Sometimes all a game needs to be fun and entertaining is simplicity. Just a couple of buttons to remember, simple techniques to master, and a shot at getting to the top of a leaderboard. Agent Intercept is such a game, born from an attempt by developer PikPok’s rejected effort to revive the Spyhunter series, leading to a new title taking liberal inspiration from that attempt. You are an agent who controls a vehicle to take down an organisation intent on taking over the world.
In Agent Intercept you control a vehicle called the Sceptre. At first it looks like a typical sports car, albeit one that’s armed with missiles, machine gun, and other weapons. However, the Sceptre is a much more advanced vehicle than that, able to transform into different configurations such as a speedboat or a snowmobile depending on the terrain. You don’t need to worry about switching form through levels as that is done automatically depending on the terrain you encounter. The only controls you have to focus on are boosting, shooting, and turning as you take out the vehicles of the villainous organisation known as CLAW.
There’s a pretty entertaining story running through the game with CLAW’s cartoonish villains and the Agency trying to stop them. It really digs into over the top spy genre tropes such as elaborate plans to conquer the world, wild gadgetry, and a simple case good vs bad. The campaign doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it is amusing when some game cutscenes represent characters by their cars no matter what the situation.
The main campaign is split into three chapters of five missions, and within each mission are five objectives that you can aim to complete. These can include simply completing the mission, getting a specific score multiplier, drifting a certain distance, taking out a number of enemies or completing something within a time limit. To make progress you will need to complete a set number of objectives in order to unlock the final mission in a chapter. This element is also present in side missions where you need to complete a minimum of three out of five objectives to move on to the next side mission.
With each mission can be completable in a few minutes, you could complete Agent Intercept in around two or three hours, but there’s plenty of replayability beyond that. You might want to get to a point where you have completed all objectives in the campaign or side mission or hop on to the Score Attack mode to take on the leaderboards.
Within score attack you can replay the same missions from campaign and side missions, but with one of three different modes. The first is high score chase where you attempt to get as high a score as possible. The second mode is target practice in which you shoot targets as quickly as possible to rack up the points. The final mode is time trial in which you need to complete a course as fast as possible. Within this mode there are boost pads to help you go faster, but also other vehicles you are not allowed to hit. Every vehicle you hit adds one second to your time, which will impact your place on the leaderboards. The fact is that there are quite a few things to do in the game.
The visual design of Agent Intercept is fantastic. Every mission has a bright colour palette, the Sceptre looks cool and the transformations are slick, enemies are easily identifiable, and the character portraits look good too. While playing the game it wasn’t Bond that came to mind with the design choices, but more the 2015 The Man From UNCLE movie. The soundtrack is heavily inspired by musical scores from spy films, but sounds fresh and could easily find its way into your daily playlist. If you need some music to play then the soundtrack could provide a solid choice.