Twenty years later, I still find myself playing this. Unmatched to this day.
BOND... SORT OF
Covert Action is a game of espionage. The player takes the role of Max (or Maxine) Remington, a globetrotting multi-skilled secret agent employed by the CIA in both counter-terrorism and international crime-fighting. Max will go through mission after mission in the attempt to foil a series of crimes and terrorist attacks, by locating the various participants in the plot and arresting them, hopefully fast enough to stop the crime from taking place.
Max starts each mission with very little information - usually just the location of one of the participants in the plot, or the name of one of the participating organizations, or perhaps a clue as to which crime is being perpetrated (from kidnapping to prison breaks to bombings of government buildings). From these few starting pieces of data, the player must slowly uncover the plot and the names and locations of participants so that he can arrest them.
CLASSIC CLOAK AND DAGGER?
Gathering information makes up the bulk of the game, and there are many ways to do so. The player can visit locales in any of the available cities (usually around 10 locales per mission, in a specific region of the world), and perform espionage activities there. This includes wire-tapping, car chases, and even breaking-and-entry. Each of these methods presents a different minigame to play, and thus requires the player to excercise a different set of skills. The better you are at the minigame involved, the more information you will collect, and the less you'll alert the organizations involved.
The wire-tapping minigame is a game of logic where the player must place logic chips on a circuit board, to direct electric current into the proper channels, while steering them away from the alarm signals.
The car chase game requires quick decisionmaking as the player directs his car to tail a suspect around tangled city streets, without losing sight for too long.
The breaking-and-entry game is much more complex, and requires quick reflexes - Max will navigate through a maze-like series of rooms, avoiding patrols and collecting information from cabinets, locked safes, and computer terminals.
As more information is collected, the player will have a better idea of the number of people involved in the crime, their names and portraits, as well as their ongoing activities. He'll receive updates from CIA headquarters regarding intercepted communications between the various members of the organizations involved. There's a lot of deduction to do - at first you don't know who it is who's sending or receiving these transmissions, or their part in the plot. You'll have to piece most of that together by matching faces and names, as well as keeping tabs on the origin and destination of the transmissions (some of this is done automatically). There's also a decyphering minigame where the player needs to switch letters on a scrambled message to decode the real message - this will give some insight that may otherwise be hard to deduce.
MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL
Each mission is limited in time - there's only about a week to solve the crime before all members involved go into hiding. Also, you lose points if ever the crime is perpetrated before you can arrest the key individuals. Every action you take, including travel between locales and countries, will take some time off the clock. As you gain experience with the game, you'll be able to learn the order in which crimes are perpetrated, and thus the best time to arrest each individual just before they go into hiding (after that you can't arrest them anymore). Act too soon, and you will disrupt the entire crime plot, causing all participants to disappear quickly. Act at the right time, without drawing attention, and you might even trap the whole group, including the criminal mastermind at the top of the pyramid. Arrests are carried out by breaking into the hideout and nabbing the criminal without getting shot by the guards. In some cases, you can find information that will help "turn" a criminal into a double-agent, revealing all the information he/she knows about the crime, and assisting greatly in discovering the identity and/or location of the other participants.
ONE TICKET PLEASE. FIRST-CLASS, NOT COACH.
There is a vast number of cities in the game, and each city has hideouts for each of the criminal organizations (there are several dozens!), each of which could be hiding a participant in the plot, or none at all. This means that you can't just go around checking every locale to see if there's a plot-participant there - instead you have to pinpoint your search as much as you can before making any move. Each mission is fully randomized, including the setup of the various minigames, so you should always expect the unexpected and be prepared to take drastic measures when time begins to run out. Reviewing the data you've gathered so far, as well as CIA reports on terrorist activities, may help greatly in determining where to strike next. You could even do a passive search back at CIA headquarters to dig up more info when you're stumped.
AND THE BOND GIRL?
At the end of the mission, you're scored by how many plot participants you've managed to arrest, based on their importance in the plot (double points for turning anyone into a double agent). Additionally, any physical evidence you
manage to capture (like a bomb or hostage essential to the crime) will give you more points. Failing to stop the crime will give negative points. Ultimately, you'll want to capture the masterminds behind the crimes you solve, as they are worth the most points (and supposedly will end the game if you capture all masterminds, around 30 or so, which I have yet to manage after all these years). As a nice touch, during "R&R" after the mission you'll have a reward cutscene of meeting a woman (or a man, if you're playing Maxine), and based on your score she could be anywhere between an ugly office clerk and a beautiful woman on the beach.
CASE CLOSED
Covert Action is a difficult game that requires a wide variety of playing skills rather than one focused skill. Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why the game never sold as well as it should've - most players prefer to play games that test one or two skills at most. Covert Action requires logic, time management, puzzle-solving, quick thinking and reflexes, and even good vocabulary (for the password and decyphering minigames), making it a very versatile game. While this may not appeal to everybody, it is certainly one of the most brilliant challenges of the classical game era.
If you don't flinch at playing older games, and would like an interesting challenge of a kind that is extremely rare these days, be sure to keep your eyes out for Covert Action.