IGNN–The Imaginary Game News Network

• For: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
• From: Mapilor Entertainment
• Rating: 10 slaps with a wet fish
• Reviewer: Gideon Chazwit-Stoop

When international bad guys plot against the United States, Leonetta–the super alter-ego of CIA Director Leon Panetta–is sure to be on the case, hunting them down through his octopus-like network of shadow agents and contacts across the globe. The game play unfolds in two very different ways: first, you’ll direct the Agency in the resource management panel, allocating budgets, reviewing the latest intelligence, doing backroom deals with other leaders of the government, choosing colors to paint your new office and briefing the President when steaming piles of shit hit the “national interest” fan. As events unfold and it becomes clear that action must be taken to foil a civilization-ending plot, you’ll duck into your redecorated, private restroom and transform into “Leonetta”–a badass, can-kicking, super crime stopper from Langley, VA who carries the latest lethal gadgets and who moves through a dangerous 3-D underworld dressed like Mr. Miyagi. The action mode features Leonetta’s “extreme prejudice” moves, which give players the option to apply justice however they see fit and with stylish, acrobatic kills reminiscent of a Cirque du Soleil–trained assassin. Leaping, whirling, slowing time with your CIA Temporal Gadgetron then finishing the job with a flurry of combo moves, Leonetta players take part in what can only be described as a killer dance–a sort of virtual Paso Doble. The veteran team at Mapilor Entertainment, which previously brought out the award-winning PC title, Dancing with the Czars–a dance competition between government agency heads hoping to win more than their fair share of the biannual budget–have once again combined action, dance, and depths of plot that would make most super villains or novelists green with envy. But the behind-the-scenes, Machiavellian machinations of Czars are mere child’s play compared with the blood-letting in Leonetta’s two dozen missions that take players from the halls of congress to the jungles of Brazil. Leonetta definitely has enough action to satisfy, and enough gore to nauseate, but as the game progresses the resource management tasks loom ever more important, and I found myself spending most of my game time trying to keep the budgetary axe from falling. Eventually I discovered that I had no recourse but to use my super powers to “convince” the House Appropriations committee that it would be better to fund the CIA than to have their internal organs removed and displayed for the C-SPAN audience. And in the end, the choreography of action and resource management spun out of control and I was left with a game that felt like an excuse to wreak Dexter-like vengeance on a group of blithering fools on Capitol Hill.