Hello Guys, Today I'm gonna talk about in RetroReviews we have Project IGI So, sometimes it occurs to me that perhaps the games which I remember to be great only hold such high praise in my opinion due to the technological advancements they made versus the limitations of my harbor at the time there is something about a game not running well on the pc which in my mind at least has always managed to give it a little bit more credibility than perhaps it is worth the only way, of course, to find out if this is the case is to go back and replay these games and the computer they can fart out graphics no questions asked and a game that has been rattling around in the back of my mind for quite some time now is project IGI.
I'm going in as it is sometimes referred to was released in late 2000 by a Norwegian developer inner loop who were commonly praised for their flight simulator game joint strike fighter despite being a first-person shooter IGI actually uses the same engine as a joint strike fighter and this is no more apparent than in the opening visuals when you start the game the first vista you're treated to is a sprawling landscape complete with draw distance and a traversing helicopter inside is our main protagonist and playable character David Llewellyn jones who whilst he sounds like a member of parliament is a one-man infiltration army being sent to catcher Prado who is believed to know the knowledge through the whereabouts of nuclear weaponry
After jumping from a helicopter to a train in scenes resembling skyfall had it been on a budget of around three pounds fifty we are given our mission briefing by anya a woman who seems to have rigor mortis for hands and extract him for debriefing i talk dismissively about the game's premise and it isn't really where the experience lies the meat and potatoes here as with most fps games with the levels and weapons now obviously this doesn't look too amazing these days but 15 years ago to see a game with such an expansive area to explore that wasn't confined to corridors was something of a rarity what also made this different from other fps games at the time was how the levels had you tackled them each mission starts by plonking you down in a predetermined part of the map near an enemy base and with a questionable amount of freedom lets you choose how you go about getting around and completing your objectives with that said there is quite a large emphasis on taking things stealthy missions usually start with at least one silenced weapon and in an attempt for realism your character can't take more than a few bullets before you have to start right over from the beginning of the level.
this is probably iggy's most spawned complaint there is no mid-level saves or checkpoints you either get through your mission or you start over i actually quite like this but i'll come back to why as i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself most all of the game's 14 levels come with a different variation of the same world obstacles and mission objectives they all revolve around infiltration of an enemy base which is quarantined by barbed wire fences guard towers patrolling infantry and security cameras along with this you come equipped with a map reader to tell you the location of your next objective and it's up to you to dispose of the guards that sit in your way although saying guards plural could be a bit misleading clones will be better suited due to the fact they're almost all the same and they're equally as stupid sometimes enemies will just stand still when you shoot them or watch their best friend die in front of them completely unfazed likewise enemies can also have super sensing abilities and can spot you from 10 miles down the road with almost perfect accuracy luckily however due to the brilliant sound design and pleasing animation the guns are always fun to fire despite how poorly executed the thing you are shooting at is also deterring you from victory is each base's security system this is triggered by prolonged exposure to security cameras or by letting one of the guards get away for too long to hit the alarm or sometimes just because you looked at the building a bit funny when the alert is heightened everyone in the vicinity is aware of your presence and the game reverts back to its old-school shooter roots having you blast away through countless amounts of enemies and ammunition as you flee to your next objectives it isn't however always as simple as killing everyone in the area at certain locations have infinitely respawning enemies running out of bunker doors leaving you no other option than to hightail it as quickly as you can before you run out of firepower it certainly occurred to me whilst making notes
however, that's not how you end up playing it, and as unintentional as I believe it to be that's what kept me playing when you start to get into the game you will slowly stop seeing enemies as enemies they're more like obstacles like sort of a switch that has to be turned off to progress but it's finding out the order in which you need to turn them off which is the challenge a challenge that wouldn't be present had the game included the save function this makes it more of a trial and error experience as dying is quite easy you'll get a little further each time learning enemy placements and knowing where to pick them off from without getting too close. which means eventually with practice some levels can be completed in only a few minutes.
as the levels progress, we get some variation in mission objectives and
locations primarily in form of escort or cover-based missions thrown in with a few tank battles and an underground complex fps gameplay aside this is still a really pleasing game to run around in and this is due to some great music and sense of freedom
few bullets before the game are over or possibly I have just played too much daisy and everything now seems to draw resemblance to the point where I actually seek out good vantage points in the real world
getting slightly off track there so to come back to my original question whether the game still holds as much quality as I thought it did when I first played it no, it most definitely does not but I do like it and I like it now for different reasons than I did when it was first released back then I remember thinking it was super realistic all the buildings were the scale it was outdoors realistic guns and you died easy dying easily in the game always seemed to me to be rooted in some sort of logic rather than being a bullet sponge while some of those facts do still remain true they don't give the game the same status I once believed fortunately now though I do see it positively in a different light it was trying to do something different and whether it meant to or not it turned out to be something rather unique in the end though I don't think I could give it an overall recommendation the things I like about the game seem to be all of its shortcomings which probably to the average gamer would seem laughable but if you are of a like-minded nature and enjoy the era of shooters where they were all trying to do something a little bit different.
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