I didn’t want to follow Planescape with another RPG and my top two picks this time were both RPGs. My backup plan was a nebulous “maybe an adventure game? We haven’t had one of those in a while.” I started poking around those and found myself gravitating to something with a contemporary setting. I was close to pulling the trigger on Police Quest 3 when I ran into some Spycraft references. Not long after I was giving it a test drive, and not long after that I decided it was worth a shot.
Spycraft is a bit of an odd duck. It’s got mid 90s quality FMV scenes that will remind you of video CDs (if you have the misfortune of having ever seen those). Most of the game is CIA workstation simulator. It’s got weird adventure game issues where you do a thing that makes total sense and it doesn’t work at all. But somehow it works. I’m looking forward to gnawing on the next slice of the puzzle when I get home.
It’s available from GOG. I had a heck of a time getting it to run larger than a postage stamp. With some trial and error I was able to get it to run fullscreenish, I’ll try and remember to edit my config into this post when I get home.
I still have a 3-CD version “offered only with STB Systems video products.” I never finished it, but remember enjoying the game as far as I got back in the day. It says MS-DOS or Windows 95 compatible on the disc surface, so GOG packaging sounds like a definite hassle-saver.
Wow, I beat this game back in the day! Probably one of the few that has been featured in this club.
I remember doing a really bad quicksave at the wrong moment near the end which made a sequence extremely difficult every time I reloaded…but I persevered.
Enjoy everyone, this is really zany. My brother liked to make fun of the game/me as I kept listening to audio segments for clues or something or other.
I really liked this game back when it came out because at least parts of it felt like real spycraft type stuff, sifting through materials looking for clues. The FMV is… well, not as bad as a lot of FMV. I got it on GOG awhile back, so I will be joining in I think! Good pick!
Got back to this after some distraction by Devil Daggers. Made some progress tracking down Onyx, then got stuck for a while because I thought something was optional that clearly wasn’t. I think I’ve screwed up the order a bit as I’m getting messages from people who have supposedly disappeared. It’s a little weird. At least I haven’t gotten any messages from the dead yet.
It’s final thoughts time for this one. Which is convenient because I finished this morning.
I think I might call it the 2nd best FMV based game I’ve played, unless I’m forgetting one. Like maybe one of the Tex Murphy adventures.
The desk intelligence puzzles were a nice change of pace from the typical adventure game try everything on everything approach that I’ve come to expect from most adventure games. Some of them were better than others.
