Spy Fiction also offers up some neat gameplay devices, such as the ability to disguise yourself as an enemy after taking a 3D picture of them. This is actually integral to the game, as many missions require you to pose as your foes to advance. And with two playable characters, you'll face slightly different challenges depending on the character you choose: Billy can only disguise himself as a male, while Sheila can don both male and female attire. You've even got an arsenal of neat spy gadgets, including Spider Grips that allow you to crawl along low ceilings and Optical Camouflage that blends your character into a wall as they lean against it. The title also includes some mini-games, such as a skydiving sequence, that help to keep things fresh during missions.

Since Spy Fiction is, at heart, a stealth game, there are several portions which are somewhat reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, as the sequences come across as more of an homage than a blatant rip-off.

The problem with Spy Fiction is that it requires massive amounts of patience due to some poor AI and design decisions. Upon being sighted, you have a few options: fight it out, run and hide, switch into a new costume or some combination thereof. Except that the auto-aiming gunplay takes all the challenge out of combat, and as a result, the game keeps throwing more enemies as you cut them down, reducing fighting to little more than a temporary solution. So now you're left with only two choices: run and hide, or proceed in a new disguise. Unfortunately, either way you go has the same end result - waiting out the alert.

You see, once you're spotted, guards pour into the area. After a bit, they drop into a cautionary mode, which basically means all those extra guards stay in the area but aren't exactly looking for you. At long last, everything returns to normal, and all the regular guards you'd previously taken out are replaced at their posts while all the extras disappear.

Truthfully, the alerts wouldn't be an issue if they didn't take so long to clear. If you're going to survive the search, you'll find a good hiding spot and stay there. And there you'll wait, through the search phase, through the caution phase, and then you'll finally be free to go about your ways. This can take minutes at a time, to the point where dying and restarting is sometimes the quicker alternative - especially once you discover the game will start you off at almost the exact spot where you died. At one point, I actually began using a rubber band to hold down the crouch button while I read a book, waiting for an alert to end.

The other major flaw lies with the title’s sometimes poor AI. At one point, I was able to escape detection by merely climbing onto a ladder, though I was still in plain sight of the guard. In another instance, a civilian in a locker room noted that my disguise wasn't up to snuff and issued an alert. Before the guards arrived, I'd switched into a different set of clothes. Not wanting to attract attention, I stood in the corner. As the guards searched the room, they noticed my presence and inspected my costume carefully, cautiously approving of it. When I tried to walk out of the room, the AI path of two guards was in direct conflict with that of my character - they kept walking into her, and I couldn’t walk past them. This caused yet another examination of my disguise, which didn't go so well. A few seconds later, another inspection, and this time they realized exactly who I was and started shooting. Luckily, I made my way to a hiding spot and waited out the alarm, but my disguise was marked as wanted, causing anyone who saw it to call the guards, resulting in yet another alert.

If a costume is integral to the mission, or if all of your disguises are marked as wanted, you'll have to restart from your last save, assuming that you didn't make the mistake of saving in the middle of it all. In that case, well, hopefully you won't mind restarting the game.

One could deduce, and rightfully so, that the solution to this problem is simply to not be caught in the first place. Sure that's an easy goal when you're sneaking around in spy mode, but it's a bit harder in disguise. Attempting to go through the wrong door or bumping into the wrong person will often result in an alert.

When Spy Fiction works, it's really cool. There's something to be said about infiltrating a facility as a janitor, disguising yourself as a scientist, stealing retinal scans through some wacky spy gadgetry and finding the lotto ticket that just happens to be this week's password. It's just that those defining moments are spaced out by some poor AI and a punishing alert system that end up severely dampening the overall experience.