Mission briefing

Four perspectives on the action

   For one thing, you don't control the generic lone, semi-invulnerable hero. Instead, you're the commander of the Espion-age-nts, a team of secret agents serving the Blitzstrahl Corporation. For each of the game's missions, you'll select four of the seven agents, each of whom has a unique ability ranging from bomb disarmament to hypnotism. None of the characters are controlled directly; instead, you switch back and forth between each one and give them orders to follow. Small "picture-in-a-picture" windows on the right side of the screen keep tabs on the other agents, all of whom are acting simultaneously. Because you have a team of agents, and control no character directly, Espion-age-nts in many ways owes more to real-time strategy games than it does Metal Gear Solid or Resident Evil. Some RPG elements appear to be included as well, as each character possesses a number of numerical statistics.

   The strategy-oriented premise is certainly promising, as there have been few similar games on console systems. Of course, there's still plenty of things that could go wrong -- poor mission design and incompetent AI could both cripple Espion-age-nts. And the graphics certainly rank well below the Dreamcast's standard, though that's understandable given that the engine must render four scenes at once. Still, it's more than your standard adventure, and proves that there are still many new ways to make the same game.