I recall seeing an ad for Sid Meier's Covert Action back when it originally released, and was thoroughly intrigued by the premise. Being barely more than a nipper at the time, however, I wasn't in a position where I could purchase new games for myself, and so it was that I never got to sample its delights.
Until now, that is, thanks to the fact it's on GOG.com.
For the uninitiated, Sid Meier's Covert Action (hereafter simply Covert Action) is a spy simulator from the great mind that gave us Civilization and Pirates. In terms of execution, it's much closer to the latter than the former (unsurprisingly) but is very much its own beast in its own right.
Taking on the role of Max or Maxine Remington -- to use the rather tired "joke" that the games industry is oh-so-fond-of at the moment, take note at how easy it is to include a female character, Ubisoft -- you're tasked with uncovering a series of elaborate (and randomly generated) plots from various bands of evildoers around the world. In order to do this, you'll have to snoop around, tap phones, tail suspects in your car and decode messages. As you proceed on your merry, discreet way, you'll uncover various pieces of information about the various ne'er-do-wells who are involved in Today's Big Plot of Evil, and ultimately gather enough evidence to be able to 1) track them down and 2) arrest them. Your ultimate aim is to arrest the 26 "mastermind" characters who are causing substantial amounts of trouble for the world -- only then will Max/Maxine be able to retire and enjoy life to the fullest.
As you can probably tell from the description, Covert Action is an enormously ambitious affair held back somewhat -- though surprisingly not as much as you might think -- by the technological limitations of the time. Despite being randomly generated, the game manages to spin a series of convincing, compelling mini-thriller tales that you're right in the middle of -- and you feel like you're an important part of the emerging, unfolding narrative.
Your various spying activities are represented by minigames. Wiretapping and planting tracers on cars is represented by a game in which you swap chips around in an attempt to prevent electricity flowing to certain destinations -- particularly alarms. Tailing a suspect or arresting them in a car chase takes the form of a bizarre driving game in which you control two cars simultaneously as you navigate them around a sprawling city map. Cracking codes requires you to actually crack codes using your own powers of deduction. And when you break into a building, whether it's to arrest a suspect or simply to gather some information, the game shifts into a top-down tactical shooter-action-adventure-stealth-type affair in which you rifle through drawers, shoot enemies, steal their clothes to disguise yourself and hopefully manage to not set off any alarms.
Your efforts in these games will reward you with pieces of information, each of which will help build up a dossier on the evildoers involved. You'll be provided with a few simple clues at the start, and these files will be further fleshed out as you progress until you reach a situation where you have enough conclusive evidence to take someone down and make the charges stick. But if you leave members of a plot at large, don't count on them seeing the error of their ways -- there's every possibility they might show up in a later case to break their buddy out of the clink.
I've only played one case so far, but I'm already thoroughly enamoured with this game, despite its minimal sounds and revolting EGA graphics. There are a ton of cool touches -- having to recognise people visually without prompting when observing a building is very cool and "spy-ish", while the codebreaking is legitimately satisfying -- and it's a game that I would absolutely love to see a modern-day remake of. In the meantime, though, the original version holds up a lot better than I thought it would, and for those of you starving for some authentic-feeling espionage action, I can highly recommend it based on what I've played so far.
