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Spy Mission Games For PC: The 9 Best Tested

Sneaking, stealing, and being covert – it’s the 10 best spy mission games for PC.

This list rounds up the best PC games to try if you fancy some covert ops. Some are glamorous parodies of 60s thrillers; others, dusty cold war open-world. But all of them offer best-in-class clandestine thrills.

Here, in no particular order, are the 10 best spy mission games for PC.

Whish is the best spy game to play without graphics card?

You can play Hitman Blood Money in any kind of PC with a power supply.

What are some best spy games with good missions?

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Hitman Blood Money, and Meta Gear Solid V are few of the best spy games with good missions.

Spy Party (2018)

Spy Mission Games For PC

A Spy Party would be great, wouldn’t it? Martinis, tuxedos, getting sniped through a window just as you’re about to plant evidence on that KGB agent you slightly fancy.

Okay, maybe not the last one. But don’t take our reluctance to die in the line of duty as a slur against Spy Party. Spy Party is a smart, asynchronous multiplayer game that sees one player as the aforementioned espionage schmoozer, another as the sniper trying to scupper their plans.

And the interesting thing here is that the sniper has no idea who the human player is, and has to work it out through a swirl of visual cues, odd behavior, and intuition.

If you like your spy movies more Bond than Bourne, the sedate, canape-munching pace of Spy Party is a classy distraction. I’ll be the one standing by the window, with the dashing mustache. Try not to shoot me, please.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)

Spy Mission Games For PC

This is a brilliant stealth game on every conceivable level. It’s systemically perfect, allowing you to think through every strategy before you implement it. All this while remaining flexible enough that you can adapt if things go wrong.

Say goodbye to endless restarts to get that “perfect run”. MGS V is all about whatever works. And it also has that wild, Kojima sense of humor, too. If you don’t want to spend hours listening to audiotapes, delving into the game’s world of counterespionage, vocal parasites, and governmental betrayal.

Instead of all this, you can just lark about instead, sliding around in boxes or fultoning every living thing you find. It’s the ultimate reactive stealth sandbox, the sort of game Nintendo would make if they ditched piranha plants for sentient snipers.

Gunpoint (2013)

Spy Mission Games For PC

Gunpoint displays elements of the classic spy game in every pixel. There’s a fedora, a raincoated hero who’s pushed into an impossible conspiracy. A warehouse of technology-liquidizing gizmos that defy real-life physics.

But that doesn’t mean it’s in any way clichéd. It was created by ex-PC Gamer writer Tom Francis, and his years as a critic help the game to avoid narrative clumsiness with the ease of protagonist Richard Conway.

Which is, in itself, a clumsy way of saying it’s both funny and good. It also has a deeply satisfying central mechanic, which allows you to hack circuits and force all kinds of unpredictable results.

It’s so good, in fact, that Gunpoint feels like the work of an evil genius rather than one person.

Evil Genius (2004)

Evil Genius

So far we’ve been all about saving the world in this list of “spy mission games for PC”. But our fourth pick is all about conquering it.

Evil Genius takes any aspirations of nobility, straps them to an unnecessarily slow deathtrap, and laughs maniacally while it explains its plans in great detail. It’s essentially a mad scientist lair management game – Dungeon Keeper meets Despicable Me. Which sees your polo-sweater wearing ne’er do well raiding with armies of henchmen, abducting civilians, and building bases in the evilest locations imaginable.

If you fancy trying a classic spy game from a malevolent, cat-stroking POV, Evil Genius is here to do your bidding. And if you want all the Austin Powers humor from a heroic perspective, our next entry has you covered.

No One Lives Forever (2000)

NOLF

Surprisingly few spy games use swinging 60s cheese as their inspiration with quite the same gusto as No One Lives Forever. And that’s exactly what makes it so refreshing to play, even now, 18 years after release.

