Codename: ICEMAN

Let's make no mistake. There is no game from Sierra - that even comes CLOSE to how difficult this game is. As an avid Sierra fan and collector, dating all the way back to the 80s - I had beat every Sierra game I had gotten up to this point. When they announced Codename: Iceman - I bought it and - after almost a year of playing it, finally had given up. There were years, I'd install it - try again - and give up. And it was always the same place - if you've played - you know - the Sub sequences with the torpedoes. I finally replayed it - and used a walk through - and found where it was wrong. Doing some corrections - I was actually able to finally bypass the sub sequence and move on! Once you get past that the game is beautiful - but the game DOES make EVERY attempt to dead end you (forgetting to reclaim your ID at the Pentagon, for example), and has some difficult things (aside from the sub) like the "Boss Bottle Game" (though the bottle is not required; it does prevent saving and restoring too many times and will call you out for trying to cheat at the game!) The game is relentlessly brutal but if you can look past all of that... and I won't blame you if you can't - then the game truly is amazing. I did save SEVERAL times; several locations - and made those save games available: http://sierrahelp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=54167#p54167 I also created a walk thru that should allow you to beat the subs pretty flawlessly: http://sierrahelp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=54227#p54227 And posted the little known Codename: Iceman comic that appeared in Sierra's magazine: http://sierrahelp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=73583#p73583

I remember this game. Unfortunately. Because this game is not fun, and perhaps it doesn't want to be. But what DOES this game want to be? It presents itself as a playable novel, but the characters are one-dimensional and forgettable, the story itself little more than background noise and most dialogues are hardly anymore than idle chit-chat. It isn't an adventure game either, since tedious puzzles with illogical solutions may be fun if presented by a space-janitor turned special-agent commanding a mop and half a brain-cell. But as the setup of this game turns out, I would rather read a telephone book while getting my teeth examined. Finally the game asks you to pilot a submarine, and you may begin to wonder if you misunderstood the game in the first place and it actually tries to be a sub-simulator with adventure elements. Wrong. Because what it actually tries to make you do at this point is take a written test where you have to proof that you have the printed manual next to you and can type in the commands listed therein on your keyboard. So all things combined, it is either a ten-finger typing trainer, hidden inside a failed graphic novel disguising as an adventure game with submarine elements trying to test your reading and spelling skills, or it is a "patriotic military simulator", trying to show you all the things wrong with the American military, by presenting it in the most cheesy rainbow-colored light to ever shine from a unicorns rectum. Either way, I recommend this game as much as I recommend a colonoscopy: It is good to know that it does exist, but you probably won't want to stick around to see the pictures.

Good graphics and music cannot save an insipid, unintuitive, soulless game that actively hates you and wants you to fail at every turn. Avoid like the plague.

Jim Walls is not a good game designer. He asks you to follow procedure all the time, no matter how tedious and pointless it is. On top of that, purposefully doing stupid things isn't much fun in this game like it is in "Space Quest" or "Quest For Glory." In the "Police Quest" games he wanted to each you how to be a cop. In this game, he wanted to teach you how to be a Navy SEAL. Well, I don't want to learn how to be either of those things. I just want to play a fun game. This game has every bad thing about adventure games, complete with copy protection puzzles, a ridiculous number of dead ends, piloting a submarine with controls that are next-to-impossible, and gambling. To make matters even worse, the dead ends are some of the worst dead ends ever. With the gambling game, you cannot save too many times during it (or the game will kill you) and you HAVE to win it or the game will be unwinnable. I want a challenging game, but not a game that's flat out unfair. The story isn't even all that interesting in my opinion, nor are the characters. I doubt most people can even remember the name of the main character. To sum it up, there's a reason they never made a sequel to this. The only good things about this game are the artwork and the music were very good for the time, as was the case with most Sierra games.

I played this game when it was new back in the day. Needless to say it was simply Impossible. From the in game enabled copy protection (correct CPR procedures to save someone dying in a beach) to the most annoyingly obtuse required sequences of play, you could literally play the game for several hours only to find out you cant simply advance at all due to a mistake at the start. What people fail to realize is that Iceman was made with the same mindset of some of the King Quest series. An error, by not fault of your own will invalidate progress further on. You are forced to play the game over and over until you get things right, and then on top of that, adding insult to injury, you are on some places, reliant on the most horrendous RNG mechanics to pass some parts of the game. I mean, if you are a modern gamer, this strange jewel of yesteryear will give you headaches and endless frustration. Even if you are a vintage gamer you will see how obnoxious this game can be! But then, some of these games shine due to the Nostalgia and the trips down memory lane that they bring upon you. I rated it 5 because this is a classic vintage game from Sierra that was probably made to pair up with the old Sierra Hot Line that gave hints back in the day (it was an 800 number) and that required you to buy the hintbook in the end haha. It is a very nice spy story wrapped up in a strange attempt to make a game artificially hard and that requires almost arcane composition of the parser commands in exact sequences. It is simply a piece of history Like many others I never finished it either and got stuck at the Underwater combat sequence like a TON of people .... One of my friends back in the day passed that sequence after he confessed he decided to try it for days in zombie mode and found out it was just RNG. I am not spoiling anything, game cant be spoiled, it is simply too bizarre to be spoiled as the only way to finish it properly is with a cluebook or walkthrough.