When I was a kid the television show, Mission Impossible was part of my family's weekly viewing. Later as an adult, I got to watch a new version of the program that was trotted out. It featured some of the original cast and the son of one the first stars. Then came the Mission Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise. This was a departure from the pat scenarios that been part of the television show. Now there is a game called Mission Impossible that is based upon the movie. The game that I reviewed is on the Sony PlayStation platform and was released by Infogrames.

The game takes the same plot as the movie. You are Ethan Hunt, a top-notch agent in the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). You are framed by someone within the IMF. You have to recover a stolen list of agents to uncover who the real traitor is.

This game has gotten some unfavorable reviews. Sam Bishop over at Gamezilla Console had only a few good things to say about it. The same thing with Jeffrey Adam Young over at Happy Puppy. But these guys seem to think that everything new should step up the pace and push the envelope in game development. It sometimes just doesn't happen that way. To me, Mission Impossible is a great role-playing, international intrigue game.

One of the first things that I liked was the Quicksave and Quickload options. Save your game anywhere in a level with Quicksave. Then if you die or don't finish the mission, retrieve the last saved game from Quickload.

The difficulty levels for the game are Possible and Impossible. If you want an easy time of it, then try out the Possible difficulty. If a challenge is to your liking, then the Impossible playing levels are a must.

Each mission begins with a briefing. After that, check out the team member profiles to get a feel about who they are and what they can do for you. Grab some equipment that will help you on the mission and then head out.

There are different scenes where you talk with people, try to find things or shoot it out with the bad guys. When you talk to people, talk to everyone possible. You never know who might offer a tidbit of information that will help the success of the mission. Finding things can be tedious as the items needed aren't always easy to obtain.

Shooting it out with the bad guys gets to be a chore. You have some cool weapons like blowguns but limited actions. If you can sneak up on a bad guy and knock him out, it might work out better for the mission. Shots being fired tend to bring more bad guys running into the scene.

Some of the neat things at your disposal are gas capsules, plastic explosives, dartgun, electro-stunner and silenced 7mm gun. Some weapons that you can pick up along the way include a sub-machine gun and a Hi-Power 9mm pistol. There are gadgets that you can use like infra-red goggles, smoke generator and a frequency scrambler.

The coolest gadget that's available for use it the Face-maker. This device allows you to reproduce anyone's face into a foam mask. Use this mask to fool the bad guys and accomplish your mission.

To some diehard gamers like Jeffrey and Sam, this game probably doesn't seem like much. To me, Mission Impossible was a fun, exciting and sometimes frustrating RPG.

For information about other Infogrames titles, check out their web site at www.infogrames.net.

Copyright © 2000 Bruce E. Von Stiers