Death to Spies: Moment of Truth Demo

As far as the stealth genre is concerned, there are a few series out there that took it upon themselves to introduce and revolutionize the core mechanics, including Thief, Splinter Cell and Hitman. However, there have been many other attempts, some of which turned out to be quite successful, even if they did not exactly bring anything new to the table and just reused what the others already mastered, such as Dishonored.

Death to Spies: Moment of Truth goes even further than that, by basically copying the entire gameplay mechanics from the Hitman franchise and changing the environment altogether, in order to relay the same atmosphere in a different setting. However, it also integrates a few gimmicks of its own, while also significantly increasing the difficulty level, to make matters more interesting and the missions more challenging.

In case you are not aware, this is actually the second title in the series and it had time to refine the formula, although the story is largely the same, since you are still a Russian spy that must gather various pieces of information from the opposing side. Hence, whether you have to disguise yourself as a German soldier and extract details about an attack plan, or you have to give your best impression of an FBI agent conducting an investigation, there are plenty of interesting scenarios to play through over the course of the campaign.

Now, as previously mentioned, most of the gameplay mechanics are borrowed from the Hitman series, but they are somewhat modified as well, in order to fit the new environment. Hence, you can equip your character with the desired equipment before each mission and proceed in a variety of ways to accomplish the objectives. Enemies can be killed or knocked out, depending on how violent you want to be and whether you are worried about leaving a trace or not. Wearing specific uniforms can help you sneak into various zones, although you can also be recognized if you linger too much.

One other aspect that greatly influences the gameplay is the fact that the difficulty level is quite high, since you are not really given a steady walkthrough or tutorial to explain the mechanics. Largely, this is due to the fact that everything was explained in the first installment, but it would have been nice to have the option to learn how to make use of your equipment. Moreover, the AI is quite clever and you can have a difficult time trying to trick it, especially if you are not careful and you trigger alarms.

Death to Spies: Moment of Truth brings a large array of improvements over the previous episode, even if it borrows most of its ideas from other franchises. The lack of originality is compensated by the fun and challenging gameplay, which should make you forget about the weak graphics engine and the somewhat unimpressive audio department.