It’s inconceivable that this much time and effort would go into making a game that’s essentially a triple-A comedy title. But that doesn’t mean the No One Lives Forever is in any way bad or disappointing in fact, when it came out, many hailed it as the best FPS since Half-life.

And in Cate Archer, we have a true PC gaming hero. Sassy, smartly dressed, and in desperate need of a comeback. But sadly, that’s never going to happen.

A licensing Farago means the promise of a NOLF sequel is permanently stuck in a super villain’s volcano lair, waiting to be devoured by mutated komodo dragons.

Invisible Inc. (2015)

Spy Mission Games For PC

The one thing that Invisible Inc teaches us, aside from all good spies need snazzy jackets, is that espionage is hard. There’s no swaggering into solutions by accident here, in this turn-based stealth game, every decision should be cautiously planned, and you always need a watertight exit strategy.

Things will go wrong. You’ll be tempted to try and achieve too much. Operations will fall apart like the spy equivalent of a clown car. But when they go right, you’ll feel every bit as capable and sexy as Invisible Inc’s cast of immaculate characters.

Well, for a while, at least. If you love XCOM but prefer your peril on a smaller scale, Invisible Inc has a discretely shared data spike with your name on it.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)

splinter Cell Chaos

It might be 13 years old, and lost in a bustle of other, similar Splinter Cell titles, but Chaos Theory stands out as offering all the best bits of the series. It does everything you want from a Splinter Cell game.

Glowing green optics, shooting lights, and threatening hapless goons, it also features Michael Ironside’s best performance as Sam Fisher.

He’s a man so grizzled he makes most grizzly bears look like Paddington. His delivery is helped along by the game’s blackly comic script, and levels that represent the pinnacle of the series in terms of design and intrigue.

Sam Fisher is a stealth game icon who’s informed numerous videogame protagonists since, and Chaos Theory is a lingering example of exactly why that is.

Alpha Protocol: Sega (2010)

Alpha

Alpha Protocol is one of those games that sounds conceptually brilliant but doesn’t quite deliver. And, like a dog with a wheel replacing one leg, you learn to love it despite its deficiencies.

It’s full of cool ideas and big concepts, a true espionage RPG, that tries to chart the full experience of being a spy, rather than the business end stuff we see in most games.

There’s a degree of strategy behind everything you do, and branching choices that let you play the game as whatever type of spy you want. Does it gel into a satisfying, cohesive whole? Not exactly.

But when a game tries so hard and includes so many aspirational ideas, you have to applaud it for trying. And anyway, James Bond was sort of broken too, and he manages just fine.

Hitman: Blood Money (2006)

Hitman blood Money

Perhaps there’s a distinction to be made between spy games and assassination games. But there’s undoubtedly something very espionage-y about Agent 47’s murderous exploits.

Yes, your sole purpose is to drown, poison, or shoot your targets, rather than surreptitiously gather information. But if you want the feel of being deep undercover, surrounded by people who intend you harm.

There’s really nothing quite like Hitman. And while the recent reboots are truly incredible games. I’m going to include Blood Money here because everyone loves Blood Money. It still has some brilliantly inventive ways to kill people. And because it’s a dusty 10 years old, you can play it on pretty much any PC with a power supply.

Bonus: Covert Action (1990)

bonus

It doesn’t look like much these days, but Sid Meier’s Covert Action still has some ambitious ideas and deft touches. Especially for a game made in 1990. It has all the things that a great spy game should have. Infiltration, decryption, bugging, and more, each with its own bespoke minigame.

And the missions are all randomly generated, too. As you pursue the central mission of breaking a spy network in order to track down its mastermind. According to Meier, the game was actually too ambitious he felt that the disparate elements made things too fragmented.

He since implemented his own ‘Covert Action Rule’ to future releases. Ensuring that games like Civilization focus on doing one thing well, rather than trying to do too much.

With this, our mission ends here. We hope that you have liked our list of “Spy Mission Games For PC: The 9 Best Tested”. If you enjoyed reading it please share it with your friends and help us grow. Thank you.

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