Sid Meier's Covert Action

One of the greatest game I played as a child. Controls are a bit wonky, but it's worth trying it out. You create your character simply from Male or Female, then from 4 skill sets; Combat, Crypto, Driving, and Electronics which all have a rating to them. Then you in a free roam world to a degree, you hang out at the office, review the case files, place a wire tap, break into a suspect's building (stealth or loud), tail a suspects car to a new location, travel to exotic locations. It's a great game that shouldn't be missed! Matter of fact I still own the original and couldn't figure out out how to get 3.5 floppies to run. Here it is ready to go! Thanks!

I have played this since late 90s and so happy it made it's way to here. I play this game quite often and still to this day haven't been able to get the exact same mission twice. So many mechanics and ways to play, difficulty is insane at higher levels, and more work with pen and paper trying to figure out what is going on than actually letting the game do the math for me. Non linearity and everything... I love this.

This game is old, its classic, and it's got that old DOS charm that just sucks you right with this era of early 90s game. The mechanics are not complicated, but they are ROCK SOLID. The random missions and locations, clues and enemies always make this an exciting romp. You really feel like an agent on a case, desperately hunting that next clue, desperate to make that last arrest before the evil plot of the games villians goes off. Youre always one step behind evil, and when virtual lives are on the line, the pressure is on. There hasn't been one time I played where I wasnt fully engaged and sucked into the story. Once the case is over, you get a breakdown of what happened between you and the villians, and it's always really satisfying. Break down doors, hack computers, and arrest the terrorists! What more do you want?

If you are a fan of Tom Clancy-style spy thrillers from the Cold War era, this game is definitely for you. Each mission basically follows a heist or plot of some sort, and your job as a CIA agent is to stop it. However, what Covert Action does that I haven't seen any other game do is that the plots are driven forward organically, with each conspirator performing their job in turn. The planner of a plot might send a coded message to an inside contact in another organisation, that in turn hires an assassin and commissions a sniper rifle from an arms dealer. The assassin then travels to the location to perform the hit. Most games today would probably have the entire heist scripted with key events for maximum cinematic tension, but in Covert Action, depending on how quickly you act, you can prevent the plot at any stage. Even though the plots are kind of similar every turn, the realistic, time-based development of the plots means that it's always feeling fresh, and that you're really racing against the clock to stop the plot. If you waste your time chasing the wrong leads, your mission will probably fail. Another unique thing about Covert Action is that it allows you to choose your approach to some extent. The game consists of various minigames, like hacking, driving and combat. Although the combat part is mandatory, you can choose not to do the others if you don't like them. It almost dips into immersive sim territory in that regard, long before that genre became a thing. Much of the graphics are still beautiful, with hand-drawn animated panels, and although the controls in the combat sections are very unintuitive, they are by no means the worst of the times. I keep coming back to play this game again and again, and although I've probably seen every plot the game has to offer it always feel exciting and new. I can't recommend it enough.

I love Covert Action, but I'll be the first to admit it's because I learned how to avoid certain minigames for most playthroughs. Covert Action is an old gem that covers the kind of randomized gameplay that is now hollowly echoed by the likes of Skyrim's "Radiant" quests as if it's some amazing new discovery. You have a goal and a set of skills that allows you to reach them; track down terrorists, collect clues for the more long term game of apprehending a set of elusive masterminds, and catch them all like a set of mad bombing Pokemon. The difference from randomly generated games these days is that success or failure isn't a binary state. Sometimes you lose, but you still have more information on the people you're tracking. The next time that villain pops up, you're better prepared to apprehend them. Failure becomes a building experience, not a dead end. If you're fine with state of the art graphics and gameplay from a time before people realized they could eat eggs, it's a rock solid way to spend your gaming time. Sid Meier, the designer, was disappointed with the game. He felt it had too many minigames, and that none of them were very fun. This is kind of valid; I definitely hate the driving sequences, but equally love the stealth action segments, wire tapping, and cryptography. If you start on easy to train yourself and slowly amp up the difficulty, the challenge is masterful and gives you the tools you need to stick to your own strengths, to avoid the parts you like less. The game feels smart, too. You can hang back and collect intel over the wire, or go in and steal files, follow cars. The world feels comprehensive and wide open, in an 80s DOS kind of way. There's a lot to do and figure out. Covert Action lacks the scope of Sid Meier's timeless Civilization series, but is also playable in micro-doses. It's another game I can come back to, time and again, for a few sessions when I don't feel like blowing three weeks on an epic.