Mission: Impossible: Operation Surma

For what it's worth, Tom Cruise has breathed new life into the Mission: Impossible franchise. I really enjoyed the first film and the sequel, a John Woo directed action flick, showed that a little bit of style goes a long way. With almost every movie out there having a videogame tie-in, Mission: Impossible hopped on the bandwagon with a forgettable N64 and Playstation outing that paralleled the 1996 theater offering. So, how does a franchise atone for a marginal outing? To put it in a nutshell, it starts from scratch. Mission: Impossible - Operation Surma shuns the direct movie tie-in, instead offering a virtual sequel to the franchise.

Mission: Impossible - Operation Surma starts you off with a simple mission of infiltration and insertion. From there, the game moves to tracking a mark, more sneaking around and retrieving stuff, rescuing some friends, and ultimately defeating the bad guy. All of the hallmarks of an M: I movie are packed into this portable package, waiting for you to get your grubby hands on the game. Once you get settled, the action takes place from an isometric viewpoint that hearkens back to the days of the original Metal Gear Solid titles on the NES. Armed with gadgets and firepower, you control Ethan through five missions that take you 'round the world.

What works well in Mission: Impossible - Operation Surma is a tight control scheme coupled with a snazzy combination of stealth and action. Many of the levels require you to progress carefully while using your trusty jammer to disable cameras and pressure plates in the floor, all the while being careful not to alert the guards. Those of you that usually blow off stealth elements in favor of gunplay will be disappointed with M: I as the pace of the action is governed by prohibitively slow rates of fire in most guns. That's not to say that you can't unload, though. At certain points in the game you will come across a sub-machine gun that lets you mow down the opposition. Essentially, there is a little bit of everything.

Oddly enough, a "little bit" is a very appropriate way to describe the game as it is only five missions long and once you get into the swing of things the levels don't last long. This is really bizarre as the game ends right about the time that you start getting into it. Disappointing, to say the least. There is one facet of the title that helps to prolong the experience. Unfortunately, that assistance comes in the form of occasionally confusing mission objectives. I honestly failed more missions because I screwed up while trying to locate the door I needed to blow up or the helicopter that I needed to place a tracker on than I did because I died. However, a level or two into the game and you should be able to start thinking like the developer and locating these objectives successfully becomes that much easier.

Of course, no Mission: Impossible game would be complete without disguises, and in that regard M: I - Operation Surma doesn't disappoint. Unfortunately the sprite based characters are so devoid of detail that the only visual effect to using a disguise is a simple change in Ethan's color. Now, I know that this is a GBA game and that you can't expect a title to boast console quality visuals but Operation Surma, like many of its peers, doesn't offer oodles of variety in its graphics. At least the colors are bold and the animations work well with the graphical style. The real downside to the package is in the audio presentation. Now, I don't like to complain, but the constant rerunning of the M:I theme, complete with all sorts of speaker distortion, gets repetitive quickly and the sound effects sound like they are ripped straight for an old 8-bit NES title. Why, oh why, must my ears be subjected to these tedious sounds time, and time again?