Spy Fox 2:
"Some Assembly Required"

Reviewers: Belle Wong, parent, and Sean (8) and Hayley (5)
E.B. Phin Public School
Pickering, Ontario, Canada
EMail: belle.wong@home.com

Spy Fox 2: "Some Assembly Required"
A Junior Adventure from Humongous Entertainment
Win/Mac CD-Rom
$24.99 retail
Website: http://www.humongous.com
System requirements:
Windows: Pentium 90, Windows 98/95 with 16 MB RAM
Macintosh: 80Mhz Power PC, System 7.5.3 with 16 MB RAM
Date reviewed: December 17, 1999
WAYCOOL rating: 9 out of 10, Way Cool.

Sean, Hayley and I reviewed Spy Fox 2 on our PC (Pentium 200). At the time of writing, we hadn't yet solved the case, but we anticipate we'll continue to have a lot of fun trying. Spy Fox 2 comes with a sheet of stickers featuring characters from other Humongous Entertainment games, including Freddi Fish and Pajama Sam and, of course, Spy Fox. Hayley really appreciated the stickers, as Freddi Fish is a favorite with her. The game also comes with "The Official Spy Fox 2 Activity Guide". The box calls this the "Official Spy Guide", but it's really just a supplementary puzzle book filled with word games and pictures to color.

In Spy Fox 2: "Some Assembly Required", Spy Fox finds himself up against Napoleon Le Roach, master mind of the S.M.E.L.L.Y. toy division (S.M.E.L.L.Y. stands for "Society for Meaningless Evil, Larceny, Lying and Yelling). LeRoach has hatched a sinister plot to take over the world and it's up to Spy Fox to stop him. The 1100-foot tall metal statute that's the centrepiece of the World's Fair is in reality a sinister dogbot which LeRoach has programmed to activate when the 1 millionth person enters the World's Fair. He has hidden the off switch for the dogbot on the fair grounds, and Spy Fox must find it, install it and activate it before the 1 millionth person innocently enters the Fair and activates the evil dogbot.

Spy Fox has at his disposal a cool set of gadgets which he gets from Professor Quack's Spy Gadget Vending Machine, located at the Mobile Command Center. These include the Dehydrated Skis Pill (pop them into water and they become full-sized skis allowing for a quick getaway down any convenient ski slop) and a key replicating camera (take a picture of the key and bake the picture into an actual key). The Vending Machine also does other cool things, such as making special ID cards so that Spy Fox can gain access to restricted places.

In accomplishing his mission, Spy Fox also meets several other wacky characters and will receive "talk balloons" from certain ones. Spy Fox can and should question anyone he meets, because you never know which character will provide you with a talk balloon. If you talk to a character several times using a talk balloon, you'll find valuable clues. Spy Fox also has a cool watch that, in addition to allowing you to easily save, load and quit the game, also has a "space invaders" type of game which this adult reviewer found rather fun and addictive. The game is an arcade-style game reminiscent of Space Invaders, but easy enough for the younger child. Your spaceship moves with the mouse and you use the mouse buttons to shoot at the asteroids.

We all enjoyed Spy Fox 2 very much. Sean and Hayley are both experienced players of Freddi Fish and Pajama Sam, two other games from Humongous Entertainment designed for the younger player, and we found Spy Fox 2 to be similar to these two games. Spy Fox 2, however, provides a higher level of challenge and Sean in particular enjoyed the increased difficulty.

Players must solve a variety of logic problems and exercise some pretty creative thinking in the process. We found it helpful to make a map as well as keep a list of clues, since we were more likely to stumble on several different clues belonging to different problems and the list helped us remember all the things we needed to do or find in order to solve the problems. I had some difficulty getting used to the various accents in which the characters spoke (most of the accents were hilarious imitations of famous characters in different spy movies) but this might be simply an adult problem, as Sean and Hayley had no difficulty understanding the characters.

In the end, we did find Spy Fox 2 to be more suitable for the child within the middle of the range of age suggested by Humongous Entertainment. Hayley, my younger child, enjoyed playing the game and participated in solving the puzzles but at times she found some of the problems a little too complicated to understand. While she enjoyed Spy Fox 2, she felt it wasn't as good as Freddi Fish. I suspect Spy Fox 2 is a game she'll grow into within the next year or so. Sean, on the other hand, enjoyed the more challenging nature of the puzzles. The verbal humor was also more appropriate to a child Sean's age, but both children howled with laughter at the many silly antics the different characters performed.

We highly recommend Spy Fox 2, especially for the older child who has enjoyed playing the Freddi Fish and Pajama Sam adventures but who now needs more of a challenge. Spy Fox 2 is WAYCOOL!

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