The Operator is the deep state sim I’ve craved for so long
polygon.comKnowledge is power, and there are few games where that’s as literal as The Operator.
The Operator is an indie game where you take up the role of Evan Tanner, a fresh-faced recruit at the Federal Department of Intelligence (FDI). It’s the early ’90s, and an old buddy has hooked you up with this cushy government gig. All you have to do is master a set of high-tech tools and serve as the man in the chair for agents on the front lines.
In The Operator, the action all takes place on Evan’s work computer. There are brief vignettes where Evan heads home to feed his cat, or moves into a restricted area of the FDI building, but the vast majority of your time will be sorting through files, hunting for clues, and solving mysteries.
It’s tricky to hinge a game on a core mechanic, but luckily, The Operator’s central system of talking with agents, watching short videos, and doing lab work is a lot of fun. I’m a former child who cried doing math homework, and part of me was worried that the game would expect me to start breaking out some serious equations. Luckily, the challenges are more based around reading instructions and solving logic puzzles.
I have access to the best technology of the 1990s, which means I can stop the recording on a specific frame and enhance, enhance, enhance to pick up a suspect’s face, a key code, or a license plate. None of the solutions are incredibly difficult, but they’re tough enough that I’d have to stop and sketch things out, and feel satisfied upon finding the answer.
None of the solutions are like the infamous old-school adventure puzzlers, where the solution is some esoteric combination of riddles. I can ask my handler for help, which is a nice set of training wheels, but for the most part I was able to enjoy the natural achievements of identifying suspects, hunting down addresses, or investigating criminal compounds.
It’s just a shame that the agents I work with are a little flat. Agent Pendell is a fresh rookie on the case and Agent Walker
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