your missile parts.

Incidentally, the AI is horrid and not worth playing against. At level 5, it is essentially impossible to beat in direct combat, but too stupid to maneuver around your corpse after it kills you. I won by letting it collect and assemble the missile and waiting by the beach with a napalm trap, which it triggered, letting me grab the missile and flee to the submarine, and freedom.

GAB rating: Above average. Better than the first, no question, but it needed to be a little bit deeper in order to really accomplish what it was going for.