Clandestine
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Clandestine
Despite the serious tone set by the plot, it's best to go into Clandestine with a light-hearted approach. The movement is a bit clunky, the animations and voice acting are stiff as a board, and there's plenty of visual issues. However, the core gameplay and asymmetric ideas work well together. Grab a friend (this step is very important), jump on to a third-party voice chat program, and go play Clandestine. I have no doubt you'll come away with a memorable gaming experience.
I had a lot of fun and frustration during my time playing Clandestine and whilst I'm a huge fan of co-op and love to see how it being implemented in refreshing new ways, I still felt like I was playing an early access game, where only the core functionality had been completed, albeit with some pretty strange and often hilarious bugs, such as taking guards out through walls and the most randomly broken cutscenes I've ever seen.
Clandestine takes a great idea, the fact that spying is a two man job and delivers carefully balanced gameplay mechanics, both for the field operative and the hacker, that are easy to understand but hard to master.
When Clandestine works, it becomes wonderful. Two players working together to try and tackle a mission neither could handle on their own, trying to communicate in order to bolster teamwork; and it works more often than not. However, it struggles against some glaring flaws as well, such as the cumbersome controls, and the frequency of situations where one player will end up waiting around for the other to finish their bits. It's a good concept and core idea, and with a bit more polish, could be great.
Clandestine's graphics, AI and story aren't quite up to par when compared to other modern titles. However, it makes up for in part with simple gameplay, challenging scenarios and an incredibly engaging two-player relationship in with both parts have to work independently and rely on each other to accomplish their goals.
Clandestine had some intriguing aspects, especially in its unique approach to hacking, but audio bugs and poor animation really hamper the overall experience as well as characters that move like tanks.
