Secret Service follows the story of Agent Doyle who
uncovers a secret government conspiracy to kill the president and arm some
terrorists. As a Secret Service Agent, it’s up to him to put a stop to it, even
if that means having to gun down other Secret Service agents. The plot is bit
contrived but Nolan North manages to pull off some characterisation as Doyle
despite everyone else around time trying to overcomplicate matters and confuse
things. It is surprising to find Nolan North in such a game though. It’s
certainly not the high point of his career.
The gameplay sucks a big fat one to go with the mediocre story. The terrorists you face throughout the game have about four phrases that they rinse and repeat over and over again to point where you are more likely to shoot yourself in the face just to put an end to it all. The gunplay is samey and there are very few weapons, however this does make running out of ammo a near impossibility even on the harder difficulty setting.
Environments are bland and I pretty close to the Original Xbox era in terms of quality. Some of the levels, despite their simplicity, can be easy to get lost in as everything looks exactly the same. That said, I don’t know a lot about American government building design so this may actually be deliberate as a sort of half-assed defence mechanism. If it was, it didn’t work because even the super-secret underground subway is full of terrorists.
Sound wise, the only good thing is Nolan North. The rest is either contrived Americanised bullshit in dialogue and standard ineffectual background music.
The gameplay sucks a big fat one to go with the mediocre story. The terrorists you face throughout the game have about four phrases that they rinse and repeat over and over again to point where you are more likely to shoot yourself in the face just to put an end to it all. The gunplay is samey and there are very few weapons, however this does make running out of ammo a near impossibility even on the harder difficulty setting.
Environments are bland and I pretty close to the Original Xbox era in terms of quality. Some of the levels, despite their simplicity, can be easy to get lost in as everything looks exactly the same. That said, I don’t know a lot about American government building design so this may actually be deliberate as a sort of half-assed defence mechanism. If it was, it didn’t work because even the super-secret underground subway is full of terrorists.
Sound wise, the only good thing is Nolan North. The rest is either contrived Americanised bullshit in dialogue and standard ineffectual background music.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 48 Achievements
Achievement wise there are a few that make the 100% a ballache, namely the one I went for first, which is for completing the game without dying and not on easy mode. I coupled this with completing the game on the hardest difficulty and it made sense after I got through the first level unscathed. After that though, it’s an exercise in dashboard quitting every time you die and finding some half decent Amazon Prime (Netflix) show to watch while you constantly reset the game. This is made even worse with the fact the game is littered with laser trip mines that will insta-kill you and you can only see them with night-vision googles. Forget to equip them, take one step forward, die, reload, repeat.
It’s painful but not impossible and once this part is done, that the most frustrating achievement completed. There is another one that requires a full separate playthrough though and that’s for getting through the game without using night vision googles. This is obnoxious because that means navigating dark hallways and getting past the trip mines by already knowing they are there. The only feasible way to do this is by using videos because some sections of the game are overloaded with tripwires and if you don’t have a grenade to set off a chain reaction, it’s hours of trial and error to remember where the lasers are.
I doubled this one up with a collectible run through picking up the game’s 50 or so mobile phones that are scattered around the levels.
There are also quite a few weapon specific ones, all bar two of which will come from targeting specific kills and replaying levels. The other two involve shooting every weapon in the game which is a pain because there are few weapons and some of them only appear once so it’s almost another set of collectibles. The other bigger pain is for killing 5 enemies with one grenade. The terrorists never seem to hang around in groups big enough to get that many kills but there are a few spots where checkpoint reloads can be exploited and then retried until you get lucky.
There are also pipe solving mini-games which is how you hack things. There are two achievements associated with them for completing 30 and for completing 10 in a row without failing. However, you can play this in the extras menu in the game rather than suffering through additional playthroughs and you can also make the puzzles really easy by scaling down the difficulty setting so it’s not arduous which makes a nice change.
The last lot I’ll mention are the zero point achievements for blowing yourself up with a grenade, shooting a whole magazine without hitting anything and the aptly named, The Exact Opposite of Your Job for shooting the president. This last one can only be done at the end of the game so don’t do what I did and unload on the President in the first level – this will not work.
Downloadable Content – N/A
Secret Service was very much a slog to get through and the not dying playthrough kind of ruined any enjoyment I might have got from the game. It’s a very bland and unenjoyable experience but can be completed in under 15 hours.
Achievement wise there are a few that make the 100% a ballache, namely the one I went for first, which is for completing the game without dying and not on easy mode. I coupled this with completing the game on the hardest difficulty and it made sense after I got through the first level unscathed. After that though, it’s an exercise in dashboard quitting every time you die and finding some half decent Amazon Prime (Netflix) show to watch while you constantly reset the game. This is made even worse with the fact the game is littered with laser trip mines that will insta-kill you and you can only see them with night-vision googles. Forget to equip them, take one step forward, die, reload, repeat.
It’s painful but not impossible and once this part is done, that the most frustrating achievement completed. There is another one that requires a full separate playthrough though and that’s for getting through the game without using night vision googles. This is obnoxious because that means navigating dark hallways and getting past the trip mines by already knowing they are there. The only feasible way to do this is by using videos because some sections of the game are overloaded with tripwires and if you don’t have a grenade to set off a chain reaction, it’s hours of trial and error to remember where the lasers are.
I doubled this one up with a collectible run through picking up the game’s 50 or so mobile phones that are scattered around the levels.
There are also quite a few weapon specific ones, all bar two of which will come from targeting specific kills and replaying levels. The other two involve shooting every weapon in the game which is a pain because there are few weapons and some of them only appear once so it’s almost another set of collectibles. The other bigger pain is for killing 5 enemies with one grenade. The terrorists never seem to hang around in groups big enough to get that many kills but there are a few spots where checkpoint reloads can be exploited and then retried until you get lucky.
There are also pipe solving mini-games which is how you hack things. There are two achievements associated with them for completing 30 and for completing 10 in a row without failing. However, you can play this in the extras menu in the game rather than suffering through additional playthroughs and you can also make the puzzles really easy by scaling down the difficulty setting so it’s not arduous which makes a nice change.
The last lot I’ll mention are the zero point achievements for blowing yourself up with a grenade, shooting a whole magazine without hitting anything and the aptly named, The Exact Opposite of Your Job for shooting the president. This last one can only be done at the end of the game so don’t do what I did and unload on the President in the first level – this will not work.
Downloadable Content – N/A
Secret Service was very much a slog to get through and the not dying playthrough kind of ruined any enjoyment I might have got from the game. It’s a very bland and unenjoyable experience but can be completed in under 15 hours.
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