Release Date: May 8, 2018 (Early Access)

Platform: PC

Developer: Wazen

Price: $24.99

Wazen’s Assault Spy is a game where the player controls a man with a briefcase who is tormented by his junior co-worker, and spends his time being rated on an A to D system for his work. On paper it sounds like the monotonous every day of a office workers life, with a side helping of high school. In reality, it’s anything but.

Assault Spy is actually a fast-paced beat ‘em up where you play as Asaru, a corporate spy who spends his time fighting robots with a metallic briefcase and shuriken-style business cards (secondary protagonist, Amelia is yet to be added in story mode at the time of writing). Early in the game Asaru and his sugar-pop, childlike partner, Kanoko, are sent to investigate a robotics company and the craziness only ramps up from there. One of my favourite fights in the game involves fighting rhumbas wielding chainsaws.

Although the story is fun, the strongest part of Assault Spy is definitely its combat, which was somewhat surprising for me as when it first arrived in early access the combat felt glitchy and unresponsive. Not anymore. The combat is now some of the finest I’ve had the chance to play this year. It feels great to zip around the battlefield and use various combos to smash robots in different ways. It’s forgiving of button-mashing, but also offers a level of difficulty to master with different grades and experience points awarded for the player’s finesse in fights.

Unfortunately, there are still some problems with Assault Spy, one of which made it very difficult to continue through the story missions. The graphics run much better than when the game was initially released, but the style of them is still quite odd and not particularly visually appealing. I wouldn’t really recommend this game for those wanting to beat their way through beautiful landscapes. There are also a few new glitches in the game, which have appeared since the games release into early access, the worst of which is an occasional inability to interact with objects, which can be very frustrating as they are often needed to further the story. In my experience, this will often go away after a few minutes but it has occasionally needed me to reload the level which is quite annoying.

Despite these annoyances, Assault Spy has been continuing to improve at such a pace that it’s unlikely any glitches will stay in the game for too long, with the team at Wazen still frequently updating it. Overall, it’s a game with so much potential that it is well worth a buy in its current state, and will likely become a must-buy for fans of indie beat ‘em ups upon its full release. Like Asaru’s hyper sidekick, Assault Spy is simply having too much fun to be ignored.

Pros

Fun, responsive and fast combat
Whimsical and silly story

Cons

Still contains a couple of quite bad glitches (at the time of writing)
Not very visually appealing

Assault Spy Review