Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run review

The easiest way to make long-time franchise fans jump out of buildings or hurl themselves in front of oncoming locomotives (other than making a string of craptacular sequels) is to take a proven formula and toss it out on its butt. Better yet, make the different stuff so dreadful that newcomers to the series hate it too - the perfect storm.

It pains us to say it, but they took your Spy Hunter and turned it into Generic Action Game #714. In Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run, the super-sweet Interceptor car/boat/all-around ass-kicking machine is no longer the sole element of gameplay. Rather, for an uncomfortably large part of the time you’re put in the shoes of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as he shoots, punches, and piledrives hordes of brain-dead minions in a quest to stop some sort of nefarious plot that you won’t care enough to follow anyway.

Even the best parts of the game feel less than satisfactory. In the not-plentiful-enough driving missions, the Interceptor changes from car to boat to motorcycle based on the situation at hand, loaded to the gills with all sorts of explosive weaponry. Rockets, machine guns, lasers, smoke screens, oil slicks (you know, real Spy Hunter-y kinds of things) and others are deployed to take out enemies on ground and in the air. There’s even a nifty little "Salvo" mechanic that lets you take out multiple targets in slow-motion goodness.