I finally finished Agent Intercept and I just don't know if I care about finishing games anymore

Agent Intercept is a game that I have a bit of a weird relationship with. I became aware of it through Youtubers the publisher gave free codes to upon its release, and it sat on my wishlist for a long time because I was interested in its sleek graphics and modern take on the Spy Hunter formula, but it was very short and I didn't want to pay full price. I bought it for $8 on Xbox at some point and then refunded it before playing because I decided I wanted to wait for a PS5 copy in the hopes that the Dualsense would do something interesting with it. The Dualsense controller has been a very effective gimmick for me because I keep buying games on PS5 in the vain hope that they'll do something interesting with the Dualsense, and keep getting disappointed by any game that doesn't star Astro Bot.

Put a car on skis and send it down a mountain and I'll probably buy your game eventually.

Eventually in November of 2023 I got my $8 PS5 copy and started playing it. It was...alright. Agent Intercept is a pretty high production value indie game with a graphical style clearly inspired by the old flat shaded polygon look of games like Virtua Racer. There's a story with voice acting about a secretive spy agency up against a shadowy evil organization and it takes a very James Bondian approach to storytelling with lots of twists and turns and double and triple agents, as well as an evil scheme for world domination and plenty of henchmen and secret facilities, but it's all very surface level and you never come to care about the events taking place.

The game itself is clearly inspired by Spy Hunter, and you pilot a high tech car that can also turn into other vehicles like a speedboat when necessary, powerdrifting around corners, collecting and using weapons, and boosting over big jumps as you race towards the finish along the linear levels. You can't actually control the speed of the car except by sliding and boosting so it's all very arcade-like and fast paced. Controls feel fine, levels have decent readability most of the time, and the game definitely delivers high octane thrills, especially during its major set pieces, which can involve some pretty major changes in gameplay, which are handled surprisingly well by an indie team.

There are 15 levels in the campaign, divided into 3 groups of 5 levels each, and each has sub objectives like defeat a certain number of enemies or hit a certain score, with subsequent levels being locked behind these objectives similarly to how levels are locked by number of stars in Super Mario 64. There are also separate challenge levels with no story elements associated with each of the 3 major environments.

Same car, different place. It's very Spy Hunter.

I played some of the game after I got it, dropped it, picked it back up in April to play a bit more, and then dropped it again. Last night I finally did the final sub objective I needed to unlock the last level and today I beat it. It took a little under 3 hours total according to PlayStation, though I don't trust that clock and I did take some time to mess with the optional arcade missions as well.

Shooting nameless henchmen in SUVs is good for the environment

This is a somewhat common pattern for me with games like this, which is to say games that I like okay but am not swept up into. I nibble at them over time and may or may not build up the energy to actually finish. The start of this year has been mostly dedicated to finishing games I'd already started so I've done a bunch of this in the last week or so and...I won't say I've had a bad time but that feeling of satisfaction I used to get when rolling credits on a game has definitely been absent. Even with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a game I very much enjoyed and obviously played over a relatively short period (since it's barely been out a month) I didn't feel much satisfaction in beating it. I had a lot of fun sneaking around and smashing Nazis in the backs of their heads with guitars, and I really enjoyed the set pieces, but the ending? Meh.

There is a totally reasonable explanation for what happened here and you're going to laugh when you hear it. You're going to find it so funny.

When I was younger I never finished my games. The introduction of achievements and trophies were part of why I finally changed that, and while I certainly haven't finished everything I've played since then, and some games have taken me literal years to get back to, I've done much better and felt a sense of satisfaction from getting to the end most of the time. I've enjoyed that sense not of accomplishment but of seeing the developers' vision for the arc od the game, whether that be in the story or the evolution of gameplay or whatever. I also like the feeling that a game's not on my backlog anymore and while I can go back to it if I feel like it, it will be on my terms.

But this feeling has been fading recently. This is not the same as my disconnection from gaming I felt last year, because I have been enjoying a lot of the games as I've been playing them. Anomaly Agent (I like Agent games, okay? I'm still waiting for Sony to release Agent) is another indie I finished recently and I liked the challenging take on 2D brawling but getting to the end didn't do anything for me.

Trippy action part of game? Fun. Ending? Who cares.

I'm not 100% sure why I'm posting this except to remind myself of how tastes and patterns, even longstanding ones, can change over time. I also think it may not just be me because I've been noticing low completion rates on a lot of the games I've recently played, even though they aren't necessarily difficult or long. It has long been noted that people don't finish games, but at the very least the trend doesn't seem to be reversing.

For now I will continue trying to finish as many games as I reasonably can because, ironically, while finishing games isn't satisfying for me right now, leaving them unfinished does bother me a little. That's why I re-downloaded Agent Intercept and finally finished it. But maybe that will change too. At the end of the day, finishing games isn't actually important. Gaming is a leisure activity and nothing you do within the context of the game itself actually matters. No princesses are saved, no worlds rebuilt. An unfinished story is okay as long as the part you experienced sparked some kind of positive response in you. Unless you're playing a Kirby game. That pink puffball needs to get back to his home dimension. HE'S HUNGRY, YOU MONSTER! HE NEEDS HIS CAKE!