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Nice Addition For WW2 Video Game Fans...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My preview/review copy arrived on a CD-R with no documentation, along with a silver "start up" disc that must be placed in the drive before installing the main disc, but I was able to figure out how to load it without too many headaches. Retail copies probably won't require the extra disc. Although Windows Vista is not indicated, you won't have any trouble using that OS here.
Loading takes forever-count on at least 20 minutes here, even if your system is state-of-the-art. But once that is out of the way, you're in for a good time with this game. I liked the game twist that rewards the player for fewer "kills" required-after all, a spy would have to spend precious time disposing of the bodies! Like many games, one begins with various training sessions, then you are sent off to enemy lines. The missions are interesting-for once, we have a WW2 game that gives you time to think, instead of just reacting. Strategies definitely reflect what a real spy would face. But aiming can be very difficult, although adjusting the mouse speed in Windows helped. Definitely worth a try!

Interesting idea ruined by repetitive gameplay and unbearable controls.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

WW2 themed games are in no short supply these days, and the same goes for stealth games. So it was only a matter of time before someone thought to combine the two - the result is, of course, DEATH TO SPIES.

The game is hard to follow from the get-go - after a forced training session, you are introduced to the "story" which seems to involve you either being debriefed or interrogated about former missions. You are a spy of some kind, going behind enemy lines in WW2 era Germany to achieve various objectives.

Each level starts you out with a kit of weapons of your own choosing (you can also let the game choose a default starting kit each level). On each level, you will sneak by enemies to reach an objective, such as a document that needs retrieving, or a prisoner that needs liberating. You can sneak past guards, or you can overwhelm one and change clothes with him, allowing you to walk right past many of the guards undetected. You have a standard array of WW2 era weapons - machine guns, grenades, and pistols. You also have a silenced pistol, which you can use to take out guards without drawing unwanted attention. Also at your disposal is chloraform and choke wire, with which you can also silently dispose of pesky guards. The graphics are nice enough, employing the bloom effect that has become popular of late, giving the game a look very reminiscent of BROTHERS IN ARM.

The first couple of levels proceed decently enough, but by the third level I was growing tired of the same basic gameplay and the infuriating controls. This game is MURDER when it comes to controlling our man. For starters, you are meant to sneak up on guards and take them down silently - but to do so, you must hit a particular button to go into sneak mode, rather than just holding shift as other games might allow you to do. Then you must hope your crawling pace will get you to said guard before he decides to turn, to start walking again, or someone else comes into view. And when you have to subdue a guard in motion, forget about it!

When you do manage to get up to an unsuspecting guard, you can't just hit one button to punch him - you have to hit the action button, which then brings up a menu, from which you have to scroll down to the action you want to take (in this case, stun) and then hit action again! This is crazy - most of the time, you are trying to hit the guard who has heard you and is starting to turn - the extra two seconds it takes to scroll through the menu means he will complete the turn and spot you. WHO THOUGHT OF THIS CONTROL SCHEME! The same problem happens with opening doors. Go up to the door, press action, select OPEN DOOR, press action again. By then, the guards you were trying to slip by have turned the corner and seen you!

Once you are spotted, you might as well reload - two shots and you're dead. Or, which is more often the case, the guards will throw a grenade at you - and they NEVER miss with the grenades!

In the outdoor missions, these problems aren't as pronounced, because you can usually take the guards on one by one. But indoors is a different story - the guards will be in groups of five or more, so getting them alone is out of the question. Lob a grenade and they will scatter without taking any damage - and then sound the alarm which doubles the guards!

So eventually, you learn the only way to get through a level is to use the silenced pistol and kill from a distance. Even then, another guard will inevitably see the fallen body and come running. Most of the time, even if they are running straight at you, they will always stop and look at the body for a second first, which gives you time to try to pop them in the head as well. On the first level, I took out 7 guards in one spot with this method - YAWN, what fun!

Of course, you have nowhere near enough silenced bullets to take down every guard, and again, indoors they are too tightly packed to use it anyway. So, ultimately, I'd had enough and stopped playing on the third level.

With more user-friendly controls and a better ability to camoflauge yourself, this might have been a fun game. But as it is, I can't recommend it at all!

