Throughout the game you often have the choice to go in silently or with guns blazing. Since I tire of simple run and gun I played mostly as a stealth character and created a skill set that went in that direction. Of course, that put me at a disadvantage because, as I said, many missions boil down to just shooting more bad guys before they shoot you. So in the end the espionage gameplay gets turned into a simple third-person shooter where you are often on rails and have no option but to run and gun. Sort of disappointing really.

As for the story, well, it starts out being very cliche and then when the plot twists, it’s still very cliche. You’re recruited by an agency that doesn’t exist to conduct operations that never happened in order to keep the world safe for democracy. That means hunting down terrorists, exposing corruption and stopping the bad guys from doing things like killing innocent civilians with high powered weaponry. You will, as happens to every Hollywood secret agent, be betrayed, branded a rogue agent and have to go underground. Like I said, all very cliche.

There is a reputation system in the game that is based on how you approach interactions with the NPCs. A point is awarded or removed based on the NPC’s personality and reaction to how you deal with them. Flirting with a co-worker could lose you a point while bluffing might get you some respect and extra information. Each NPC has a dossier of information that accrues over time so you know what best works with them and what doesn’t. This can be vitally important because when certain NPC’s like or trust you, they allow you access to certain resources that are otherwise unavailable.

This is a rather interesting piece of the game which can give you some added benefits. If you later have a handler who likes and trusts you they will impart a specific bonus while you are out in the field. You might not always realize that bonus is there but at times it will be helpful even in a passive way. The effects are downplayed and I think they could have certainly used this more to the player’s advantage, perhaps by being able to call upon the handlers to help with certain things and supply further information.