Get Smart
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| Get Smart

Ah yes, the dreaded movie tie-in game. These notorious little buggers are generally very difficult to love. And when it's a film that's struggled for breath at the box office, the gaming vultures tend to circle even more ominously.

Get Smart certainly wasn't a terrible film; it just suffered badly from formulaic corporate moviemaking techniques. And while the film borrows heavily from its retro-tastic counterpart (the well-remembered 1960s TV series) and daubs it with contemporary Steve Carell cheese, the mobile game adaptation does an interesting job of exercising its own nostalgic muscles in an updated format.

The game of the movie seems to be a moderately seamless combination of a variety of pocket gaming styles. Multiplexing elements of stealth from Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell with the witty conversational exchanges of My Bridezilla and classic, espionage-esque visuals from games like arcade classic Rolling Thunder, Get Smart builds itself an interesting vehicle on which to carry the adaptation.

It all sounds a bit muddled and over-complicated, but these wildly varying elements are sewn together well and combine to present the correct feeling of slapstick secret agent action.

Adopting the lead role of Maxwell Smart, the missions vary quite a bit but are all constrained within a few basic parameters of gameplay – mainly stealth, insult fighting and mild exploration.

The linear corridors of each level feature lifts to take you between floors, most of which are patrolled by some kind of antagonist. As an aspiring spy, Max's preferred method of transport is on his tip-toes, so hiding around the corner until the bad guys turn their backs is the best angle of attack.

Stealth attacks can be in the form of a quick shot or a close-quarters pistol whip, and keeping the noise to a minimum helps to catch the antagonists unaware. While scouring these corridors you're required to pick up very simple clues; mainly combinations for locked doors. The real difference in gameplay is the same one that adds the necessary air of humour to Get Smart: insult fighting.

This bizarre bout of smack talking between you and an aggressor entails swapping jibes until one or the other runs out of witty retorts. The more insult fights you get into, the more verbal attacks and defences are added to your sarcastic arsenal, and winning a bout depends entirely on learning which comeback beats down which insult.

While the insults aren't especially droll (and often don't even make sense), it's the comic nuances that really make insult fighting work. In the background, other enemies jeer and flinch like the redneck crowd at a Jerry Springer show, while the battling characters grandstand and squirm as they fight their battle of low-brow wits.

Get Smart the game achieves pretty much the same as Get Smart the movie; an enjoyable and immediately entertaining hour or two of forgettable escapism. A bit one dimensional, but the box never really promised much beyond that.

Get Smart

Shallow and unsophisticated, but harmlessly enjoyable slapstick spoof spy schtick
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.