Agent Intercept

Developer: PikPok | Publisher: PikPok | Release Date: 2021 | Genre: Action / Arcade / Racing | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

The criminal organization known as CLAW is up to its old tricks, and only the highly skilled members of the Agency stand between them and chaos. As one of those agents, it is your job to eradicate CLAW and all their mercenaries while gathering valuable intel about their activities. However, unlike other secret agents, you never have to leave the comfort of your car as you complete your missions. Then again, the Sceptre is no ordinary car as it can transform into a vehicle capable of traversing land, sea, snow, and air. You’ll still have your work cut out for you, though, as CLAW is relentless and will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Agent Intercept is a non-stop thrill ride that clearly drew inspiration from action movies and spy fiction. However, instead of trying to subvert the genre or shy away from cliches, the developers have embraced all of them to create a game that doesn’t take itself very seriously. Thankfully, their main focus was entertainment, and it is hard to play through the over-the-top action scenes in this game without a big smile on your face.

Although Agent Intercept was originally a mobile title, it doesn’t feel out of place or dumbed down on PC. The game features a variety of modes, but the campaign is an excellent place to start. Here, players participate in a series of missions where they discover more about CLAW, the Sceptre, and the Agency. The campaign has three chapters, each with five missions, which might not sound like much, but there are multiple objectives per mission. Completing your primary task is obviously the most important. Still, secondary objectives could range from taking down a certain amount of enemies or reaching a specific score to drifting for a certain distance and more. The more of these you can complete, the more “intel” you will have, which unlocks subsequent levels. The objectives also add some nice replay value to the game, and the short, action-packed levels lend themselves well to repeat playthroughs.

In addition to the campaign, Agent Intercept also features several so-called “Side Missions.” These are similar to the campaign missions and just as addictive but are set apart from the main story. Even so, these missions have their own storylines and objectives that are just as much fun. Finally, the score attack mode allows players to take on challenges based on obtaining the highest score, fastest time, or most kills. This mode also has global leaderboards to compare your skills to those of your friends or strangers. If all of this wasn’t enough, the developers have stated that additional side missions will also be added to the game.

Fans of the classic Spy Hunter will feel right at home with Agent Intercept in terms of gameplay. Players spend most of their time driving a car which automatically accelerates. Since there is no need to keep a finger on the accelerator all the time, it allows players to concentrate on weaving past obstacles instead while shooting at enemies using various agency weapons that can be picked up along the way. It is also impossible to crash your car or veer off the road, but performing actions such as drifting and boosting prevents the action from becoming dull. The default driving speed feels a bit slow, but it quickly becomes clear that the game expects you to boost as much as possible to complete your missions within the time limits. Boosting and drifting also help to maintain your score multiplier as you dodge mines, missiles, lasers, bombs, and whatever else enemies throw at you. Your car is sturdy enough to crash through enemy vehicles, which is quite satisfying, but it still has a health gauge that obstacles and enemy weapons can deplete.

Every so often, players will reach a major obstacle that requires them to leave the road, and this is where your car can transform into everything from a boat to a jetski and even a plane. The handling for these vehicles tends to be slightly different, but they are still a lot of fun to use and make for epic action scenes. Agent Intercept doesn’t concern itself too much with the laws of physics, so it’s not unusual to see your off-road vehicle drive up the side of a rocket shooting into space. Other highlights include transforming into a plane as you dodge laser barriers inside the tunnels of a secret underground base. The game even throws a couple of boss battles your way, which is just as thrilling and over the top as you would expect.

Agent Intercept is a very entertaining game, but it is not overly challenging, making it very accessible. Completing at least the required number of objectives to reach the next mission is not too harsh, but players searching for a bigger challenge can return and get the harder ones, too. PikPok even included an assist mode for players who are really struggling. This allows them to enable things like double health, more boost, double ammo, easier enemies, and longer time limits. However, players who use the assist mode cannot post their scores to the global leaderboards, which is a fair compromise.

Visually, Agent Intercept is a very vibrant game that makes good use of color for its levels. CLAW might be evil, but at least they have the good sense to get up to no good in very picturesque locations. Usually, the action is so intense that there’s not much time to gawk at the scenery, but watching someone else play will reveal how much detail has gone into the background. For example, your car doesn’t just jump over ramps but performs a barrel roll while the missiles you shoot at enemies leave pleasing smoke trails in their wake. The game is also fond of throwing a few cinematic in-engine cut-scenes your way during missions but is skippable if you wish. Seeing as Agent Intercept was originally a mobile title, we were pretty surprised by the list of graphical options, too. Players can adjust everything from antialiasing and the level of detail to things like texture resolution, shadow quality, water quality, bloom, ambient occlusion, and much more. The game looks great with everything cranked up, and it makes playing through the levels set in the Mediterranean, Arctic Circle, and Sahara even more enjoyable.

As with the story and setpieces, PikPok also drew inspiration from the spy genre for the music and sound effects in the game. The background music will bring a smile to the face of any fans of classic James Bond movies, and every enemy you defeat rewards you with a victory sound effect. Agent Intercept also features decent voice acting for the main characters and some mercenaries. Strangely enough, there are a few instances where the characters speak only the first sentence of dialog, and the rest has to be read. The controls are very straightforward, and it is possible to accomplish a lot with only a few buttons, as you don’t have to worry about accelerating or braking. This makes it very easy to jump straight into the game and start having fun.

While it didn’t take us very long to complete the campaign in Agent Intercept, we had a lot of fun along the way, and the objectives, along with the side missions and score attack mode, kept us coming back for more. There is never a dull moment in the game, and every level is littered with opportunities to do something cool with your transforming vehicle. Despite the over-the-top action, the game is also very accessible and comes highly recommended to anyone looking for an excellent pick-up-and-play title.