Undercover Review

As you might expect, you play a young cadet who gets recruited to go deep undercover. Your mission is to curtail the drug trade from inside seedy criminal groups. First you cut ties with everybody, including your girlfriend. Then you hit the streets, make a name for yourself, join minor players and rise in status. It’s a fantastic setup, with tech that matches the 90s Hong Kong era.

While the narrative is good, the story progresses way too quickly. This is an undercover-cop-to-underworld-boss speedrun (any %). Despite plenty of opportunities to slow down or create suspense, it seems afraid that the audience will get bored of any narrative pause.

In relation to this, romance is underrepresented. There are three love interests, but scenes with them are preposterously short. When the sultry film star, Mengyao, joins you in the car after a confrontation in a bar, she’s out the door before you can take a breath. Scenes with Mary, the kind girlfriend you dumped, are similarly short. There is one encounter where Mary, as an active police officer, has the chance to take your character in for questioning—this would have facilitated tension, and possibly some fun romantic conflict—but the player-character just leaves. Even Miss Ying, the underworld femme fatale, finds herself isolated but the player barely spends time with her. Since the three love interests are good characters, there should have been far more interactions, and it would have been the perfect spacer the story desperately needed.

Undercover is sadly too linear as well. This is a case where most alternate choices lead to an immediate death. Given the theme, deaths are expected. But even half as many would have been too much. The story needed proper branching paths that would make replaying the game interesting; instead, going back through the timeline makes it a death simulator.

The production quality is exceptional though. This experience feels similar to My Journey in terms of how well it is put together. Strong actors, great locations, on-set Cantonese audio, and good action are all here. It makes the first play through super enjoyable, assuming you don’t die too often.

While filmed mostly in first-person, the game does use traditional third-person shots. This works okay, mostly, but it breaks immersion when you see characters talking when you are elsewhere. Maybe this was done to keep it the narrative concise, but as mentioned, brevity is its biggest issue.

Undercover is not Intiny’s best work, but it’s not bad. If the setting appeals and sparse romance is acceptable, then this dive into a darker Hong Kong will satiate. Hopefully the next time Intiny make something like this, they take their time.