KGB

The Good
KGB (or Conspiracy as the CD-ROM version is known as) is based on a series of events that took place in August 1991, a time when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of Russia and the USSR had only a few days left before it's tremendous collapse. In the game, you play Maksim Rukov, a former soviet officer who is transferred to Department P in KGB headquarters after his parents were blown to pieces in a booby-trapped car. Department P's objective is to investigate and prevent corruption within the KGB itself.

Rukov's first mission for Department P is to investigate the mysterious death of a private detective. This involves searching his apartment for clues as to how and why he died, Like the story so far? Well, it gets even better. As the investigation progresses, Rukov discovers double agents are working against him and he uncovers a much, deeper plot concerning the importing and exporting of snuff videos.

One of the most interesting parts of the game is recording conversations between a group of characters using a tape recorder that is supplied to you earlier.. It is even interesting to hear what the characters have said as the plot thickens. Speaking of the snuff video, the game tells you what happens in the video in great detail. I pictured the whole scene in my mind, and what took place was pretty barbaric.

KGB uses an interface that is easy to learn straight away. Actions are performed by right-clicking the mouse to activate a verb bar which includes commands such as Look, Move, Talk, and Fight. At the bottom of the screen are icons that let you access the options, map, inventory, and back-track options. The back-track option is there so that you can go back to a previous moment, and this is useful if you made a mistake that gets you killed or jeopardizes your investigation in any way.

The game is rather difficult, as more often than not, you need to remember what characters told you earlier to assist you in uncovering evidence of corruption. Furthermore, you can't afford of doing things at the last minute. When you are dealing with the KGB, you need to be careful what you say, because saying the wrong things may compromise your investigation.

The graphics are almost cartoon-like, and the game makes you have the feeling that you are walking in offices, whether or not you are invited, and it is nice to see little gadgets around the room. The characters that you meet are drawn nicely, and they are so Russian-like even though they all have red faces. When you are speaking to them, the game provides a close-up of them as well as the backgrounds behind them. While they are finished speaking, I enjoyed them making faces as you – eyebrows raised, smiles and frowns, etc. (while still at close-up)

The sound effects are non-existent. This is reasonable considering that KGB uses a similar interface as Dune, and that Dune has no sound effects at all. There are six pieces of music in the game, and they are a pleasure to listen to while you are playing the game. I enjoyed listen to the sixth piece, and because of this, I plan to re-create that piece in the near future.

The CD-ROM version of the game has an intro that gives you some info on Rukov's background, and covers his relationship with his parents, how they died, and how Rukov is transferred to Department P. The game also features Donald Sutherland who plays his dead father. Sutherland does nothing but give you blatant hints on how to get through dangerous situations, as long as you enable this in the game's options. He can be accessed by going into the inventory. I enjoyed it as he says “If you need any help, my son, just think of me”. The default option enables Sutherland provides little help, where he says such lines as “Act with confidence, Maks. You are a Rukov.” and “Stop bothering me, Maks. You know what must be done.” and provides little hints.

The Bad
In my opinion, the CD-ROM version could have done with more work. It was nice for Cryo to add Sutherland as a secondary character who helps you along the way, but the game would have more depth to it if full speech support had been added. Because of this, I provided the narration for the game. I did an excellent job at it, too, although it was hard to say several people's names. About 210MB was wasted on the CD, so there was no reason why Cryo was against full speech.

The dialogue was sometimes hard to follow, with characters sometimes giving too much information away at once that it goes in one ear and out the other.

There are only four save game slots, which is not very useful if you want to save at a specific moment where you know some event will happen. Nor are you able to give a meaningful description about the game. On the plus side, however, KGB tells you how close you are in completing the game.

The Bottom Line
KGB is rated 15+ by ELSPA, and understandably so. There are four chapters in the game, and in the first two, you have to deal with your closest enemies with violence. An example of this is when you attack one of the vicious thugs and put him in a trash can in a street. Another example is killing someone inside your hotel room, put him in a wheelchair, and toss him into the canal.

The game has an interesting storyline, and throughout the game, you are required to tape conversations, break into offices of your fellow comrades for incriminating evidence and use it against them, and report to your boss. If you make a mistake, it may cost you your career or your life. There are four chapters in the game. The first two are much longer, but you will do some rather interesting things in these chapters.

The Good
KGB is an old game, but it stands as a better game than most out on the market today. The gameplay is thick and refreshing, the music is well designed, and the storyline is intruiging and deep.

First of all, the graphics may not be all that, but KGB's colorful animation really makes you want to keep going, just to see what new places you can go to. Characters look good, in the fact that they each have their different looks comaparing to their personality. Everyone in this book has their own characteristics and traits.

