Who doesn't dream of the life of a super spy? After 40 years of MI6 and various suave James Bonds and countless bull-in-a-china-shop Schwarzenegger-like mercenary heroes, even a whiny, Care Bear pacifist like myself can find someone with whom to identify! Although, I can't quite see myself as a "Bond Girl," some of them kicked, umm ... yeah, quite nicely. There just may be something for me to do in The Agency if I get the right operatives to back me up ... build my own Agency ... world domination ...

Don't laugh, stranger things have happened.

Matt Wilson and Hal Milton literally brim over with enthusiasm for the game. Well, Hal does. But then being around Hal makes my hyper 8-year old seem somnolent, and Matt has this great laid back Southern charm that balances Hal out nicely. They make a fantastic pair as showmen, developers and friends.

If you haven't seen the trailer (which includes an awful lot of gameplay), you'll want to check this out first.

No elves, no aliens, just uhh ... people. What will you do in The Agency? First, you decide if you want to go suave and debonair or blunt and coarse. Will you join the ranks of UNITE or paraGON? And yes, these actually stand for something, but Hal was speaking so quickly I got an = on the paper, and he had moved on ...

You've picked your side. You're in the game! Woohoo! Simple as can be. They're fond of catchphrases, these guys, and one is "you are what you wear." You could be: Combat — Special Ops; Stealth — Assassin; Support — Melee; Undercover — Eveningwear or whatever is appropriate. The first three are fairly simple to understand. While you wear the clothing of a support character, you have the skills of a support character and progress as a support character would. Simple.

The latter allows you to infiltrate public areas unrecognized. This comes in handy after you've demolished the building across the way and need to slip into the restaurant next door; just change your slinkiest black evening gown, and no one will know it was you with that bazooka five minutes ago. Honest. Or perhaps you need to "fit in" with the locals on the beach, and your physique is more of a Charles Gibson than a Mel Gibson. Find that most excellent pair of beach trunks, and your set with your cool spy glasses and hip earpiece for some easy surveillance of the local culture.

Yeah, so that doesn't help you shoot better. It keeps you alive, doesn't it? And this is a spy game. Oh, wait, some of you will choose to be paraGON with all their brutish oafish behavior. No, I don't have my side picked out yet, not at all...

"You are what you wear" isn't a new concept in gaming. Heck, Diablo did it! Pick up a bow, improve your archery skill; cast a spell, improve your magic skill. Same idea brought up-to-date. And you get to look good while doing it. But, unlike the many of the games of old, your skills are restricted to the feature set of your clothing. Wear that camouflage long enough, and you may be a level 50 assassin, but that's going to mean nothing when you need to go in, guns blazing as front-line combat.

You do have choices, and in this case, they're rather unique. You can work your character through all of the skills sets evenly, playing whatever is needed for a certain role. Pick one, and play alternative characters for the others. Pick two? It's the last option that I find most intriguing.

Keeping up with the "hardcore" player when you play casually is always difficult. And what if you simply do not want to have a secondary character? There are reasons which I'll get to in just a moment. But, honestly, you get attached to the character you play five to seven days a week as a consistent player, and you really like Jim who only plays from 5-9 p.m. on Wednesday nights, but dang, he's like level 9, and you're level 60! Easy peezy. Change your clothes. Whatever got you to level 60 through the rest of the week? Be that, just not when Jim is around. When Jim is around, you'll be whatever complements his character best.

Other reasons ... those would be your operatives. I love that games have entire doll collections for me now that I've grown up! I never collected dolls when I was a kid. (I can just see the publisher and developer cringe as they read this!)

Your operatives are an extension of your character (and your Agency, whether it be UNITE, paraGON or one you've started all by your lonesome) into the world. As you encounter NPCs you'll interact with them, ask for information, provide information, bribe them, do all those spy-type things that spies do until you convince them to join up with you. Dependent upon who joins you and their specialty, you could have your own Q team ready and waiting to build tricked out gadgets for your car, your clothes, your phone ... I'd send them off on reconnaissance.

Nice that, operatives. They can travel the world, and you don't have to. The developers don't actually have to build everywhere in the world, either. Want to have a big battle in Antarctica? Send all the operatives down there to duke it out. Sure, we'll all be safe back in Rio sunning on the beaches, but after the battle is over and the operative population has dropped 15 percent, I'm betting the player population might notice a change in the economy, power balance, crankiness of their spouse, just the little things.

Keeping your operatives working in real time ensures that even when you can't play, the game doesn't stop for you. Unless your operatives are really, really inept or you just treat them badly ... you shouldn't log in to find a world gone completely awry. Through the magic (spies ACTUALLY have this function) of e-mail, text message and SMS, you will receive messages from your operatives about the status of vehicle orders, upgrades, item drops, espionage, political shifts, ransom requests — for them, of course. The game will keep you in tune even if you can't get there.

What about the lone wolf? You know ... the spy gone awry? I asked ... (heh, it rhymed!)

Building up your operatives means you can eventually build your own Agency. Then the real machinations begin. Both Matt and Hal were quick to point out that part of progressing is to unlock parts of the world for "PvP anytime." Those whacky guys and their catch phrases! No, you're not going to get ganked upon entering the game, but there are both PvP zones that become available to you, as well as calls for battle.

And skill will matter.

Direct from Matt, "A head shot is a head shot is a head shot."

You may be level 5 in a PvP zone with a level 60, but enough of you, and you will take down that level 60. She'll just take a few with her. A higher level opens up better weaponry, armor and some additional skills, but player skill matters. No matter your level, you will not be immune to the effects of 1,000 mosquitoes.

Did you watch that video? Did you see the part where they were on the merry-go-round? That was in-game footage. These are called Agency Moments. How boring would it be to be an elite super spy and never get to jump off an enormous bridge in the Ukraine with a bungie cord attached never hitting your head on the bottom because it was timed just perfectly. That is what we all love about this genre. When you/your group are on a mission and come upon an Agency Moment, it's the ability to shortcut through the action and start a cinematic. The merry-go-round depicted is scripted for one to four players. But, you have to time it just right. Your character is placed in-engine, and you take them all down.

Hal's big beef is facial expressions. Years ago, they simply weren't possible in massively multiplayer online games. Now, heads swerve back and forth when you click on them, or maybe you can cause your face to do a temporary expression. But then, back to the blank stare. The image of the woman on the beach doing the somersault and landing — those were in-game cuts with fluid facial expressions. Whether these exist outside of the Agency Moments wasn't clarified; however, they added a bit of depth to the moment.

My time with the guys was nearly up, and Hal (still talking) was going on about more than I could write. I have in my notes — car races! Gambling! Proximity-based weapon skill! And Matt saying he'd tell me more the next time I saw him.

I haven't played it yet. And I saw it before I even knew I saw it — I thought it was cinematic. When it was shown in its entirety, I was startled (they'd cut the user interface at Sony Gamer Day). The list of what makes this game different from any current MMO (beyond the PS3 as a second platform) is a little lengthy. But, isn't it exciting? Gonna build me an agency in Vienna ...