Jeff...STOP...RDV in Opalia, Black Lotus Hotel...STOP...You will find the documents in the usual place...STOP...Your contact will be in place... STOP...Stay on your guard...STOP ... Mission TOP SECRET...It's the 1950s. The place is the Indo-Chinese country of Opalia. Opalia has become the target of the USSR and the United States and its geographical position has made it a hot spot in the Cold War battle of the superpowers. Networks of underground informants and foreign spies have totally destabilised this once peaceful country and local rebels, led by the devious Prime Minister,, Vishaka, are trying to topple the king.The safety of Opalia is in your hands alone... you can't let them down!
~ from the back of the box
For such a generic name, there's something irresistibly pulpy about the title Secret Mission. It conjures up imagery of tuxedoed spies, femme fatales, and exotic lands. And indeed, Microids - the French studio who would later give us the incredible Syberia series - delivered just that, though in a rather unusual form. Originally released for Philips’ doomed CD-i system in 1995, Secret Mission crept onto DOS a year later. The result is an engaging Cold War thriller with cinematic flair, marred only by clunky controls.
The story places you in the shoes of Jeff, a suave operative in the year 1952. He arrives in the tropical state of Opalia, only to be promptly smacked on the head and gifted with the ever-convenient video game amnesia. Enter Natascha, your Russian handler, who reminds you that you're meant to be working for both the Americans and the Soviets in order to meddle in an imminent coup. Your loyalties - and your choices - determine how events unfold.
If the setup sounds cinematic, that's because it is. Cutscenes play a huge role here. Every jaunt across town - whether by rickshaw or jungle trek - comes with a little FMV interlude. On CD-i these masked the long disc loading times, but even on DOS they give the game a luxurious sheen. With its swelling orchestral score and a fully voice-acted cast hamming it up, it feels like an attempt at James Bond by way of Indiana Jones.
Unfortunately, then you have to play it. Unlike most adventure games of its era, Secret Mission eschews the traditional point-and-click interface for direct controls - a likely holdout from its console origins. That means you guide Jeff around with the arrow keys or number pad. While this is not an uncommon sight when the genre moved to 3D, it was rarely used in the age of picel art adventures. The result is a slow, awkward control scheme where Jeff shuffles into the slightest of obstacles. He'll get trapped behind a table leg or carpet corner or a bunch of pixels in the distance that could either be a flowers bed or a dead body. This is even more egregious when the camera flips to an isometric view. Pair that with a menu system that forces you to scroll laboriously through icons and inventory with the keyboard, and suddenly handing documents to a diplomat feels like defusing an actual bomb.
That said, when you wrestle past the interface, there's some decent puzzles and mini-games to keep the intrigue flowing. You'll have safes to crack, mazes to explore, messages to decode, and even the a shooting section complete with an ammo gauge and health counter. There's even a tense underwater temple sequence where your air supply ticks down second by second.
Visually, the DOS version can't quite mask its CD-i roots even if the pixel art is inviting. The static backgrounds are colourful enough, evoking markets, palaces and jungle ruins with painterly charm. They are all rather static, though, with not much animation going on inside of them, and not a single one able to scroll even if the environment would perhaps need it. The lavish cutscenes more than make up for this stillness, providing an believable world with atmosphere that might otherwise not be there.
The biggest sticking point remains those controls. Imagine trying to give someone a flower, only instead of pointing and clicking you must press Escape, scroll to a character icon with the arrow keys, swap it for a white rose from your inventory, then scroll back to the "give" command - and if you hit the wrong button everything resets. If you want to combine two items in your inventory, it's even worse! If you want to put chloroform on that rose, you first have to make sure you have the "use" icon selected on the left, then select the rose on the right. Tap right again and a second hidden inventory icon will appear where the chloroform bottle can now be scrolled to. With only a French-language manual at hand, figuring this out turned out to be the most difficult puzzle in the whole game. It's fussy, inelegant, and often frustrating. I suspect this was inherited wholesale from the CD-i's awkward controller setup and while it might have made sense there, on PC it feels like a deliberate annoyance.
Still, I can't dismiss Secret Mission. Beneath its unwieldy mechanics lies a genuinely compelling adventure. Is it a lost classic? No. There are far better adventure games that were made for DOS (or by Microids themselves), but it was surely one of the CD-i's must-haves. If you can forgive its eccentric interface, there's a rich espionage thriller here that rewards patience with an intriguingly good yarn.
The story places you in the shoes of Jeff, a suave operative in the year 1952. He arrives in the tropical state of Opalia, only to be promptly smacked on the head and gifted with the ever-convenient video game amnesia. Enter Natascha, your Russian handler, who reminds you that you're meant to be working for both the Americans and the Soviets in order to meddle in an imminent coup. Your loyalties - and your choices - determine how events unfold.
