The Agency [PS3]

I'm ready to play The Agency. I'm not trying to be a jerk or that snarky game journalist dude, but I'm getting sick of just seeing this thing in action. At E3 2008, I got to sit down and watch a full-fledged, hands-off in-game demo. Now here we are nearly a year later and I just got done seeing a full-fledged, hands-off demo.

Sigh.

Perhaps my crankiness is due to the fact that The Agency seems like it could be cool. An MMO set for the PC and PlayStation 3, this Sony Online Entertainment title replaces the typical MMO elves and dwarves with two factions of uber-spies. When you create your character, you'll choose if you want to side with Unite (slick spies who drink martinis and have the coolest gadgets) or Paragon (the roughneck mercenaries who'll blow everything up to reach the objective) and be launched into the world of international espionage. You'll need to monitor disguise meters and act like whomever you're impersonating, you'll need to take bad guys out without making a sound and you'll need to amass non-playable agents the way you'd amass items in other MMOs because these people will be your eyes and ears around the world.

Now, none of that is really news, but this demo of the Agency did shed plenty of light on the game's setting and how the action will work. Once you've picked a side, your game is going to be completely different from the get-go. Unite agents will start on an airship and head to Venice, while Paragon grunts will kick their way out of a crate on an oil rig off the coast of South America. From there, it's straight to your field offices -- shiny and clean for Unite and down and dirty for Paragon -- to get your first role outfit on. See, you're going to be able to change your role (think class) whenever you feel like it in The Agency. It's as simple as putting on a different suit before heading out on a mission. Similarly, you'll be packing Alias Outfits when you head out on a job. These are the disguises you can wear to blend in with whatever situation you're dropped into.

So, remember those NPCs I was talking about a second ago? They're going to be a rather large part of your game -- there's more than 480 to collect with codenames such as Knuckles and Black Mamba. As you gain experience, you're going to unlock more slots that you can then arm with those agents. This means that you can be packing an invisible sniper who can pick off enemies you see in your path or an experienced lock pick, but it also means you can have a Bond-like Q who creates weapons and gadgets on demand. Now, The Agency is a persistent world, so stuff's happening even when you're not playing. This means that when you ask for a golden gun or whatever and your tech guy says that it'll take an hour or a week to create, that means it's really going to take an hour or a week.

Still, this is an MMO, so the real guts of this persistent world are going to be missions with your fellow, human-controlled operatives and that's exactly what the latest demo I got to see focused on. Starting on the helicopter pad in front of a snow-swept mansion, which was acting as an evil Das Komitee base, a sexy female Unite agent met up with a burly Paragon dude; yes, you'll have agency crossovers when super-threats arise. Both were in formal wear -- a slinky white dress for the lady and tux for the man -- seeing as how their mission was to meet up with another operative on the inside of the gigantic chateau during a hoity-toity party. One developer was controlling the woman while another was controlling the man.

What made this interesting was that one was playing on the PC while the other was playing on a PS3. Chances are this interplay won't make it to the retail version of the game because people will bitch about balancing, but it was still nice to see at this junction.