izigame.me

Due to its unfathomable difficulty, Master Spy's gameplay is only enjoyable for the most resilient players. Unlike many other hard indie platformers though, it gives the needed incentive to push through with superb electronic music and well-made pixel graphics.
Every design element fits together perfectly. It delivers an 80s blockbuster action flick story with retro pixel graphics and a delightfully cliché plot that's oozing with cheese. The cutscenes draw on different periods of popular anime, which yields noticeably blended and highly stylised art. All of this is highlighted by the excellent soundtrack. Without the driving beats and the corny promise of the inevitable twist unfolding in the next cutscene, the motivation to overcome difficult levels would plummet quickly.
This game is no joke. There are five missions segmented into ten levels each in addition to a handful of optional hidden levels. Each mission introduces new enemies and obstacles while the player is only ever able to walk, jump, double jump and cloak. In essence, the game just gets harder with each level, requiring pin-point platforming, exact timing and reflexes seemingly impossible to have prior or past the peak age of brain response time. The levels are thankfully short enough. That helps to build up muscle memory and makes it slightly easier to focus on precision and timing. The Novice difficulty further provides checkpoints, as opposed to the standard Master and later on the unlockable Blind Master difficulty, which reduces the viewable area to a small circle around the character.
Strangely enough, playing with a gamepad may increase the difficulty if the standard layout is used. In the course of the later levels, it becomes unavoidable to perform several actions in one jump. A good example is a sequence like this: standing cloaked, jump, uncloak, double jump, cloak before landing. Since jump and cloak are both face button actions by default, such sequences become ridiculously hard with the inflexible thumb alone. Changing the layout outside of the game or switching to keyboard and mouse are good options that I wish I had taken before getting used to the default button mapping. I decided to make do and switched my hand position from normal to claw and back – mid-jump – an unnecessary accomplishment.
After handling the Novice difficulty, dying 5k+ times along the way and being awarded nothing but F grades, beating Master Spy still evokes feelings of relief and pleasure.