Mission Impossible - Operation Surma

Years ago, I overheard someone say that Mission Impossible was “America’s equivalent” to the James Bond series. This made sense, because James Bond is a British agent, while Ethan Hunt is an American agent; they both undertake impossible odds and somehow always manage to be the victor. James Bond has had a multitude of video games made after his various dangerous missions, so Atari decided to make a game based off the Mission Impossible series. Does their latest game, Mission Impossible: Operation Surma, offer a fun filled trip? Read on to find out.

Surma, a shady international corporation, possesses a highly sophisticated virus codename: The Ice Worm. The Ice Worm can bypass any security system to steal military secrets and classified weapons research. When Surma gets sabotaged and the virus stolen, it is up to the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) to get involved, and they choose their most respected agent Ethan Hunt to take the lead. Shortly afterwards, they discover that they have been hacked as well. Not only do they have to fight a madman who has this destructive virus, but now the enemies know all of the IMF’s secrets. It is now up to Ethan and his team to track down the saboteur and deal with him appropriately. The only bad thing is that this person knows all of the IMF secrets, so they have an advantage over you. Can you stop them?

The game consists of Ethan sneaking around, trying to avoid everyone in your path, and using millions of gadgets to get your job done. There are a lot of helpful items available such as laser cutters, digital binoculars, dart guns, and the fun micro-cord (grappling hook). The micro cord is one of the best gadgets available, because Ethan will always find that he needs to get to inaccessible places, so this will become necessary on many missions. The developers also made it extremely easy to get to any gadget by using the directional pad to cycle through them.

The combat in the game is pretty bad; it just consists of mashing a button a few times which will result in a three hit combo and then the “finishing move” that will knock any guard out. This gets repetitive and boring pretty fast.

The camera is horrid! The camera control in this game ruins the entire experience. It is always getting in the way and ruins a lot of things for you. While this isn’t the end of the world, it gets extremely frustrating while playing.

The graphics for this game look nice, but they could have been so much better. I say this because with many other stealth action games coming out (and ones already out), such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell series; this game doesn’t even come close to comparing visually. The lighting and texture usage is just enough to get the job done. The animations are nice as well, but they just can’t compare to other games out on the market.

The audio in this game is really good. I really enjoyed the lead characters voice as he did a great job in portraying Ethan Hunt. The sound effects and other audio that is heard throughout the game is good as well, but it has the same problem that the graphics department had, it does nothing to distinguish itself from other games. The only really cool device that uses sound is the binoculars that allow you to hear other people’s conversations, which can become very helpful at times.

Mission Impossible: Operation Surma is rated T for Teen for blood and violence. It will take up to 73kb on your memory card for saves.

Gameplay: 6.8
The sloppy camera ruins a lot of fun that this game has to offer. The only good thing is the amount of gadgets that Ethan has available, there is a gadget that is helpful in any given situation.

Graphics: 7.1
Mission Impossible: Operation Surma looks nice, but it really doesn’t take advantage of the Playstation 2 hardware. What is strange is that this game does not feature Tom Cruise likeness as Ethan Hunt, even though this is the role he has played in the past two movies.

Sound 7.6
The voice acting is really good, but all the other applications of sound contains nothing out of the ordinary.

Difficulty: Easy
While the game’s title is Mission Impossible, the game is anything but impossible, even tough it is near to impossible to get a good camera view. The levels are really easy and it takes no time to get passed them all.

Concept: 6.5
This game really offers nothing new to the stealth action series. It takes elements from all the other popular games to create this one. While this is not a bad thing, it would have been nice to see some original elements added.

Overall 7.0
While Mission Impossible: Operation Surma is not a bad game, there are so many other games out there that are so much better. It is sad to see that a few things really prevent this game from becoming better. If there is another Mission Impossible game I hope that they learn from their mistakes, and give gamers something that will really blow their socks off!