You'd maybe come across a single solitary health syringe buried far from the beaten track in each level, but even then you'd only get to slowly feed yourself a smidgen of regeneration. What's more, those guards may have been thick - but their guns bloody hurt. There was no savegame function: whether you were accessing plane logs in a flight tower, uploading a virus to a satellite or just murdering a camp of arms dealers for a lark, you'd only have one life to do it in. The most enduring memory of Project IGI, however, was the mental scarring inflicted by a late-level AK47 shot to the back. When they did notice your growing bloodbath, they'd either do a press-up in sheer terror or make their way towards you on pathways guided by a set-square. Gunfire, to them, was just ambient noise - like birdsong. Soldiers would happily maintain eye contact with comrades who'd recently fallen to the ground with a strangled yelp, only to continue their stroll unaware that anything had gone particularly wrong.
If IGI was two parts breaking into the Goldeneye dam, however, it was also one part collapsing into your keyboard and laughing at the AI. Anya's job is to furiously clatter a keyboard and tell you what order you should probably kill people in. If IGI was two parts breaking into the Goldeneye dam, it was also one part collapsing into your keyboard and laughing at the AI. Most amazing of all, however, was the ability to slide down wires. You'd take down patrolling guards when they'd turned their backs, destroy security cameras and scoot up ladders (in a snap to the third-person view) to find yourself on rooftops where you'd be able to take down future opposition from afar. In retrospect there was a fair degree of player funnelling (those terrorists really loved long wire fence corridors) - but this was still an early outing for the action bubble mentality so beloved by the likes of Crytek with Far Cry and Crysis. Looking back, in fact, it was a game swimming in the heady scent of contemporary Brosnan Bond. As such it was down to the stiff-upper-lipped David Jones (who looked and sounded more solicitor than SAS) and a pretty lady with a headset to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The story posited that one Jach Priboi had stolen a nuclear device - and left a radioactive paper-trail to his secret underground headquarters through wilderness train yards, military training facilities and prisons that looked a lot like both of the above. Yes, the likes of Delta Force had treated us to wide open vistas and a realistic treatment of weapons before - but IGI pulled off both crisp craggy hills alongside decorated (although admittedly oft-repeated) building interiors. Then it'd be a matter of course to snipe the guards in the watchtowers to make sure your waltz through the front gate could be made in private.
You genuinely felt like you were alone in the middle of nowhere, and that the only way out was in. A common sensation was to sit atop a distant cliff and scope out a hulking military base sat squat in the middle of a valley. Norwegian outfit Innerloop had treated us to Joint Strike Fighter three years previously, but seemingly grew a taste for headshots and men who shout 'Hey you!' Men in red berets will react to an alarm sounding. It was a first-person military shooter, yet it had been put together on the foundations of a flight sim. What separated IGI from fledgling Tom Clancy rivals back in 2001 was what it was built in. He went in, he went out, and he shook bad guys all about - with bullets. Project IGI stood for 'I'm Going In' (which made it a shame that its sequel wasn't called 'I'm Just Popping Out: Does Anyone Want Anything?') and it saw Brit hero David Jones doing just that. There's the feeling of anticipation as you scan the perimeter of a hulking military installation, the satisfaction of stealth kills and security camera outages as you breach its walls and (of course) that feeling of utter terror when the alarm is triggered and identical men in red berets start sprinting in rough diagonals towards you. Sneaking into bases is just the best thing.
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