Agent Intercept Drifts Its Way to a Touchdown, but Misses the Extra Point

Spanning three chapters of five levels each across beautiful environments thanks to its simple but striking cartoony aesthetic, Agent Intercept puts you in the wheels of a transforming car tasked with taking down the evil organization, CLAW. In Fast and the Furious fashion, you’ll do a lot of drifting, mixed with over-the-top action, and a story so generic, you’ll forget it as you hear it. With only three buttons required for playing–one for moving left and right, one for boosting, and the last for gadgeting–anyone can feel like an action star, and the music goes a long way in bringing out those 60s spy vibes.

There are many explosions and high scores to chase, requiring combos you do not break, all of it culminating in a showdown between you and a giant mechanized scorpion. The gameplay loop is fun, but not without its faults. Boosting is a crucial mechanic , but the only way to gain boost is by letting your boost meter fill up on its own, or through pickups scattered across each level. You don’t get boost from drifting, stunts, or taking down enemies. This leads to a lot of down time where you’re not boosting and not boosting is not fun. The game is incredibly slow at normal speed, especially in boat form, feeling more like a stroll through the countryside than a high-octane adventure. You also need to be boosting as much as possible in order to keep your combo alive, so it’s not only important for making the game more enjoyable, but for completing certain objectives as well. If boost was rewarded for more actions, or the pickups were more plentiful, the gameplay loop would be a lot more satisfying.

Speaking of satisfaction, or the lack thereof like a rolling stone, while you do transform into other vehicles during story-related moments in the game’s well-designed levels, it’s only fun when you’re in car form. The boat sucks no matter what you’re doing in it and the jet is less like the After Burner-clone I expected and more like a poor man’s Flappy Bird. Thankfully, you’re in car form most of the time, but in a game where you’re controlling a transforming car, it’s disappointing when the transforming part is one of the things you enjoy least.

Taking only two hours to complete, the campaign doesn’t overstay its welcome. Each mission has five objectives you can go after if you want, but only a minimal amount are needed in order to open the final level of each chapter and they don’t have to be completed all in one attempt. You have additional modes in the form of Side Missions–which are just campaign missions that didn’t make the cut–and a Score Attack mode that takes the campaign and side missions, changes nothing, and lets you see how bad you are as you see your name nowhere near the top of the leaderboards. While short on content and little reason to revisit the game once you’ve beaten it, if you’re looking for some over-the-top action with simple but mostly satisfying gameplay, Agent Intercept is a good time, if not a very replayable one.

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Agent Intercept Drifts Its Way to a Touchdown, but Misses the Extra Point