So so

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I wasn't impressed with this game at all. I felt like I was never IN the game...just point and shoot...that's it.

Difficult to play

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Perhaps I'm an action-game neophyte - I prefer strategy games like Civilization - but I had enough trouble with this game that I can't really say I played it. It was virtually inoperable on Windows XP. On Windows Vista, it loaded and opened up. But I found it difficult to control using the cursor arrows - I don't think it worked with the mouse - and enough so that after an hour or two, I just gave up on it.

thoughtful stalking

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I come to this from flight sims (e.g., IL-2) and strategy games with realtime battles (e.g., the Total War series) so this is a new, but accessible, experience for me. The training mode takes patience but is very worth while since the game has a number of keyboard controls to learn, and game concepts to absorb. Be careful: mistakes even in training (e.g., grenade throw) can be unexpectedly lethal.

This is not so much a first-person shooter as a third-person (i.e., just behind the character) stalker. Much of the game requires thoughtful stalking (evading sentries, etc.) and any rapid movement or shooting a la Wolfenstein will simply bring down the whole scenario on you. The missions can be difficult and will require patience and a lot of creeping about.

The game loads and plays well even on my older Windows XP (vintage 2003) platform, so it can run well even on limited systems. And the programming has some thoughtful touches (holding down a mouse button for strength of grenade throw, or holding the shooter's breath while looking through his sniper scope -- a very clever method). The period touches all seem accurate. Well worthwhile.

Surprisingly enjoyable!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to admit: when I first got this game, I was skeptical about whether I'd like it or not. I'm not into the WWII/ military genre; I don't like shooters; and the most experience I ever had playing a stealth game was Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (which means barely at all). It didn't help matters any that I found the training level of Death to Spies exhausting, or that my initial impression of the 1st level was one of being overwhelmed.

But the strangest thing happened-- it began to grow on me. And the longer I played, the more I understood why: Death to Spies is definitely one of the most intriguing games I have ever played.

For one, being of the stealth genre, it's not your typical shoot 'em up where all you have to do is develop quick reflexes and twitchiness. It's very cerebral, in that you have to rely a lot on strategy, powers of observation, patience, logic, and a sense of timing in order to complete the number of tasks given to you each level. In many ways, it plays out more as a game of logic and timing, if anything else. There's some action in Death to Spies, but on the whole the majority of your time will be spent either observing other characters or planning your next move.

Another reason why this game grew on me was its immersiveness. From the more down to earth graphics to the occasional sounds of radio broadcasts that play from the rooms of NPCs, there's a subtlety to the look, feel, and sound of it all that makes you really feel as if you're in whatever environment you're playing in, whether it be inside a prison camp or inside a lavish hotel.

If there's any quibble to this game it's that it's well designed to a fault. Some reviews have given points to this game for its realistic approach to the stealth genre. This is both its strength and weakness. On one hand, you'll marvel at the level of realism in which you have to make the main character carry out his tasks without resorting to a Rambo-style slaughter. (For example, you can't indiscriminately kill guards who are within walking distance of each other, because their bodies will eventually be discovered by their colleagues, which will then alert everyone to your presence.)

On the other hand, you might find your patience strained at times from the realism, because you have to spend so much of your time either walking past enemies from place to place (when you'd rather be running), or crouching for several minutes at a time waiting to leap into action.

More laid back gamers might enjoy this type of gameplay because there isn't the anxiety you would have in a shooter where there are enemies coming at you every which way. The twitchy gamer, on the other hand, might find the more slow-paced style of gameplay frustrating and even laborious.

Fault aside, I think Death to Spies is a pretty good game, especially for people who are more into puzzle and logical gameplay than action or just want a change of pace from it all. If you're more into shooting, running, driving, flying, and zipping your way through a game, however, I'd pass; there's far too little of that in Death to Spies to make it enjoyable for the more action-oriented gamer.

