There are enormous numbers of people out there, working under the jurisdiction of the Government of the United states, who engage in the sort of covert operations most citizens of the US would rather not know about. Some of them sit in desks in Washington DC, operating computers and analyzing data. Some of them travel around the world, from Moscow to Minneapolis, thwarting acts of espionage and deception. Some of them could live next door to you and you'd never know it. It's all sort of creepy.
Activision's Spycraft: The Great Game is a creepy game. That it succeeds at making the player uncomfortable with the events they have to participate in is a testament to its perceived realism. Of course realism is a relative term; the involvement of ex-CIA head honcho William Colby and ex-Major General of the KGB Oleg Kalugin virtually guarantees some concept of reality. However, the CIA wouldn't want too much realism, and had to clear the design before they allowed Colby to work on the project.
The game puts you in the shoes of CIA operative Thorn. After some initial training where you learn the ins and outs of spy-dom, a candidate for the Russian presidency is taken out by an assassin's bullet. Sources in the Kremlin indicate that this isn't the last of the assassinations - the next target? The Present of the United States of America. Just as your team is being formed, the head of the team is also taken out by an assassin. Guess who's put in charge?
The gameplay veers between field work, usually accompanied by full-motion video, computer hacking and general adventure-style object-oriented puzzle solving. Of the various styles of play, field work often comes up short. While the video that accompanies much of it is first-rate, much of the game aspect consists of dialogue trees and an uninspired target practice. Some of the video comes off as a Dragon's Lair-style exercise in proper timing, which is successful at generating suspense and tension, and forces the player to make quick decisions. Make the right one and play can progress. Make the wrong one and in a best-case scenario you'll end up getting transferred out of the CIA. In the worst-case, you'll end up dead.
It's in the computer work that the true brilliance of the program shines through. You have a PDA with you at all times, and through it you can access computers around the world. Styled after the World Wide Web (which, one has to remember, was set-up by our very own Government for this sort of purpose) and providing links to actual US Government web sites (assuming you can install and use the on-line component), this part of the game is incredibly realistic. Some of the things you can do on your computer include doctoring photos, dissecting sounds into their components to identify ambient background noise (reminiscent of a scene in The Fugitive where Tommy Lee Jones figures out what city Harrison Ford is in), image analysis and decryption.
The web interface is the key to keeping the player from being overwhelmed with the sheer amount of data accumulated. Files will be created in certain areas that contain all pertinent information about whatever it is you're working on, and links will help tie the specifics of who's who and what's what.
The actual on-line component of the game is the part that is perhaps least utilized but shows the greatest potential for future installments. If you have a web browser and an Internet account, you can log into Activision's web site every time you start the game. You will receive actual news that helps to make the world of Spycraft even more realistic. You can also use the links built in to the game's pseudo-web to access the actual CIA, FBI and DEA (among others) web sites.
The potential of this part of the game cannot be understated. Think of a scenario where the game can download new parts of the game for the player to participate in, ones that were perhaps peripheral to the main plot thread (which requires video and sound). Perhaps you're in the middle of the case and someone needs a quickie decryption. When you login, you get e-mail from a co-worker asking for help on a particularly tough decryption, photo doctoring or sound isolation. You would download only the data files needed - no video or dialogue. It would allow the game to have more legs than the average "finish and forget" adventure.
For a game with as much full-motion video as this, the performances are above average. There's less of the scenery chewing that we've come to expect from these things. The bad guys all look more normal than your average bad guy - they don't dress in black, sport cool sunglasses and feature Schwarzenegger-esque physiques. They look more like the spy next door than some of the Bondian villains we've come to expect from Hollywood.
The game is far from perfect. The amount of disk swapping (there are three CDs in all) reaches near comical levels at certain points of the game. A better idea would have been to include another CD and include more redundant information on each of the CDs. A more serious problem is that, overall, the game isn't that difficult. Early-on the game really leads you to the obvious solutions - it's only further into the game where you start finding actual challenges (one of the sound puzzles is especially clever). Some players may experience troubles with the system requirements (it requires 16-bit color under Windows 95), but, aside from a conflict with Adobe Acrobat, the game played without any crashes and at an expected pace on a decent machine (remember - any Windows 95 game is much happier with 16 MB of RAM).
As a game, Spycraft occupies that middle ground somewhere between the anal-retentive detail of Sierra's Police Quest series and the fantasy of James Bond. At times, Spycraft actually approaches that pretentious The Great Game billing, suggesting what could happen if Tom Clancy ever decided to design an adventure game. You will have to make life and death choices that may leave you wondering if you've actually won the game or not, and it's these moral ambiguities that are among the most effective elements of the game.
For gamers interested in replayability and such, Spycraft isn't a linear adventure with only one patch to completion. There are as many as six different endings to the game, and you can finish the game without "winning" the game. At least two of the endings stem from one major moral decision that is extremely difficult: would you murder a fellow operative for the greater good of the "company" and the world? It's these sort of decisions that take Spycraft to a higher level than most interactive adventures, because upon completion, you may think the "winning" ending isn't the one that you feel comfortable with.
Overall, it's a virtual guarantee that Spycraft is like nothing else you have ever tried. That alone is enough to whole-heartedly recommend it to adventurers, but it's those players who are interested in government and espionage that should check this out. If you're not already paranoid, Spycraft will guarantee sleepless nights.
