"Spy House: Diary War" review: novel and classical

The core of "Spy House" is very simple, it tells how a few strangers through the false daily life, gradually transformed into the real sense of "family." In this story, the protagonists' respective "secret identities" and rising international tensions are universal tools for setting up jokes and dramatic conflicts - at least now that the daily plot has penetrated into the mainstream market, it is hard to distinguish it from the long-lived "family" animation of the last century.

There's nothing wrong with manga or anime, but as an inevitable part of the fan economy, their story model is a terrible fit with video games that emphasize "experience." And this is almost all the older generation of national comics have faced the problem, until "Doraemon" and "Crayon small new" to find A more flexible, but also more in-depth industry business model, so that the "daily series of comics to change the game" this thing seems to have some turning point.

Interestingly, however, Spyhouse: Diary Wars takes none of this to heart. When the creators realized that the tone of their work was not meant to fit into the regular commercial game framework, they resolutely chose a less expensive and more classical development model, which paid homage to the national level predecessors of the past -- generally, we call this type of game "small game collection", but for these games, You also need to add a "marvel change" prefix in order to clarify its fan orientation.

In advance, I am not really a fan of "Spy's House", but the accumulation of experience in the "Many-to-mini-game collection" over the years still brings some summary and horizontal comparison capital. Simply put, such games often suffer from too low development costs, no ability to design the corresponding original gameplay, have to rely on the existing mature gameplay, fill the original empty frame - you say it is bad, real fans will tell you "don't play go away"; But say it's okay, most of them are just copyrighted art material applied to non-copyrighted classic gameplay, and busy reviewing good and bad is obviously not fair to those who seriously do gameplay games.

The lack of a mature and coherent intra-office loop makes it seem like you opened the GTA just to play the online casino inside.

I know it doesn't sound good to say, but it's true -- most of these games aren't "bad," they're just extremely "mediocre" in terms of gameplay experience, and mediocre can range from good to bad, with extreme people treating the good as gods and the bad as shit.

There was a game called Chibi Maruko-Chan: Pocket Money War on the Nintendo GameBoy, which was the first gamification attempt of Chibi Maruko-chan, a national manga IP, but it later became famous in the Internet community for some negative reasons. Among them, the developers tried to use a set of random loops, forcing the series of unrelated small games, is the key to the collapse of all existing game balance - after that, good "fan service" gradually became the focus of the industrialization of similar games.

By comparison, "Spy's House: Diary Wars" seems pretty good. Although it also uses small games in bulk as the core gameplay, it does not use it as the only fulcrum of the game. Even if the story is equally dispensable, it still fits in perfectly with the worldview of the original. More importantly, even if its outside gameplay cycle is extremely monotonous, it can at least successfully connect the logical relationship between the story and the small game, so that it does not become a pure "skin change" game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's fun. As a game, "Spies Play House: Diary Battle" is still "mediocre", but it is just mediocre above the pass line, which covers the fact that "small game collection" itself does not have much technical content.

However, this is also because "Spy House: Diary Battle" has a very obvious advantage - that is, it is too strong as a "fan game" service spirit. Even with the visible lack of money, it has found a good balance between cost and final performance -- the game's character interactions and dialogue are all done by real-time 3D models, and you don't see any cost-cutting "slideshow" performances except for some original event CG. From this point of view, it does appear to be more sincere than many "re-reading plot" marvel games.

In terms of visual style and character modeling, the game makes the greatest reference to the TV animation that was launched last year. The colorful character expression changes and full-voice narration also bring some extra points to the existing character relationships in the original work. If you like the "daily" part of the animation, then naturally you can tell the story from the perspective of "Anya". Feel some genre fun that is different from anime or manga.

However, as the most direct manifestation of "low-cost development", the design of "full 3D performance" and "full voice" naturally needs to pay the corresponding price, and its specific performance in the game is as follows: The whole story only provides a minimum of closed scenes for the player to explore, there is no practical interactive elements in the scene, even the daily description of special events, but also stay at the stage of a few conversations can pass. More often, the player needs to imagine the whole story through a fixed silent performance... By the way, in this process can not forget to take the corresponding photos according to the preset requirements of the game.

The out-of-office loop of Spyhouse: Diary Wars is born out of this low-cost relationship -- players film ania's everyday moments, earn the points needed to play the mini-game, earn the out-of-office currency by playing the mini-game, and finally use the currency to buy items needed to unlock more locations, as well as character costumes with various additional effects.

In fact, this is a relatively ideal approach to game design. Unfortunately, whether it is the Angle of view and composition when taking photos, or the exploration of daily life, the production team does not leave players too much freedom to play. Anya's daily life is roughly divided into three stages: the two points and one line of "Eden Academy" and "Forger's house", and the "short trip" once every three days. When the novelty wears off and the cooling-off period begins, it's easy to get bored with this monotonous process and endless cycle.

Throughout the process, the only thing that can be called a goal is a drawing diary that is gradually filled with daily photographs. The game does not have a "week" concept, and there is no specific time limit for play. At best, you'll be able to tap into everyday landscapes that anime and manga can't, and at worst, you'll quickly lose interest in the game due to a lack of motivation... That's the problem with people.

Finally, let's talk about the small game part of "Spy House: Diary Battle"...

To be honest, there is nothing to talk about, because most of them are too ordinary, including the more accurate input of the "vegetable ninja", the horizontal version of the right side of the parkour mini-game, and the computer table to play poker, and even the "spy House" image of the "Pac-Man" and so on.

It is worth affirming that these small games have taken care of the basic setting of "Spy House". For example, in poker, Anya can use her super powers to spy on other people's hands, while Joel and Lloyd's respective "secret work" also corresponds to the concept of "spy" and "killer", incorporating some simple action elements. This takes care of the needs of fans to a large extent, and ensures the unity of the game and the original in the world view.

But as I said earlier, Spyhouse: Diary Wars is ultimately a "mediocre" collection of small bulk games. In order to take care of potential users who may exist in the "Family Fun" animation at a controllable cost, it controls the operation and gameplay ceiling of all small games very low, so that players are easy to subconsciously tie repeated play to utilitarian goals - this is also a common problem in many small game collections - although aware of this "Spy's House: Diary Battle, does not set small game play as a compulsory play item, but it is still not enough to improve its "not fun" status quo.

Of course, if you are just a "Spy's House" fan, the behavior of "play" itself does not have too high a demand, buy the game just to appreciate the characters' daily life from another perspective, then all the above negative reviews of the game can be regarded as farting - because, "mediocre" is never a fault, "Spy's House" : Diary Battle is just a fan to the marvel to change the game.

But if you've just seen a few animations and want a more playable collection of mini-games... Save your money for World Games 51 or Mario Party next door.