Agent USA

Agent USA is an Ancient puzzle arcade with a strong educational element, focused primarily on children's audiences. The plot of it, by the way, is very fascinating: somewhere in America "free" turned out to be a thing called fuzzbomb - something like a TV, which with its radiation can zombify people, turning them into so-called fuzzbody. You play as a secret agent traveling in different states of the USA by train in search of this terrible thing in order to find and neutralize it. For this, it is necessary to find and have at the moment of meeting exactly one hundred special crystals that block the action of radiation.

First you need to say a few general introductory words about the game. At the beginning of the game you have ten crystals, so you need to find new ones, and the only way to do this is to “breed” these crystals. They should be placed directly on the platforms of railway stations, where after some time they will give offspring in the form of new crystals. People in black hats often wander around: these are somehow threatened people who strive to steal crystals from you in order to protect themselves from radiation. They will have to be driven away from the crystals, but you can even completely clear the station from them ...

The next moment is the terrible "contagion" of the irradiated: if one fuzzbody touches another person who does not have a protective crystal, then that one also becomes the same. And this infection, so to speak, is spreading very quickly. Thus, if you are touched by a fuzzbody at the moment when you have at least one crystal, then you will lose this crystal, but remain normal. If you don’t have it at the moment of touching, then you yourself will become a fuzzbody. However, the game for some reason does not end there - your hero simply starts wandering aimlessly around the territory, but often in the end he will be saved by “someone else” who touches him while having a saving crystal. The notorious fuzzbomb is guarded by a large number of fuzzbody, and that is why in many ways you need a hundred crystals at the time of meeting with it (more than a hundred crystals cannot be carried at the same time at all).

The game begins at the station of a random American city, almost always - the administrative center of the state. There is always an information booth at the station, entering which you can track the movement of the infection throughout the country - the current location of the fuzzbomb and the direction of radiation propagation. After that, you need to take a ticket to the city that would be closest to the fuzzbomb (tickets in the game are free, but sold in another cabin). Between the big cities there are high-speed trains that can take you to the place very quickly - in this case, the symbol "*" is near the name of the city. There are several levels of difficulty (the criterion is the rate of infection spread).

The game is very old, so you should not expect graphic miracles from it. The palette is only CGA, the drawing itself is not so bad, but there are very few objects on the screens, people are depicted small and even caricatured (in the form of large heads in headdresses (our hero has a white hat) and tiny legs), and sometimes and in general it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the screen. The overall level of complexity of the game can be estimated as quite high, and the game itself is much closer to the puzzle than to the arcade; however, playing is extremely interesting.

But what surprises unpleasantly is the desire of the authors to position their game as a child’s. Yes, she really in such a “fascinating” form can increase her knowledge of the geography of the United States, because the game has a map of this country, and the names of the cities to which we arrive are remembered unwittingly, but was it worth it to come up with such an eerie plot that actually draws on a thriller? .. So all the same, it’s completely not worth giving the game to children. But for those who have already reached adolescence, it will fit just fine, because it is a rare example of combining a pleasant (truly complex and exciting game) with a useful one (some knowledge about American cities will definitely remain).