Sid Meier's Covert Action

Covert Action is a surprisingly complex spy game, comprised of several minigames in between various travel screens and infomation screens. if you can bear with the control scheme (it is QUITE archaic) the game is great fun and while the formula is similar from case to case, it's still potentially fun for hours, once you get the hang of the minigames. The main minigame, infiltration/break-in is also entertaining enough to keep you captivated, while you try to figure out where various nefarious characters are hiding out. The game is dated, for sure, but the premise is well executed and quite rare to see, only Shadows of doubt really comes close to matching the feel of conducting your own investigation. Had the controls been better and a bit more responsive, i'd have given it 5 stars.

‘Covert Action’ may be 30 years old at the time of this review, but it’s still a captivating game to play despite its age and flaws. In it, you play Max Remington, THE ONLY freelance secret agent in the (ENTIRE) western world. You’ve been called in to complete a series of important missions with the CIA. You’ll need to infiltrate enemy buildings, tail suspects by car or escape from being followed yourself, decrypt coded messages, and install wiretaps to gather intelligence. The game is played out via 4 types of mini-games. How much you enjoy ‘CA’ will greatly depend on how much you like them. They’re either action-oriented (combat/infiltration, driving) or of the puzzle/strategy variety (cryptography, wiretapping). I enjoyed cryptography most, and I eventually got used to combat/infiltration despite it being clunky and slow even by 1980/90 standard. Make sure you have a full-size keyboard or joystick for the latter. The ultimate goal is for you is to capture 26 (not a more manageable 5 to 10) Masterminds who devise evil plots. The game randomly generates the specifics of each mission, so that it’s more replayable and unpredictable. Yet, ‘CA’ also ends up not having an overarching story, and the missions don’t really mean much when the villains and criminal/terrorist organizations are literally interchangeable. For a game presenting the incredible and romanticized notion of an incorruptible, legendary western spy who can do it all, it’s disappointing that it lacks drama to propel itself forward. In the end, it’s your personal determination to foil criminal/terrorist plots, and your appreciation for the mini-games that drive the game. I had a great time playing ‘CA’ and I was resolute in capturing a Mastermind, despite ending up thwarting the same plot twice by chance. Once I’ve caught my first one, I felt accomplished and empowered. At the same time, I was also happy to call it day. The CIA will need to find another Max Remington to catch the other 25 Masterminds.

I remember playing this game, its different settings just blew me away. To this day i love games that show you different points of views and use different game mechanics throughout their course, and this one was the first on that did exactly that (at least the first one i found) A timeless classic (timeless i will check now, gotta go buy it ;) )

Covert Action puts the player against a series of terrorist conspiracies, one after another. Each time you start with a vague, undefined yet very present ticking clock working against you, maybe a handful of clues of varying value, and all the air travel the Agency can afford. From there you're expected to draw whatever conclusions you can from what little is known and then hit the ground running. Sometimes that's easy. "We know this guy is involved, here's his photo, he's in Brazil. Traffic analysis says the Shining Path is making huge money withdrawls." Sometimes you have to go in a bit blind and feel around. "Here's a codename of an otherwise unknown enemy agent we think is somehow involved. A car was stolen three weeks ago in Europe. Good luck?" Gameplay consists of a series of minigames - there are top down stealth / shooter sections, circuitboard design sections where you swap out chipsets to activate your trackers while avoiding triggering alarm nodes, cryptograms to break captured message traffic, 'follow that cab' tailing / driving encounters. Each has a wide range of difficulties that scale with the 'threat level' you chose when you started playing, and you're given a 'specialty' when you start the game that makes a particular mini game of your choosing easier. Defeating a conspiracy gives you the option to step up a difficulty level on the next operation. Although the stealth/shooter bit is unavoidable, the game does a good job giving you ways to work around any other minigames you don't enjoy or have difficulty with. Trailing a car can usually be bypassed by placing a bug on it instead. Crypto breaking can be automated, although this burns time pretty aggressively, or you can just track down the sender / recipient and 'ask them politely' what it says. Because of how clues are handled, you don't have to follow up on every lead, and might not have time to anyway. I personally hate the driving sections and can still enjoy Covert Action - I just avoid them wherever I can and just fail them right away when I can't. Failing a minigame always comes at cost, but never out and out loses you the game. If you get shot up you'll be taken hostage and either have to escape (which takes time) or agree to give them enough info that they can inflitrate the Agency with a mole. (Mole hunts are another aspect of the game - distractions from your actual mission, but important to avoid being ambushed and the enemy tracking your movements.) Setting off alarms makes the enemy call in extra security, complicating future operations. And all the while the Conspiracy continues to develop. Each conspiracy has a chain of events the enemy needs to complete to be successful, and you can break the chain anywhere. Steal the bank plans back and they won't be able to proceed to the bank robbing stage. Arrest the paymaster and the mooks will stop coming in to work. Once they know they've been bested, named enemy operatives will disappear into the shadows, biding their time until they can strike again. "Masterminds" lead each operation, and while your medium-term goal is to stop the terrorist attacks your ultimate goal is to take each Mastermind down so they can't keep launching these operations. This gives each session a nice range of how things can end - you can lose and innocent people die, you can stop the conspiracy while learning a little bit more about the mysterous person behind it while they escape, or you can shut down the whole institution by lopping off it's head. It's a five out of five for me. Lots of ways to play it, in terms of difficulty level and what kind of balance you want for the minigames. You can play for an hour to just efficently stop an attack, or buckle down for a few hours and take down an entire international terrorist organization. It runs on a potato. I've never had a bug playing this across four computers and multiple years. My only caveat would be that I think if you didn't enjoy multiple minigames, or disliked the sneaking / shooting sections, you wouldn't have a good time. If you're into older games, though, you should be okay, as each of them (possibly excepting that darn driving game) is well put together and fun in it's own right. I really want a remake of this. It could even be in spirit and not in name to bypass IP related expenses, the ideas here are so broad it would be impossible to C&D a modernized semi-clone without trying to claim copyright to the entire genre of spycraft fiction.

Probably the one of the more obscure classics.... get it!!!