In order to succeed at Mission: Impossible, the player must learn to think like a spy. Before each mission you get a detailed briefing, showing you your contacts, items you’ll encounter and which weapons the enemies will have. Unlike Goldeneye’s briefings, the information here will be extremely helpful when you try a level for the first time. Being spotted snooping around or attacking someone at the wrong time can spell certain failure for the mission. You even have to watch who's in the area while you're talking to your contacts. Additionally, if you are in disguise, you must be true to the character of that disguise. For example, the guards are smart enough to arrest you when you’re disguised as a repairman and you’re waltzing around with a gun drawn. This means that if you draw a weapon, you’ll have to make sure that you’re out of sight and that your victim is looking away from you. Even then, you’ll usually only have around ten rounds of ammo, so you’d better make your shots count. Only by mastering these types of intricacies will you be able to clear the missions. This change from the standard guns-a-blazing video game is drastic and most welcome.

	Mission: Impossible gives you lots of information before and during each mission.
	You'll have to use your brains and not your brawn when you're undercover.

After playing a while, it became clear to me that the development team really took their time to make sure that this game was as good as it could be. While it still has some rather serious flaws, I have to commend the development staff (who received the game midstream) for managing to get the game to play as good as it does. It’s not easy to try something new, and for a first attempt at this kind of gameplay, Mission: Impossible is impressive.

Even with the new brand of gameplay, Mission: Impossible has some real problems. The most notable is the control. Overall the game controls better than average. However, better than average is not saying a lot because there are so few N64 games that have really good control. It took me about half an hour to get used to the inventory system, as well as trying to position Ethan in front of a door or object at just the right spot to enable him to open or to use it. The jumping lacks precision, and in a few stages this can be a slightly frustrating problem. There’s also no way to strafe around corners. The worst control problems take place in the level that has you descending to the IMF Mainframe to copy the NOC list. It’s realistic that Ethan, hanging from a single rope, swings wildly at the slightest move of the Control Stick. However, this is also quite frustrating, as precise handling is needed to make it through without getting killed by the moving laser beams. Even if you manage to make it down to the mainframe, you’ve got to swing over to an ID card slot, and then to the computer -- all before the computer attendant enters the room. It’s very difficult and very frustrating.

This level may look cool, but it's control is simply awful.

The IMF Mainframe level aside, Mission: Impossible is still highly playable despite its control problems. In my evaluation period, I managed to get through roughly 3/4 of the game on the Possible difficulty and roughly half on the Impossible difficulty. The balance between challenge and fun is kept pretty even throughout the game. While I found myself repeating the stages several times before I completed them, when I failed it was almost always clear that I had made a mistake of some sort. By the time I figured out all the spy tricks to get out of a level, it felt like I had become something of an expert on it. With a knowledge of the levels, the Impossible difficulty level was just the right increase in challenge. With this difficulty setting, the level structure remains intact, but the game gives you more objectives and/or throws one or two more traps for you to evade. There aren’t any clues to help you figure out these new elements either. You get to test your spy skill by figuring them out on your own.

Another incredibly refreshing element to the gameplay is the way it values life over death. It’s nice to play a good guy that doesn’t run around killing everything in sight. In the CIA Escape level, you don’t kill the CIA guys who are just doing their job, rather you knock them out with a sleeping dart or a stunner. In some cases you have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t wake up and spot you, adding an entirely new element to the game. There are some levels where you do kill enemies, but they’re always the guys out to kill you rather than to arrest you. The number of enemies is also limited, so each guard presents a unique challenge to evade. The more ammo and life energy you can save for the next part of the level the better you’ll fare.

It is important to note, however, that the body count does go up in the later stages (although it never comes close to Goldeneye's number of falling bodies) and the gameplay becomes more of a mix of stealth and shootouts. Even though it’s not the game’s emphasis, the weapons system in Mission: Impossible is also very spy-like. For example, almost all weapons allow for some degree of zoom-in like Goldeneye’s sniper rifle, and aiming is easy to do. There are even entire levels that require you to switch between snipers to cover Ethan from attacking bad guys. The eagle-eye perspective in these stages is truly enjoyable, and making sure you only hit the bad guys is a formidable challenge.

	The sniper levels make you feel like you're a member of the SWAT team's elite.
	Aiming is a cinch with the first person view (hold R) and zoom features.

Mission: Impossible is the first mature N64 game that doesn’t feature hordes of senseless violence and twitch gameplay. And for that alone I’m tempted to give it a safe buy rating, but unfortunately I can’t. Not only is the control on the not-so-hot side, but more importantly, I don’t think the game holds the replay value to justify the cost of purchase. Once the game has been completed on both difficulties (which, if my progress is a good way to judge, won’t take more than two or three weeks at most), many people probably won’t want to play Mission: Impossible for any reason other than to show off how good they’ve gotten at it. However, the spy-like gameplay can be a little addicting, and I was more than a little sorry to see my evaluation period end. The bottom line: you simply must rent Mission: Impossible to try out its new gameplay, and if you‘re like me you might be tempted to purchase it despite it’s problems.