IGI 2: Covert Strike for Windows

A first person shooter with freedom of choice

I.G.I. 2: Covert Strike is a first-person shooter with stealth mechanics, akin to the 'play your own way' style of games. You play as elite agent David Jones, a one-person army as you work to stop World War III from becoming a reality in an action-packed campaign mode. 

You can choose to use the environment to your advantage and take your enemies by surprise or go in guns blazing. I.G.I. 2: Covert Strike plays similarly to Call of Duty 2 or old Medal of Honor titles.

Choose your own style of play

It would not be unreasonable to assume that, as a first-person shooter, you'd be placed on a linear path to the end of each mission. However, I.G.I. 2: Covert Strike breaks the mold by creating vast open maps to tackle how you want.

You can go in guns blazing from the start or take a stealthy approach. A blazing guns approach might be fun, but a difficult one to pull off successfully as the AI are crack shots regardless of range. Knives to the back result in a one-hit kill, incentivizing flanking unaware opponents; this stealth approach is accompanied by a visibility meter so you can see whether or not you are visible.

These vast open maps allow you to take different paths, try other tactics and play the game the way you enjoy. Similarly, despite being vast, the level design is intuitive enough that you can't simply run through them without thought. Guard placement and alarms create a feeling of suspense as you take each corner with caution. Alarms quickly alert guards of your position, giving you away and placing you in the center of a gunfight, so being perceptive to their placement and avoiding or shooting them with a silenced gun helps keep you hidden.

Despite the praise, maps can often feel empty, whether due to a design choice or system limitations we don't know, but this emptiness can often break immersion as we ask ourselves why there's a big room with almost nothing in it.

Tense atmosphere behind every shot

First-person shooters don't get enough praise for their sound design, and I.G.I 2: Covert Strike certainly requires that praise. This game excels at creating a tense and suspenseful atmosphere with its excellent background music and soundtrack. 

The alarm sound effects, guards voicing their next movement or actions, each gunshot, and miscellaneous environmental noise keeps you focused on surviving. The background tracks keep you on your toes, whether walking through a forest or hiding in a bunker.

Unsettling AI

AI movement and capability contribute to the core experience of any shooter. Too challenging, and the game becomes a slog of unfair deaths. Too easy, and there's no real need to experiment with other options aside from ‘see a person, shoot’. As many users have voiced, AI is both easy and incredibly difficult. But how can that be?

I.G.I 2 suffers from a problem most older shooters experience, and that's an uneven AI curve. When confronted in a gunfight, you'll find that the AI is incredibly accurate, hitting you with submachine guns from an unfair distance, yet, if you're around a corner, the AI will haphazardly run into your view one by one like a domino chain of blind mice. The same rules apply if you engage with the AI outside of their view range; they will run on top of one another, waiting to be picked off.

While this doesn't necessarily adversely alter gameplay, it creates the feeling of unfair moments when you are instantly gunned down when you fail to stealth through a close-quarter part of the map. Aside from this, gunplay can often feel clunky to control, but this is a common drawback FPS' games faced during this time period. 

I.G.I 2: To strike or not to strike?

I.G.I 2: Covert Strike appears at first glance to be another generic shooter, and while some of the same core concepts are included from other similar titles, players can expect an immersive and challenging experience. Each playthrough can be made different by taking different approaches, and it provides an enjoyable experience, despite having a campaign on the shorter side.

If you are a player that enjoys a fresh first-person shooter experience, we can't see why you wouldn't like I.G.I 2: Covert Strike. Give it a try and let us know what you think of it. 

This program is available on Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11 platforms.