Espion-age-nts

 Espion-age-nts
Mission briefing
   Does the world need another adventure game? The premise to Espion-age-nts sounds like little more than your typical adventure fare: in the near future, the world is ruled by corporations, who employ military teams -- such as the one the game focuses on -- to carry out various espionage missions. Fortunately, the title isn't all clichés; in fact, it boasts more originality than most adventure games.
Espion-age-nts
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.


Preview by Fritz Fraundorf, GIA.
 
Espion-age-nts
Developer NEC Interchannel
Publisher Tommo / UFO Interactive
Genre Adventure
Medium GD-ROM (?)
Platform Dreamcast
Release Date  09.26.99
 1999
News
Tommo grabs Espionage Agents and Monster Breeders
Media
7 screenshots
Artwork
12 character designs, group portrait
Other
Japanese packaging