Game Title: Spy Chameleon RBG Agent
Developer: Unfinished Pixel
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 414 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Stealth Games. When I think of stealth games, my mind immediately goes to Metal Gear Solid. No, not the new half stealth half mindless shooter Metal Gear games, but way back on the PS One with the original Metal Gear Solid. Where you had to worry about where enemy sight was at and finding a good strategic way around every enemy. When you didn’t have the EZ Gun to tranquilize everyone.

Old-fashioned stealth isn’t used in games all that much anymore, but it is in some. The indie world has a lot of these games and the PS Vita does get some of these indies. That’s what I’m going to talk about today. Here is my official review of the stealth game, Spy Chameleon: RGB Agent!

Story

Normally, this type of indie has some sort of storyline to give you a scenario to justify what you’re doing. Unfortunately, Spy Chameleon doesn’t give you any sort of scenario. There isn’t one written down in the manual, either. Just, nothing. You’re thrown in and do stuff without any knowledge as to why.

Gameplay

Spy Chameleon is an over-head stealth game. When you play the game, you’ll be going through stages with the task of not being seen at all, utilizing the natural ability of the chameleon to blend into your surroundings. There aren’t many other elements in play here, so it is basically just a stealth game.

When you first start the game, you can set whether you want to be on the Normal or Hard difficulties, but you can always go back and play through the other difficulty later on. There are no other game modes for you to play, though. The main campaign of levels as well as the same levels in the other difficulty are everything at your disposal to do in the game.

When you’re playing through any of the 75 stages, you’ll be in a top-down environment with you, enemies, and collectible items up for grabs. Your goal in each stage is to collect flies (collectibles) and reach the exit to complete the stage. You’ll need flies to be able to unlock later missions, so it is always a good idea to try to gain as many flies as you can before leaving.

There are some basic stealth elements here like avoiding enemy sight and running behind enemies, but Spy Chameleon makes itself unique with the chameleon’s ability to change his skin color. There are 4 colors you can do, color-coded for the four face buttons. Blue for X, Pink for Square, Green for Triangle, and Red for Circle. There are also many environment areas the same color, be it colored lighting or spilled paint. When in these areas and you make yourself the same color, you are completely hidden from any and all enemies, as long as you don’t physically bump into them.

As you play through each set of stages, there are other elements that are thrown in. While one set may throw in enemies you can eat, another may introduce cardboard boxes you can hide and move around in (big Metal Gear reference right there). This all leads up to the final area where all previous elements are implemented for the biggest challenge.

Speaking of, I wouldn’t call this one of the console-throwing games for difficulty. While it is true that Hard Mode is very difficult and some stages in normal won’t be passed with flying colors on your first try, I didn’t find this game to be overly difficult. Not that it’s a bad thing, but just to throw it out there to those hardcore stealth fans that may be looking for a large challenge. You won’t find that here.

Now, let’s talk about how long the game, or rather, isn’t. There are 75 stages for you to go through and, given time to repeat and master, I would give each stage an average of about a minute on normal mode. That would leave the entire game between 1 and 2 hours long. While you can easily double this by going through again on Hard Mode, the game isn’t going to last you very long. Aside from beating your own scores, there’s not much replay value here.

Controls

First of all, you will be happy to know that Spy Chameleon is compatible with the PlayStation TV. I apologize for not having a video review to go along with this, but I do have my reasons. I’m starting to adjust to training and working my new job at Apple Care, so it may take a week or two to fully adjust to the new flow of my time for reviews. For now, no video review of Spy Chameleon.

There are no touch controls to worry about, so it’s all down to physical controls. Movement is done with the D-Pad and Left Analog Stick, and the camera can be used with the Right Analog Stick. You use the face buttons to change your color as I said in the last section. X turns you blue, Square turns you pink, Triangle turns you green, and Circle turns you red. Start opens the menu and that’s pretty much it. The triggers don’t do anything, nor does the select button.

Even though story was skipped out for this indie, a control explanation was not. The first few levels will show you everything you need to know for controlling and understanding the game.

Presentation

The presentation section is where we get one of the problems, but that’s not up first. Visually, the game looks nice. The 3D models look pretty nice on the screen. When you see zoomed-in renders you can see some blemishes and jagged edges, but since it is an over-top game, it makes it look nice and it’s easy to forgive that aspect.

Frame-drops are the main culprit here. When you start some stages or move to certain areas, the frame-rate stutters for a few seconds. Thankfully, this was always localized to a stage loading, so it never causes problems during gameplay.

That’s something you don’t see in the PS4 version. It’s not something that’s going to break the game, but it’s something to note. It’s also worth noting that Spy Chameleon uses the extra RAM available on the Vita, so it’s not like the developer didn’t optimize the features enough.