Spy Strikes Back (The)

Though he may have met his maker thousands of times in Spy's Demise, Penguin's secret agent indeed strikes back in another challenge of reflexes and cryptography. The Spy Strikes Back is not a difficult game to master (the subtitle is "How Not To Be Seen" and the more time you spend cowering in a dark corner, the more time you'll live) but it is a difficult job to find, let alone decipher, the clues and solve the mystery.
Spy Strikes Back takes you to the East German town of Aichenbach, hideout of international terrorist and bon vivant Dr. Xavier Tortion. At this point, it's advisable to put this review on pause while you decipher the joke. Got it? Good. He's hiding out in a castle with five floors, each floor divided into 24 sections of 16 rooms each. That comes out to 120 screens. In those 120 screens are hidden nine clues. As you may guess, this game takes a good deal of perseverance because, as in Spy's Demise, the clues are in code.
Getting through the levels isn't too hard. All you have to do is hide a lot. Figuring out where you are, however, is another story. You have very little control over where you go. For example, there are elevators, but they'll go up or down at their own whim. You can't explore the castle systematically and you frequently double back on your tracks. A couple of charts in the corner tell you where you are.
Each section looks about the same. There are 16 rooms in each and the corridors are patrolled by electronic sensor whatnots. You can't fire at them - all you can do is run or hide in a room. Some of your hiding places have bonus prizes in them and it's a good idea to collect them because you get an extra spy every 2,000 points. As with Spy's Demise, the whole tedious operation is accompanied by some great music, including Beethoven's Fifth and Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. The spy deserves a vacation at the Salzburg Festival.
Cover an entire level before taking any elevators and make a map.