It’s time for a quick look at a Mission Impossible game. You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of this one before right? I guess it sort of just got swept under the rug. It’s actually a decent game but to be honest I wouldn’t call it much more than that. The game is fairly short and some of the mechanics aren’t explained very well so you will have to take a while to get used to them. Throw in more of a story and this could have turned the corner a little better. Still, for a few bucks you could do worse and it’s fun while you’re playing through it.

The game starts off with an evil group causing mayhem and you have to stop them! Ethan will be relying on his support staff to get him through but can they really save the world? Honestly the story’s super forgettable. The main villain here is your average suit and can’t really fight. With only 5 levels it’s not like there’s a lot of time for a big story anyway right? It’s for the GBA so I have to give the game some leeway on the lack of cutscenes but I do think they could have been more imaginative with the character portraits and such.

As for the gameplay, this is mainly an overhead shooter. You run through the levels and blast anyone who gets in your way. Each stage has several objectives for you to complete like hacking a computer or protecting someone. So you have to shoot your way through the levels but also while keeping in mind that sometimes you need stealth. If you hide in the shadows then the guards will often forget about you. They have no peripheral vision either so you can run at them from just out of eyesight and karate chop them into the ground. All stealth moves are 1 hit KO techniques after all.

Then you have gadgets which is where the game gets a bit rough. You can deactivate cameras and mines but I never figured out how to even detect the mines. Felt a bit random the whole time. For the cameras, you had to turn the scanner off and on while running around a lot to get it to work. I suspect this is not the intended method but I couldn’t figure out how to make this work so eh….that’ll do. I got the cameras off which is the important thing. If you don’t do that then you end up being attacked by a whole squad of elite soldiers who are incredibly hard to fight off. Trust me it’s not a situation you want to find yourself in.

With enough experimentation and dying you will eventually get the hang of the game. Because of no tutorials and how the mechanics don’t make sense, the first level will by far be the toughest one you encounter. It also feels like the longest by far. The game is only a few hours long and I want to say level 1 out of 5 probably took about half of the runtime. Yes, level 1 was that serious! One pro tip that the game won’t tell you is that to use the grenades, sniper, and other ranged abilities like the tracker you have to hold R and then aim them out. I died quite a few times while trying to figure that out.

If the game had more polish then I think this really would have gone a long way. Trust me a little dab of polish really does help in every area from graphics to gameplay. This game felt like it was thrown together rather quickly. It doesn’t take away from the fact that the actual shooting part of the gameplay is fun and there are a lot of other positives but you know there are much better games in the same genre. This game just didn’t try to surpass its limits and was content just being good.

There isn’t really any replay value so what you see is what you get. I am glad that the levels had save points so you didn’t have to start from scratch though. That would have been absolutely brutal. Although as a lack of quality of life there is no save point when starting a level so you have to go through level select instead of clicking load game which is a little rough. It doesn’t really make sense but hey it’s not a big deal.

Overall, Mission Impossible definitely deserves better as far as video games go. I think you could really make some incredible titles based on the franchise with the right studio. A mix of action, stealth, and adventure? Yes this would really be a hit. In the meantime if you really want to see how the games go then it’s not a bad idea to jump in and check this one out. The low price helps a lot and I do think you will have some fun here. It just won’t last long and you will be ready for the next adventure in a flash.

Overall 6/10