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Use the rickshaw to travel around the fictional Eastern-European country of Opelia (left).
Combining two items from your inventory is awkward and unintuitive (right).
If the setup sounds cinematic, that's because it is. Cutscenes play a huge role here. Every jaunt across town - whether by rickshaw or jungle trek - comes with a little FMV interlude. On CD-i these masked the long disc loading times, but even on DOS they give the game a luxurious sheen. With its swelling orchestral score and a fully voice-acted cast hamming it up, it feels like an attempt at James Bond by way of Indiana Jones.
Unfortunately, then you have to play it. Unlike most adventure games of its era, Secret Mission eschews the traditional point-and-click interface for direct controls - a likely holdout from its console origins. That means you guide Jeff around with the arrow keys or number pad. While this is not an uncommon sight when the genre moved to 3D, it was rarely used in the age of picel art adventures. The result is a slow, awkward control scheme where Jeff shuffles into the slightest of obstacles. He'll get trapped behind a table leg or carpet corner or a bunch of pixels in the distance that could either be a flowers bed or a dead body. This is even more egregious when the camera flips to an isometric view. Pair that with a menu system that forces you to scroll laboriously through icons and inventory with the keyboard, and suddenly handing documents to a diplomat feels like defusing an actual bomb.
 |
 |
There are some great puzzles, such as this decoding puzzle. Can you reveal the secret message? (left).
The arcade sequences are less great. Can you hit the shooters before your life and ammo run out? (right).
That said, when you wrestle past the interface, there's some decent puzzles and mini-games to keep the intrigue flowing. You'll have safes to crack, mazes to explore, messages to decode, and even the a shooting section complete with an ammo gauge and health counter. There's even a tense underwater temple sequence where your air supply ticks down second by second.
Visually, the DOS version can't quite mask its CD-i roots even if the pixel art is inviting. The static backgrounds are colourful enough, evoking markets, palaces and jungle ruins with painterly charm. They are all rather static, though, with not much animation going on inside of them, and not a single one able to scroll even if the environment would perhaps need it. The lavish cutscenes more than make up for this stillness, providing an believable world with atmosphere that might otherwise not be there.
 |
 |
Gambling on mice and cheese in the underground sewers beneath a night club (left).
You sometimes play as other characters, like this jobsbody who can gain access to a palace (right).
The biggest sticking point remains those controls. Imagine trying to give someone a flower, only instead of pointing and clicking you must press Escape, scroll to a character icon with the arrow keys, swap it for a white rose from your inventory, then scroll back to the "give" command - and if you hit the wrong button everything resets. If you want to combine two items in your inventory, it's even worse! If you want to put chloroform on that rose, you first have to make sure you have the "use" icon selected on the left, then select the rose on the right. Tap right again and a second hidden inventory icon will appear where the chloroform bottle can now be scrolled to. With only a French-language manual at hand, figuring this out turned out to be the most difficult puzzle in the whole game. It's fussy, inelegant, and often frustrating. I suspect this was inherited wholesale from the CD-i's awkward controller setup and while it might have made sense there, on PC it feels like a deliberate annoyance.
Still, I can't dismiss Secret Mission. Beneath its unwieldy mechanics lies a genuinely compelling adventure. Is it a lost classic? No. There are far better adventure games that were made for DOS (or by Microids themselves), but it was surely one of the CD-i's must-haves. If you can forgive its eccentric interface, there's a rich espionage thriller here that rewards patience with an intriguingly good yarn.
To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox to bring the game to modern systems. French and English Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.
File Size: 278 Mb. Install Size: 555 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ
Download
PC-DOS
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Secret Mission is © Microids
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me
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Interesting game, never heard of it before. I was surprised that it has direct control of your character. Back in the day that was probably more of a nuisance but these days it makes for a really nice couch gaming experience with a controller. Anyone know of other PC point-and-click style games from the era that has this? A good one is Cthulhu Shadow of the Comet.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I missed the mouse controls in this game. It uses direct controls probably due to its console origins (it came out on the doomed CD-i a year before). There aren't many more that I can think of. Cruise for a Corpse has an option to select Keyboard controls in the setup program, but my installer doesn't have that by default (not have I made it joystick compatible with the mapper feature). Maybe try Codename Hellsquad for the Amiga (also on this site). It has gunplay in there, but its more of a traditional adventure in design than not.
DeleteJust remembered you can now filter the Genre pages by tag :)
Deletehttps://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/game-collection.html?genre=Adventure&tag=Direct+Control
i have this game on my Phillips CD-I (model 450) and it's one of the few "good" games on this system, the only real down side on the CD-I is the horrendous frame rate, between 15-10 fps, very choppy and slow but thankfully playable. the MS-DOS version is little bit better but not by much.
ReplyDelete