Perfectly Peculiar Pixels [#20]

In the effort of reminding everyone of the marvellous scope that video games provide us in the art of story telling, and in the light of the current geopolitical state, I thought I’d go over how different video game eras handled what is ‘in the business’ termed trade craft. Purposely omitted here, are any iterations on the story of the the world’s most famous spy, since the makers of Hitman are giving their go at that particular license as we speak.

No, the focus on today’s line-up is on being the surgical, rather than a blunt instrument, and/or directing one. Think more Simon Pegg and less Tom Cruise, if we were to use Mission Impossible as our analogy.

The more astute among you may recall Sid Meier as the creator of the Sims, or, since that one still bares his name, the Civilization series. We haven’t however discussed Microprose’s love of complex systems, be they of strategic and micromanaging nature in UFO:Enemy Unknown, numerous though by current standards rather quaint flight simulators, or indeed whatever was apparently Sid’s current obsession at the time, be it pirates or the American civil war. Cover Action also appears at the tail end of what’s best described as the video game equivalent of a ‘procedural’ TV-show. Think “Papers please” - but through hardware limitation rather than design choice. As evidence to support this theory, I would like to present things like Police Quest, and Mad TV. Long before the likes of GTA, it is the last place where you would expect to find a car-tailing mission, but at least you won’t have to follow the damn train.

From the DOS police spy procedural, to the 1994 era of FMV games. Why draw graphics, if you can take and present photos and video? Much like Covert Action, Spycraft shares the 90s ethos of essentially mini-games making up the entire game. While the results are a little janky, and FMV actions sequences always leave things to be desired, even in the best of times, the shear variety of mechanics, and visuals makes up for it, and the acting is at least on par with TV shows of the time (which isn’t saying much). You will spend half the time watching a spy thriller, and the other half being constantly introduced to new tools and gameplay.

Firmly in the modern era of stylized, 3D graphics, I singled out this game for trying to implement a hot seat aspect into the genre. As the name already suggests, it takes two to play this game, where the roles of our analogue protagonists are spread evenly between two players, namely that of the hacker and the field agent. I find this to be a great, although double-edged exercise in game design. On one hand, yes, it’s a great concept, similar to Keep talking and Nobody Explodes, even less ambiguously titled It Takes Two, or Lovers in Dangerous Space Time, in that playing alone is either impractical or downright impossible, and cooperation is the only way to success. On the other hand, however, it’s a pain to have to schedule playtime with someone. If you can overcome that obstacle though, Operation: Tango may very well provide a substantial bit of fun.

Epic’s free game of the week sounded, from the description, like a rough redo of Spycraft. But gameplay has more aptly been likened to “Papers, Please”-but FBI, or rather FDI as your organization is called in the game. This dips its toes in so many of the procedural-analogues, like Uplink but for investigation. Like Jack the Ripper, but fully voiced and without the amount of reading that you could have just opted for a book instead. And not unlike playing Abby from NCIS, but you provide your own caffeine drip. Whether it’s the sign of current state of game development, or a lean into realism - where ‘the operator’ is not also a field agent like in Spycraft, the game sounds like a nice return to telling stories in what are today, unconventional ways, but those appropriate to the story being telling.

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