"Secret Service" is a true cheap budget title and it shows

User Rating: 5 | Secret Service PC
By natasha8384 | Review Date:
This is the third game by Cauldron and published by the budget division of Activision that I played and the result is about same -- the developer simply fails to raise the quality and its products stay solidly below the average. The shortcomings in "Secret Service" are very similar or even identical to their previous games such as "History Channel: Battle for the Pacific" and "SoF Payback". CloakNT engine is getting really old and it's not a worthy opponent to more well-known game engines. Yet, the graphics, while nowhere even close to superb, are bearable and not distracting the gameplay itself. Sound is OK, but not the best selection for this title.

- graphics: 6.5/10
- sound: 6.5/10
- gameplay: 4/10
- game mechanics: 5/10
- story: not worth mentioning
- re-playability: none to almost none

The best hope for this game was in a dominance of totally mindless shooting action, but unfortunately the developer decided to intersperse lame puzzles (bomb defuse puzzles, etc.) along the way -- as soon as you think, oh, my, this is picking up the pace ... bummer, yet another puzzle just to kill your hopes of a prospect of mindless shooting fun. In short, the idea that a set of identical or very similar puzzles can somehow redeem the game will push you closer to simply uninstalling the game and recovering some 3 GB of space on your hard disk. Game mechanics didn't improve from the previous Cauldron games very much either -- you can now lean (Q or E) but you can't lean and move; you can jump, but you can't jump over a foot high rope (which points towards a heavily scripted gameplay, even when it defies the movement logic). Enemy AI is almost OK -- they take cover most of the time, but then again they often also jump right in front of your shooting gun committing suicide. Maybe the brightest spot in this game are the gun models and their semi-realistic behavior when firing, tho the gun sounds are not too hot.

Overall, skip if you expect a ton of entertainment; buy if you want to waste some time. The current price is around $10 in Best Buy. Sometimes,so called, budget titles end up being lots of fun, however "Secret Service" is a true cheap budget title and it shows. Score: 4.8/10.

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