The plot is deep, and is almost like a movie. You always have to keep playing because you always want to find out what happens next.

The music is great, and will probably have you turning up the volume. There arent any sfx, but the music is enough.

The Bad
However, the game is increasingly difficult. Some missions require yopu to be at a certain place at a certain time, or do a certain thing first, and if you do something else first that was required to do later, you blew your chance. Frustrating retries are what made up the bad part of this game.

The Bottom Line
Nevertheless, KGB was a well designed, plotted game, that deserves a solid 5 / 5.

The Good
KGB, or Conspiracy, as it was named on the CD-ROM version I had back in the days, is a political thriller with murder, conspiracies(duh!) and lots of shabby affairs as main ingredients. I might as well say it right away, the story/plot is great. The story, and the very original(but difficult) "puzzles" are what makes you keep on playing despite the flaws the game has. The player has an immense freedom in what he can do, although you have to do the right things in the right order, or youäll die or fail(usually die). But the fact that you do not get many clues and can investigate for your own, trusting your own investigating abilities, makes it feel as the game is very open, when in fact it is not. It actually feels as if you are a spy caught in a very confusing web of lies, conspiracies, murder, snuff-videos and corruption, desperately trying to both survive and to find the truth about what is going on. I really like the way the plot takes turns and twists and forces the player to be attentive and not only solve the "puzzles" but also listen to what the character have to say in order to figure out who to trust and who is trying to fool you. In other words, the game is more involving "story-wise" than "puzzle-wise", and to me that is a good thing. I write "puzzles" in brackets because there are no traditional puzzles in this game. As Rukov, a fresh KGB-agent trying to discover corruption inside the KGB, the "puzzles" are really something more than just solve boring "put the egg in the hat and use it on the banana"-puzzles. In this game you spy, use surveillance equipment, you decode messages, follow suspects, interrogate people, and above all, you manipulate and use all of your diplomatic skills to get out of the many precarious situations you find yourself in. It's a very intelligent game, and it demands a lot from the player. The characters are also good, and the story is definitely not suitable for children. This is a real dirty story that takes place in the Soviet Union and it's full of corruption and death. Another both good and bad aspect of the game is how time moves. The clock is always ticking on, and you should do certain things before certain times and so on. This is sometimes a good way to make the game feel more realistic. But it is not only good(see below.)

The Bad
First of all, the graphics aren't very good at all. It's not appalling to look at, but it's not very good looking either. On the CD-ROM version you can get hints from Rukov's dead father, played by Donald Sutherland. I like Donald very much, which is why I really hated seeing him in this boring, very "brown" role, with a silly accent and a beard, repeating the same hints over and over again. The biggest problem, however, is the difficulty of the game. It's more than challenging, it is frustratingly difficult. Sometimes you have no idea what you should do, and Donald "hints" that you are doing just fine, and then five minutes later, without knowing what you have done wrong, Donald tells you that you have failed and that you should start over. Yes, people, this is the worst part of the game. If you do not do things in the right order, and if you are not in the right places at the right times, you fail. Often you don't even realise that you have failed, so check carefully before you save because it is very frustrating to save a game just to find out that you have blown it and have to start all over from the beginning of the chapter. There is a function that allows you to backtrack a little while, but this doesn't work well at all, and all too often it does not backtrack long enough to allow the player to correct the mistake, in which case you have to start over. Extremely annoying. As long as we're talking about failing, there are way too many ways to die. Sometimes you do not even realise that you have written your own death sentence. If you say one thing wrong to a CIA agent that you meet, he will snipe you when you leave the building, while you may think that you have done well and saved(you do a lot of investigating in the hotel you meet the agent in), you go outside and you just die, and there is nothing you can do about it but start over. I didn't even know who killed me or why the first times it happened to me. This is just downright idiotic and without these disturbing elements the gameplay would rise considerably. It is frustrating enough that you often find yourself in situations where you have no idea what the hell you are supposed to do. A game should not leave the player clueless to what the goals are, if the player are clueless it should be to how to reach these goals. It is very common that you wander around aimlessly, hoping to stumble upon the right path(but mostly you'll hear Donald telling you to start over..AAAARGH). This arbitrariness of the game is very frustrating and it feels very unfair to constantly fail or be killed despite the fact that you have been doing so well and found a lot of clues, just because you should have done something else first(which the game did not hint about at all).

The Bottom Line
Although the game is very difficult due to it's lack of clues on what you should do and why, the games advantages are stronger than the flaws. It feels realistic, open and the story is very good and full of intrigues, twists and turns, and the end is both surprising and quite good. If you can endure the frustrating difficulty (use the hints a lot) it's in the end a very rewarding game. Try it out with and open mind.