Secret Mission

In the late nineties, the little-known developers Philips Media France programmed the game Secret Mission. It was released by Microids, another reasonably obscure French company. The company is much better known for Amerzone, which was a more commercially successful adventure game, but not markedly so. The game is an adventure style of interactive fiction game with themes of espionage and spying that takes place entirely in the third person perspective, three-quarters top down.
Secret Mission, as mentioned, is an adventure game that was popularized by the point and click interface.

Secret Mission, however, is entirely keyboard driven, making it much more clumsy and time consuming than other games of this nature. The game itself is inventory driven, and features the standard find and use goals for most of the items scattered about this large game.
The premise of the game is actually a good one, and the plot of Secret Mission had great overall potential. The user awakens in a small, quaint 1950s hotel room with no recollection of who he is or where he is located. The first person met is a decidedly attractive young woman who identifies you as Jeff, a secret agent who is posing as an American super spy, but actually works for the Russian government. Jeff is in the small Middle Eastern country of Opalia, an exotic land filled with political turmoil and strife. Vishaka, the prime minister of the land, intends to assassinate the country’s king and usurp control of the country. Mother Russia has great interest in the control of this country, as well. So does the United States of America. Jeff must find evidence of Vishaka’s plans, and present it to the Russians, who will then use this information as leverage over the Opalians, gain influence in the land, and eventually take control of the country themselves. Jeff must do this without alerting the Americans of his progress, for they too want Opalia, and Jeff’s double agent status could endanger both himself and his true country should the Americans become suspicious.
Secret Mission is a very standard adventure game with fairly straightforward puzzles, made more difficult by the clunky interface. Similar to other games of this nature, the actions the user can perform on a given item appear as icons when the user is close to them. A series of buttons must be pushed in order to access the commands from the keyboard, as opposed to just easily mousing over them, like other games’ more friendly interfaces. Despite the fumbling interface, Secret Mission does offer a great and in depth tale that should help the user to overcome the interface difficulties and continue through the game. The double agent theme is complex and exciting, and Secret Mission should be given a try.