Teenagent

After playing through it (and consulting a walkthrough several times) I have to say I was not very impressed. Perhaps I am spoiled by the excellent VGA graphics typical of Sierra adventure games of the same period, but for a game released as late as 1994, Teenagent is nothing to write home about in the graphics department. Graphics aren't everything, of course, but the throwaway plot and the bland item-hunting gameplay don't leave much else to enjoy. The dialogue does have its humour, but the simple puns and slapstick comedy make it obvious that this game is intended primarily for--you guessed it--teenagers. So unless you played it yourself as a teenager and want to take a trip down nostalgia lane, you might prefer to spend your time elsewhere.

With gold mysteriously and continuously disappearing from bank vaults a secret organization specializing in unusual phenomena enlists the help of a fortune teller to randomly pick a name from a phone book as their secret agent of choice to solve the mystery and put a stop to the thievery. Ultimately hapless teenager Mark is the one strong-armed away. The game is divided into three sections, first the training camp, second the village wherein you try to gain access to the mansion that is outed as being the source of the theft and finally the mansion itself. The story is fluff but maintains a consistently light-hearted and humorous tone that gives it the life it has. Mark manages to be a likable protagonist, with many amusing remarks and interactions with the sometimes oddball inhabitants around him. The graphics are basic by VGA standards but are clean and functional with pretty decent animation and character models. Also simple and functional are the controls, using only the left mouse for movement and examining hotspots and inventory and the right click for actions, with F1 for saving, quitting, sound adjustment and so forth. The true standout element for me though is the music, which is awesome though some of the better tracks are restricted to one room each. As far as gameplay is concerned it would seem at first to be a very good starting point for those getting into adventure games, as, along with the simple controls and humorous, light story, there are no deaths, dead ends, real time challenges or anything of the sortm just item collecting, character interaction and puzzles to solve. Here's where the game falters - namely, the puzzle logic of this game, or lack thereof. It's one of those games where the design is so arbitrary and downright lazy that it's as if it was created around a session of madlibs. The solutions to the puzzles are almost all ridiculous but rarely funny or absurd enough to justify their existence. Mostly it's just frustrating, and a walkthrough will be a necessity unless you like going through tedious trial-and-error processes of elimination, which isn't worth it in this case. In addition to being nonsensical and random, the puzzles are also severely lacking in imagination. Almost of the puzzles are of the inventory-based variety,all of the items of the one-use-only variety, their one use not even making any sense in context, trying to find the right place to stick the right object and sometimes combining two or more objects together in baffling ways, others involve repeatedly probing a character until they give up the doodad you'll need. The most well-designed puzzles are in the very end of the game, one not involving inventory or repetitive interaction but a book case and a color-coded desk drawer (still frustrating though due to it being a pixel hunt with no reason save for outside resources that anyone playing the game would know about, being one well-hidden book among a huge shelf of other, useless ones) and another involving trying to gather the components of the main villain's ID to get a jive-talking robot / safe to open himself up. Usually though it's stupid situations like Mark being too lazy to sift through a patch of grass for a nut and so having to fix a crooked rake in a nonsense manner with the nut in the end being used for a throwaway item combination that triggers something that there's no reason anyone should believe it would trigger! Despite the lack of glitches or any other technical hiccups on my end this kind of design makes it feel rushed, hell there's even one item in the game that's never even used! And besides that this game is just not very compelling. It's ridiculously short, first-time players, even with all the confusing puzzles, should be able to complete it in under an hour at most, the environments are lacking in cohesion save for an excuse to collect disposable objects with contrived functions and as a result it all feels terribly underdeveloped. It's far from unplayable, there are worse freeware titles out there, and for what it's worth you might get a decent time-waster out of it. With a good soundtrack, some funny writing and a short playtime it might be worth the effort if you're an adventure game fanatic but past that once you're done with it there's no reason to go back to it ever again.

Teenagent is as much a spy game as it is a Saturday morning cartoon aimed at young kids to teens. And like said shows it can oscillate between being fun and engaging one episode (figuratively) and completely silly, trivial and nonsensical the next. The games story centers around an interesting hook for a mystery; gold bars are stolen in plain sight with no visible break in or thief. Your mission: catch the culprit's; only problem is you are a regular teenager (think Cody Banks before that film was even conceptualized) thrust into this mystery after the agency was recommended to you by, out of desperation, hiring a psychic. From then on you are trained,rather briskly and in an "trial by fire" method, and sent on your way to solve the caper. The game functions like a typical point and click adventure game. You explore environments learning about and interacting with other characters and objects to solve puzzles that will help you complete your objective. In this regard Teenagent ops for puzzles that can range from clever and amusing (such as some of the training challenges), trivial and amusing (using an item to get around an obstacle only to realize you did not need it) and absolutely ridiculous, nonsensical and nebulous to decipher (the tree near the mansion). This uneven mix of smart and ludicrous puzzles fits like a glove around the game's story and tone, which is mostly focused on comedic scenarios. The comedy in question is the odd and at time's charming mix of bizarre situations thrust upon the main character and writing that sounds like it came straight from an out of touch adult trying their hardest to appease teenagers. All of this culminates into a rather unfortunately brisk but satisfying conclusion to an otherwise flawed but fun adventure/puzzle game. If you are willing to put up with momentary lapses into moon logic and at times somewhat juvenile writing Teenagent, in all its "special agent" silliness lends itself to be a goofy, uneven, but fun oldie.

I loved this game. It worth 5 stars because of price (free I mean). That sense of humor used in protagonist's lines made me laugh out loud. By the way, it might be looking long for 95s and not today. Without walkthrough it's not possible to get things work. And I'm finally stuck with empty drawers in office: there were no dictaphone and Polaroid, sigh. This is ridiculous that you need to make things linear in this last stage! Fine, that humor brought me: so many references to reality, women things, corruption, Spiderman (smash like if you also got it), etc. It looks noir-like when teen agent talks with himself, that looks funny. I think this game doesn't make bad experience of adventure games, because it still has a plot.

This is the full version, with full voiceover and the soundtrack as well. Couldn't be any happier to get this here for free, brings back me to my childhood! As for the game, despite the lenght, it's still tricky. It's a must have for all point-and-click lovers!