This is a good title for the right kind of stealth PC gamer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If your machine can run it smoothly and you have the patience for a fairly frustrating 3rd person stealth shooter w/ strong espionage WWII overtones then this might be a good choice. I found it to be most appealing in its overall ambiance effective background sounds and music make it a mildly immersive experience, but the missions which ramp up in difficulty very quickly can border on hair pulling difficulty because the game lets you roam and get off task very easily. That coupled with controls that feel a little convoluted compared to your average console stealth run through and you have a game that is for a specific few. Those who find Russia's DTS program and its ties to the war will find alot in the details to enjoy as the weapons and missions are interesting and varied enough but this is for the diehard PC gamer as you will be restarting missions alot. My machine ran this game okay and graphics looked OK but check your specs as I had alot of choppiness and sound clipping overall making this title not much fun to muddle through in the end.

Seen It, Done It...found nothing new or fresh

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I just played Death To Spies. It took forever to play. There is NOTHING NEW with this game. If you played other spy games, especially the James Bond From Russia with Love game..you played this one.

When you play a new PC game, you want a freshness or something you never seen before. This aint it! It has too much repeat action and you will bore quickly

Rent Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent you will enjoy yourself more

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

Yet another FPS

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: December 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Death to Spies is a first person shooter. There is a nice tutorial included with the game and the graphics are decent to nice, but the game itself isn't too entertaining. At times, it can be downright hard or impossible to beat some of the areas. The missions aren't that creative either -- they are all the classic stealth missions that have been used over and over again in all the other FPS. This game is worth buying and playing if you like a real difficult spy/stealth type game with decent graphics.

Not for everyone, but I'm loving it.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: February 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I really hated to ding this game a star for "overall", because I'm really in love with it. But let's get the bad out of the way first. Graphically, I love the way it looks, but in a retro sort of way. nothing fancy, but gets the job done. The open areas are done well, and some of the buildings are nice, but I found it odd that none of the huge buildings had functional windows. Possibly a limitation of the game engine. I'm having zero problems with the controls. There is a slight adjustment to using them, but the tutorial mission does a great job of training you in quickly. I'm using my 4-year-old Athlon XP2600+ with a gig of ram and a 7800GS video card, and I'm getting good framerates with every option maxed, so it runs very smooth even on lesser hardware.

This game is definitely not for everyone. Each mission requires a great deal of patience to get through. If you're a shooter fan, look elsewhere. This is more akin to a third-person "Thief" game, with some major differences. "Death To Spies" has an overhead map. And you will be lost without it. The map is moveable and resizeable, so I put mine down in the right corner and made it small. I refer to it constantly, since it shows you the location of each enemy, their direction of travel, which way they are facing, and whether or not your disguise is good enough to fool which ones. Changing uniforms is easy to do. Knocking out the person to get his uniform is less easy, and requires strategy and patience to get them alone somewhere, and then carry the body someplace like a closet without being spotted.

Tension in this game is through the roof, much like "Thief". If you are on the fence about this game, I HIGHLY recommend downloading the demo first, which is the first mission of the game. The demo gives a VERY good indicator of what the rest of the game is like. The demo also pulls no punches, and is quite difficult. It took me nearly four hours to complete it, but as in all the missions in this game, there is a HUGE sense of accomplishment upon finishing a mission. Each mission consists of multiple objectives, which you can generally complete in any order, and there is also a huge sense of accomplishment when you hear the clicking typewriter signalling that another objective has been completed. The game is linear only in that you must complete all objectives. How you go about doing that is generally up to you, with a few caveats. Those exceptions though are common sense, and make sense within the gameworld.

There are 10 missions total. I'm currently in Mission 7. The first 4 missions took 2 to 4 hours each to complete. Now that I'm getting more familiar with how the AI works, the last few missions have taken less than 2 hours each.

Totally immersive and utterly involving, you can lose yourself in a game like this. Thankfully, you can save anywhere, save often, and quicksave anywhere you like. The one thing that bugged me most is the lack of a first-person point of view. I generally never touch a third-person game, as I hate having my character block my view, but I can easily overlook that for a game as well-crafted as this one. The level design is outstanding. You can tell that the developers put a lot of love into this creation. I'm eagerly looking forward to a sequel, though that may not be likely since this game is pretty hard-core and may not appeal to the masses. But if you've got patience, and like to sit and stare at the screen, plotting your best plan, and then executing it carefully, then I can give this game a very high recommendation.

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