The Operator review

Evan Tanner is having a bad day. In fact, The Operator (from indie dev Bureau 81) could have been called “Evan Tanner’s Really Bad Day” and I wouldn’t have questioned it once. As the newest recruit for the FDI’s “Operator Program” Tanner is essentially an analyst, chained to a desk at HQ and providing live intel to the agents in the field.

Right away, then, The Operator feels new and different. It’s a hybrid of FMV titles like Telling Lies and desk-jockeys sims like 911 Operator. It begins with a phone call from FDI Director Trench, an old friend, who gives Evan an assignment to help a fellow rookie, Agent Pendell, with a murder case that’s been foxing her. Everything in The Operator is done from Evan’s work desktop, with fully voiced phone calls from contacts, allies, and antagonists. Evan himself isn’t voiced, but you have dialogue choices that can affect how people respond to you.

There are also several narrative choices to make, one or two of which will have far-reaching consequences. I’m not sure what I did wrong, for example (well, except when my actions directly got an ally killed, of course), but my ending was horrendously bleak. How the story might change based on your choices and competence is enticing, though.

You’ll also deal with Agent Walker, a Texan FDI field agent with a gruff attitude, Agent Katherine Andrews, and Xavier Skinner, your direct superior. Besides these there are a few primary antagonists including HAL, a cocky, nihilistic computer hacker with their own agenda. The characters and their actions interweave with yours, creating an intriguing mystery and a narrative pace that I really fell for. Even though I could see a few of the twists coming, it still managed to surprise me in other areas.

There’s a real sense that what you’re doing is crucial. Other characters will send you files to decrypt or hack into, video footage to parse (though this is set in the early 90s so the quality is abysmal), audio logs to mull over, and images to peruse for clues. Sometimes you’ll need to analyse a chemical compound, or even defuse an explosive. One simultaneous strength and weakness of The Operator is that very few of these activities are repeated. In the short four hour campaign there’s no filler, so it might take you a while to get your head round chemical analysis only to never ever have to use the skill again.

It also holds your hand just a little too much, offering multiple ways to get clues and help from the NPCs. That said, when someone asks you to find a suspect’s address and you remember seeing an image with a name tag earlier, then open it and find the name, which lets you search them on the database, it makes you feel pretty clever – which for me is the mark of a good puzzle or mystery game. There were few moments where I was really mentally taxed, but now and then it had me stumped for a few minutes before I remembered an earlier case or clue.

The flipside of this coin is how it makes you feel when you screw up, as I did, towards the end of the story, and got one of my allies unceremoniously killed. The sad thing was I had more time to solve the puzzle, but I rushed and guessed and got them executed. And then the story kind of went downhill from there, and resulted in a pretty rough ending for everyone involved.

As a narrative puzzle game, The Operator is pretty decent. It never feels unsolvable, but isn’t insultingly easy either, and presents itself with some nice touches – like when you log in as Evan every morning and can press any keys you like but it always types his name and password. The mystery is intriguing, too, involving a Roswell-like cover up and a villain that feels like they were plucked out of a Dean Koontz novel. You can also get through it in one or two sittings, which is a bonus for some but may feel too short for others. Ultimately though, The Operator feels very different to the games I usually play and still hooked me from start to finish, which is recommendation enough.