Code-Name: Iceman

The Good
Designed by Jim Walls as a potential spinoff of his Police Quest series, Iceman was way ahead of its time in terms of plot. The game had you take on the role of a Bond-esque military guy on a quest to stop some nasty political business (in the middle east, if I recall correctly). I remember being delighted (at age 12) when I managed to get the girl in bed for the first time (score!).

The Bad
Then again, it is INSANELY difficult and far too obtuse for its own good. Walls' philosophy with the Police Quest games he designed was to simulate actual police protocol, and to a large extent he succeeded (although I never liked the Police Quest games). Cops are "real world" enough that the average, literate person can reasonably be expected to slip into the shoes of a police officer after the minimal instruction booklet briefing. But a super secret military agent guy? Last I checked, not too many of those guys and gals were around, and as such, I had a hard time getting anywhere in this game. How am I supposed to know how to plot waypoints on a nuclear submarine's navigation computer? Yet this is just one of numerous onerous tasks that Iceman thrusts upon you, the gamer. Good luck. This became one of many Sierra adventures for which I had to buy a hintbook (a cottage industry which Sierra started and has since blossomed into a major arm of several publishers).

The Bottom Line
Interesting plot, damn hard adventure gaming, and piloting a submarine. Don't hit the icebergs!

The Good
It was coming to the end of the Eighties, and with two Police Quests under his belt, Sierra employee Jim Walls decided to step away from the gritty world of Sonny Bonds to focus on the real-life duties of a Navy officer. The officer, in this case, is Commander John Westland, who gets interrupted by his superior while on vacation in Tahiti to take on a secret mission involving oil reserves in Tunisia and the possibility of the president being assassinated if the U.S. government doesn't comply with the terrorist's demands.

You start on a nice Tahitian beach and eventually have to chat up a babe who happens to be an agent that you'll rendezvous with later. During that time, it is nice that the game uses elements that is influenced by the Leisure Suit Larry games. You see Tahitian women walking along the beach, and looking at them gives you a LSL-style close up. Also, that dance scene is taken right out of the first game.

The majority of the game takes place in the submarine, the USS Blackhawk, where you have to sit at its controls and do things such as bringing down enemy ships, navigating around icebergs, and such. There are many ways that you can die when you finally get behind the controls of the submarine. I remember when I changed the heading and depth when the hatch is still open. More points are awarded for correct procedure. Time is crucial, and if you don't do all the things by the time the game is ready to move on, then you will become stranded or killed.

The graphics are adequate for the time, and the submarine is laid out nicely. (I haven't been inside a real sub, so I'm guessing the layout is based on a real one.) One thing I really like about this game is watching the Russian destroyer on the horizon during a beautiful sunset.

Since around 1988, sound card support was introduced in most of Sierra's game. When it comes to Code-Name: Iceman, Adlib sound is okay, but quite poor compared to what the MT-32 was capable of. With the device, you can hear additional sound effects other sound cards aren't able to produce such as the waves at the resort, and the submarine's sonar just sounds real. Music is also enhanced. I quite enjoyed listening to the music when you arrive at Dulles Airport, as well as what you hear at The Pentagon.

Copy Protection plays a key role as far as Iceman is concerned, and anyone who tries to play the game without reading the manual will have trouble. You have to perform CPR on a girl very early in the game by reading the correct procedure outlined in the manual, but the major thing is decoding secret messages, which is so complex that you have to refer to a code book you pick up early on. It' great that if you happen to decode them incorrectly, you will get a parody of Little Miss Muffet or Little Boy Blue.

The only puzzles are figuring out what each object does and how to use them. The game uses the mouse for moving your character around the screen, and the keyboard to enter commands at the parser. Unlike most of Sierra games, you need to be specific in what you type.

The Bad
I found the first of the submarine battles too difficult, and the battles are a hit-and-miss basis. There is no way you can avoid missing your target, except to keep doing a S&R (save and restore) procedure and hope that you can hit it. There is no way you can avoid the torpedoes the enemy launches, except to use decoys (and even they can miss). Before the sub battles is a game of Boss Dice you are forced to play. Waste of time.

