I sure do love a game you can cross out in a single sitting. A cool evening, a cup of your preferred beverage in hand, light dimmed, and a fun game to engage with for a couple of hours. What a prospect for a fun time! It is called Tiny Gaming for a reason, after all, and I cherish those games that do not pad their time up to scrounge up extra hours of gameplay on nonsense. THE OPERATOR was on my watchlist since I played the excellent demo, in which the plot is masterfully teased and the immersion is magnetic. Now that the game is out I jumped on it like a hungry hippo to gorge myself on it and see if the full meal was worth the wait.
You slip on the shoes of one Evan Tanner - a fresh-baked agent of the Federal Department of Intelligence. Your role? To become the titular Operator, a desk jockey with access to some cutting-edge tech made with the sole purpose of helping field agents with their cases. Your access to rich databases, applications that help you render clearer images from recordings, extrapolate data... You're armed with tools to divulge secrets and minutiae details from any scrap of information. And your hands will be full from the very beginning, as a couple of agents tossed your way stumbled into some spicy criminal acts to solve. You will be their helping hand, figuring out crucial details, parsing clues... It's a detective game from the comfort of your desk.
As it happens, nothing is as it seems. The cases evolve. New factors arrive at the scene. New names to sleuth upon, new clues to confuse the situation. I don't want to divulge any information that could spoil the game, because it is a fairly short affair. I managed to get through the entire story in a comfortable 3 hours, and someone with a sharper mind I can see knocking it back to about 2, maybe? Let's just say there's a conspiracy at play, and you're going to get entangled in it, like it or not.
The story is as linear as it gets. There are hardly any decisions you can make to alter the course of the plot. There are no multiple endings in sight as well. This all means that the game has hardly any replay value, it's a done deal. Once you witness the narrative, you consume all the game has to offer. This might sound unappealing for such a short game, but I am here to assure you that's not the case - and for a couple of key reasons. First, the immersion is total. I was glued to the screen, both of my PC and the one in the game, which is our main window of interaction with the game world. The voice acting is impeccable, and stellar in every way - I bow my head to the talents behind it. Be it a gruff veteran agent or a greenhorn on the first case, they all sound very believable and convey emotion in a way that grasps my imagination.
The story is riveting, too. I will admit that I managed to figure out the main plot point before it hit me full in the face, but otherwise, I never felt even an iota of boredom. It was always escalating, turning, changing to keep me invested from start to finish. As the cases progress you get new tools, and new little mechanics to play around with. The puzzles and problems you need to solve never become too demanding, but they also did not once feel trivial to cross off. If I have a small gripe with them is that every new tool is used pretty much just once before we are tossed into a new thing. On one hand, it keeps everything fresh, but I would love to be able to display my knowledge of these tools and use them more extensively. On the other hand, though, it doesn't grow stale thanks to that spare use. Oh well, hope for a sequel to have more cases to play with!
Overall I had an excellent time with THE OPERATOR. If I had any real complaint, which goes a bit contradictory to my love of small, compact games, it would be that it was too short! Not that it's a problem, not that it felt wrapped up before I felt it was satisfactory. No, it's because I was so engrossed with it, so tantalized by the impeccable presentation that I crave more of it. I want to play THE OPERATOR 2. And 3 and 4 and more! I love the execution of this concept and would be more than amenable to digging my hands into a whole series of games like this, each with its case to crack. I think that is the best possible praise I can give the game - that I need more of it, the faster, the better.
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