Rarely does a Steam game recommend using a controller upon launch. After all, PC Master Race or whatever right?
I should have listed in retrospect.
Spy Drops Gaiden may be a 2D, arcade adaptation of the original Spy Drops, but it’s routes exist in the Metal Gear franchise and games of a similar style and genre.
Developed by Dadako and published by Rainy Frog Co. Ltd., Spy Drops Gaiden has you “dropping” into a series of 12 stealth missions. Avoid enemies, sneak through bases and assassinate your target. Simple ideas, complicated endeavours.
Without a jot of hand holding the game sets you away. You have limited shots with your tranquiller gun, use them wisely. You figured how to crouch, good luck figuring out when it’s useful. The enemies have torches, can they see you through obstacles? Sometimes. Can you pass through that gap, who knows?
Factored into my struggles were my belligerent insistence on using a mouse and keyboard. You’ll find far more nuance in the stick of a controller than the WASD keys for moving slowly if nothing else.
The old-fashioned nature of the graphics makes each map uniquely tricky to traverse, as it’s not always apparent where you’re supposed to go, and if you can even go where you’d like. You might knock out an enemy with your tranquiliser, but he’ll be up in about 10 seconds so keep moving. Hide in a bin if you like but the soldiers aren’t going anywhere so it’s a temporary reprieve. All this leads to a somewhat frustrating but ultimately satisfying experience that you don’t quite get from the original Spy Drops’ 3D world.
The sound mixing is interesting; I don’t know if it’s good or simply nostalgic. Alarms, gunshots, doors opening etc. all feel like sound bites I’ve heard a million times playing games in the late 90s/early 2000s and there’s an element of comfort in that. The music is a tense synth beat, urging you on despite stealth needing a kind of patience the game doesn’t have.
The Metal Gear influences are obvious, from the aesthetic to the codenames and mission briefs, MG fans will find something familiar in Spy Drops that modern spy games tend to lack, for good or bad.
My overall takeaway is that Spy Drops Gaiden is a cheap and cheerful nostalgia trip for a type of game that is rarely made anymore outside of the indie space. Does it play as well as the games it tries to emulate? I don’t think so, but perhaps that’s me remembering Metal Gear as a more polished experience that it actually was. If you’re comfortable with old-school gaming, and the lack of QoL features that modern games have established then this may be for you, as for me, I’m a easy-mode gamer and this, whilst not difficult by any stretch, is annoying enough to put me off.
Beyond any of this though is the price, for just £3.99 you can experience all I’ve written and more. Plus, if the thought of parting with money unnecessarily gives you heart palpitations like it does me, then simply download the demo and give it a whirl free of charge. But, as I said, as Steam said, please use a controller.