The Bottom Line
So, what audience would Code-Name: Ice-Man appeal to? Well, it appeals to anyone who enjoys James Bond movies, since both the game and the movies share similar elements. It is also for anyone who has a lot of skill and patience. Anyone else, like me, should steer well clear of it. If it was not for the sub battles, I would have completed this by now. Thank god there wasn't another Navy Quest.

The Good
The idea of mixing a basically pure adventure game with arcade sequences is nothing new. The addition of a simulator is already something novel and interesting. I have to admit it, while I also state that I always disliked simulator games and that steering the submarine in "Codename: Iceman" did nothing to change my mind - I didn't like these sequences, but I appreciate the idea. As for the types of puzzles, there is also lots of variety - everything from flirting with a girl (who soon turns out to be an agent too), through repairing machines, decoding messages (it's hard to figure out exactly how it works and the system involves copy protection, but after some time it actually got quite fun) to finding and freeing the hostage.
I liked the graphics, but I generally like good-quality EGA graphics, sometimes even better than duller VGA graphics and definitely much more than 95% of 3D graphics. A modest palette of juicy colors with clever use of shading works fine in different settings from a tropical island to sub machinery.

The Bad
However, despite these advantages the game also has two big flaws: a very high difficulty level and crazily excessive use of copy protection measures. In "The Colonel's Bequest" it was enough to find the correct fingerprint in the manual and while this wasn't integrated into gameplay at all, at least you didn't have to worry about copy protection afterwards. In "Codename: Iceman" copy protection is employed several times: first you have to check out the first aid procedure and basically retype it in the game (luckily it's a SCI game which pauses when you type), then use the manual to look up passwords for decoding messages (three times!) and check out how to turn on some devices such as the sonar. Plus, it's better to familiarize oneself with the rules of the "Boss Dice" game in order to make sense of it.
After about 1/3 of the game has passed, terribly hard sequences pretty much bang you on the head one after another. Boss Dice is a game of luck and you can only restore it twice (at least there is another, albeit more complicated, solution to the puzzles which involve the objects won: a bottle of rum and a magnetic device). The two battles are also very hard and luck-based. Later you have to follow another ship to get into the Mediterranean safely - getting and staying under her is hard, but first signalling her correctly is enough of a pain. In the coded message you are told to signal the ship with a single "ping", but when using the sonar you get two kinds of little sounds: a "click" when turning the sonar on and off and a small "beep" later. How am I supposed to know beforehand that yes, I have to turn the sonar on and immediately off, without waiting for the "beep"? It's easy to think it's the "ping" you have to signal... At the end there is another action sequence that you luckily can bypass: escape from the terrorists. What I found really annoying is that the game reacted very slowly to everything I pressed - timing it right is next to impossible. You have to speed up to be able to escape, but the van actually reacts only when you already ahould be slowing down before another curve...
The simulator sequences may actually be harder for modern players than they were when the game was made - at least on laptops, which don't have a separate numeric keypad. It involved constantly turning Num Lock on and off - "on" to speed up (numeric "+"), "off" to be able to type things like "close hatch" or "depth attained", "on" again to adjust speed...
At the end yet another detail - saying "I didn't like it" would be nitpicking, I'd rather describe it as a funny lack of realism. Some cabins on the sub look like hotel rooms. Well, I've never been aboard a submarine, but from what I've read it seems pretty clear submarines don't look like this. The pressure they have to withstand is so immense they must have as little surface as possible. Often they don't even have beds for all the crew - one shift is sleeping while the other works. Again - I wouldn't say it's really a disadvantage - the rooms look nice enough (even though the "hotel"-like cabins are actually rather boring, some other screens like the machine room or weapon room are much better), but it's a bit curious in a game so much acclaimed for its realism.

The Bottom Line
Anyway, I would say the game is worth trying out. Despite its flaws it remains interesting. But be prepared for a hard and frustrating game. Myself - I'm happy to keep a screenshot collection in my emulator, but I doubt if I'll ever play the whole game again.