Posted December 19, 2012
I haven't touched this game since I first played it back in 1998. It's still as fun as I remember it but I'm wondering about a few things. Game designers of 1996, pay attention to me!
- Man they make it super obvious who the mole is, almost immediately after the subject is brought up. That program Colby gives you immediately narrows it down to just 4 suspects with just your second piece of evidence. Of those 4, one of them is Colby himself. No way it can be him because not only did he give you the program, but there's no way he would contribute to a game that cast him as a traitor to his country (chilling fact, he died in a drowning accident right after this game came out. COINCIDENCE?), so right away your suspects are down to 3. Maxine isn't high up enough and in the loop on everything, so that narrowed it down to the Director or Deputy Director, and the Deputy Director is played by a character actor known for evil bad guy roles...HMMMMMMMM. You know it's the Deputy Director one hour into the game, but they have you going around investigating pointless red herrings in your teammates' offices when Colby's program has already eliminated them as suspects. They could have at least stretched out the number of suspects so there was some suspense in figuring out who it was.
- I "solved" to the Gog/Magog cypher but the solution still doesn't make sense. What clue are you given that the cypher key is "The Rabid Hound"? I only passed the puzzle because you got that book of the month club disk at the beginning and there are only two books available so I figured why not try everything. Are you supposed to see Blake's Hound of the Baskervilles book and proceed to try every book with the word "Hound" in the title?
- The photoshop puzzle was pretty silly! No reference at all to what you're getting wrong, and the "correct" solution looks laughably more fake than a lot of the "wrong" solutions.
- Figuring out the PEG theft was a well designed puzzle, except that they dump the obvious solution on you right away! He's only the 2nd suspect and the 1st has zero suspicious calls. The very first thing they hit you with on the 2nd suspect is a phone call from a woman begging for sex from a nerdy scientist. Red flag! An ID from the woman's voice turns up an ex-North Koren intelligence agent. Bingo theft immediately solved. If you dig deeper you'll notice subtler clues like the scientist's biography mentioning he never uses elevators yet one day "he" used an elevator, and his security voiceprint was a recording. But you don't need any of that since they made it wildly obvious with a North Korean agent seducing him.
- The CIA director is one heck of an over actor!
- Man they make it super obvious who the mole is, almost immediately after the subject is brought up. That program Colby gives you immediately narrows it down to just 4 suspects with just your second piece of evidence. Of those 4, one of them is Colby himself. No way it can be him because not only did he give you the program, but there's no way he would contribute to a game that cast him as a traitor to his country (chilling fact, he died in a drowning accident right after this game came out. COINCIDENCE?), so right away your suspects are down to 3. Maxine isn't high up enough and in the loop on everything, so that narrowed it down to the Director or Deputy Director, and the Deputy Director is played by a character actor known for evil bad guy roles...HMMMMMMMM. You know it's the Deputy Director one hour into the game, but they have you going around investigating pointless red herrings in your teammates' offices when Colby's program has already eliminated them as suspects. They could have at least stretched out the number of suspects so there was some suspense in figuring out who it was.
- I "solved" to the Gog/Magog cypher but the solution still doesn't make sense. What clue are you given that the cypher key is "The Rabid Hound"? I only passed the puzzle because you got that book of the month club disk at the beginning and there are only two books available so I figured why not try everything. Are you supposed to see Blake's Hound of the Baskervilles book and proceed to try every book with the word "Hound" in the title?
- The photoshop puzzle was pretty silly! No reference at all to what you're getting wrong, and the "correct" solution looks laughably more fake than a lot of the "wrong" solutions.
- Figuring out the PEG theft was a well designed puzzle, except that they dump the obvious solution on you right away! He's only the 2nd suspect and the 1st has zero suspicious calls. The very first thing they hit you with on the 2nd suspect is a phone call from a woman begging for sex from a nerdy scientist. Red flag! An ID from the woman's voice turns up an ex-North Koren intelligence agent. Bingo theft immediately solved. If you dig deeper you'll notice subtler clues like the scientist's biography mentioning he never uses elevators yet one day "he" used an elevator, and his security voiceprint was a recording. But you don't need any of that since they made it wildly obvious with a North Korean agent seducing him.
- The CIA director is one heck of an over actor!
