Spycraft: The Great Game Review
This is not a game whose video segments are mere story-props that leave theplayer behind, but one designed to keep the player actively involved.
If the concept of a resolutely straight-faced game developed with actual input from former CIA/KGB members seems just a little scary to you, you'll be all the more prepared for Spycraft, which is more than a little frightening. As a CIA operative from “The Farm,” the player must utilize intelligence records and techniques--including satellite photo enhancement, multi-level data analysis, field combat training, image alteration and even interrogation/torture--to root out a group of renegade secret agents who have killed a Russian presidential hopeful and are now after America's Chief Exec. My head's had just about all the bad-acting-intensive, video-based yawners it can handle without actually imploding, so Spycraft came as something of a relief. The acting is reasonably good, and the game elements are presented in a nonlinear fashion which, while simplified (and still slightly bewildering), presents the realistic, on-your-own flavor of an intelligence operation. This is not a game whose video segments are mere story-props that leave the player behind, but one designed to keep the player actively involved (sometimes emotionally involved, and that's all this reviewer is gonna give away about that).
Spycraft is a classy piece of work; it's entertaining but at the same time manages never to insult the player's intelligence, unless it's on purpose (“Absolute crap!” is one of the charming evaluations your handiwork may receive over the course of your training.) A caveat: Realism, acting and game quality aside, Spycraft is essentially a mystery, and hence has as much replay value as finding your car in a mall parking lot.
