Jamie Collyer
Retro FPS titles always catch my eye, growing up as I did around the invention of the genre. The seminal Goldeneye changed console shooters for ever, and we’ve seen plenty of homages to it over the years. The latest in the line is The Spy Who Shot Me, a 32-bit throwback to simple run and gun shooting. While it’s not without charm, particuarly in it’s presentation and off-kilter jokes, it unfortunately is hampered by aiming controls that feel incredibly off putting to use.
I’ll get it out of the way; shooting in TPWSM is woeful even when considering it’s supposed to be aping games of the mid 90’s. It’s simple enough – no reloading or aim down sights, plenty of ammo, a small variety of types – but the issue is that it feels horrible to use. The right stick allows us full 360 degree movement of the view as you’d expect, but there’s a weird latency to it that gave me motion sickness for the first time since playing the original Wolfenstein 3D. Pressing the stick in any direction sees our aim move slowly for a second or so (depending on how high the sensitivity is set) before it then speeds up making it hard to accurately aim. It remains this way until we let go of the stick, at which point we repeat the process.

This has the knock on effect of it feeling horribly sluggish and unpredictable to use, and any attempt to fight more than one enemy (or try and accurately hit ones further away) is a frustrating experience. While the AI is as simple as can be – they literally just run at you, stop to shoot, then run some more – it’s still possible to be in what can only be described as a Storm Trooper fight as both the player and the AI struggle to aim and hit anything.
One late level has us confined to an automatically moving boat, and our only interaction is to aim and shoot – these on-rails sections are never all that fun in games with functioning controls, but I almost gave up at this point, so frustrating was it to try and hit enemies on the banks and in distance buildings.
On foot at least we can resort to the tried and tested strafe to aim, and it’s a strategy that got me through 99% of the game. Again, enemies will either be stationary or running straight at us, and so ducking in and out of cover by strafing proved to be the easiest way to line them up for a shot rather than trying to manually aim with the stick.
Occasionally we’re presented with a different scenario, such as racing a boat or skiing down a mountain, and these sections control pretty poorly too for other reasons. The boat slides about both land and sea as though it’s greased up with the slipperiest oil in the world, while the skiing and other chase sections are basically simple Temple Run affairs with plenty of sudden obstacles to avoid. They’re fine if unexciting, but at least we don’t have to worry about camera controls here.
I managed to power through the game in spite of the controls, and it’s…OK? I think with some better feeling aiming it could be quite fun as each level offers up several optional objectives as well as hidden items and easter eggs to find. I attempted to do some of these to start with, but in the end I just got through the levels before I lost my lunch.

TSWSM has an odd sense of humour, delivered in fairly naff voice clips, but it did get a small chuckle from me once or twice. Our character Agent 7 is a bit of an anti-Bond, feeling more reminiscent of Jonny English in his ability to succeed despite his obliviousness to what’s going on. There are also multiple (fairly bland) visual gags such as being able to shoot someone in the toilet who’s forever peeing while he flails about, or soldiers attacking you while in their underwear. It’s not going to have anyone belly laughing, but it’s all inoffensive enough.
Conclusion
I had hoped to start the year of with a bit of a lighter game, and The Spy Who Shot Me looked to fit the bill. Sadly, while the jokes and presentation are fine enough, the terrible feeling aiming ruins what could have otherwise been a fun take on retro FPS action.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
Good
- Nice retro presentation
- A couple of passable gags
- Multiple optional objectives on each stage
Bad
- Terrible aim control feel, to the point of almost ruining the game entirely
4
Poor
Written by
Jamie Collyer
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan
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