Teen Agent

Introduction:

	Here is the first sentence or two from the readme.txt file
	from the game Teen Agent:

	"This game was made in 1994. In 1999 we thought it might be a
	good idea to give it free to the Internet community,
	especially adventure games lovers. Enjoy!"

	Metropolis.com nicely released this game for all to play, so
	play it I did.

	Teen Agent is a 2D hand-drawn adventure game where you play
	the character of Mark, an teenage secret agent.  In the
	opening scenes of the game, you get to watch (and laugh) at
	just how a teenager gets to be a secret agent.

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes):

	Extremely high quality for the graphics limitations of the
	time.  I was extremely impressed at character movement, nad
	there was some elegant artist's work on some of the animals
	in the game.  Several small animals (a mouse and a squirrel)
	were amazingly good, especially considering the limited
	pixels available to not only draw them, but then give them
	movements which seemed natural.


Sound (music, voices, special effects)

	No voices, and nothing special (good or bad) about the music.
	Subtitled throughout, with easily read text.

Story (plot, theme, depth):

	It's a very well told story, with enough going on to keep you
	immersed in the game.  As far as theme goes, perhaps it could
	be stated as "Let's tell a silly story and make the player
	laugh".  That's OK, because I certainly did appreciate the
	humour in this game.  Just playing through Mark's secret-agent
	training with the commander made the game worth playing.

Characters (depth, development, interaction):

	I would call them more amusing that "deep".  This game
	certainly doesn't attempt to compete with The Longest Journey.
	Perhaps Discworld II is the closest game in terms of character
	and humour.  There was enough character interaction to keep
	you interested.  Some of the characters and situations are
	definitely very funny, and there are many characters that are
	just obstacles; you need to figure out how to get them to go
	somewhere else.

Puzzles (difficulty, uniqueness, suitability, ugliness, linearity):

	Everything sounds good up to now doesn't it?  Too bad that
	things go badly downhill as soon as you start trying to solve
	the puzzles.  There aren't any really bad puzzles in the sense
	of action, mazes, or sliders.  However, I had to consult the
	walkthrough many, many times throughout the game, mostly
	because you had to perform actions on objects (or with
	objects) that just didn't make any sense whatsoever.  In many
	cases it came down to a case of either consulting the
	walkthrough or trying everything on everything else.  I won't
	reveal any spoilers here, but let's just say that my wife and
	I would read the walkthrough, look at each other, and say "Why
	would we EVER think to do that?".  Once or twice may have been
	OK, but this happened dozens of time throughout the game.  It
	was made even worse when a perfectly reasonable solution
	wouldn't work, but a completely senseless one was required.
	Infuriating and frustrating.

Controls (user interface, save/restore, sound/video adjustments):

	Save/restore worked well.  Sound levels were consistent
	throughout.  The user interface was backwards from what I was
	used to,in that the left mouse button was always "look at",
	and the right mouse button was "walk to" or "act on" or "use".
	It took a bit of getting used to, but wasn't any problem after
	that.

Bugs or problems:

	None encountered.

Pros:
	An amusing, well drawn, well written game.

Cons:

	Puzzles that Salvador Dali would be hard-pressed to solve.

Conclusion:

	If you are an extremely stubborn gamer that is willing to try
	ridiculous actions using ridiculous objects, then you won't find
	anything wrong with this game.  The rest of us will need a
	walkthrough at hand to get through this one.

	My best guess would be that if you enjoyed Discworld II, then
	you will enjoy this game as well.

	For me, it was a great game which was turned into a mediocre one
	by the poorly thought out puzzles.  Too bad, since it had such
	potential.  Hopefully any further games from Metropolis will
	address this problem.  If so, they should be good.