Has there ever been a game like this?

I was having a conversation with one of my brothers today and the topic turned to games with voice recognition gimmicks. I remembered a game called Lifeline, wherein you directed the player character with voice commands. Unfortunately, when the protagonist even understood your commands at all, she was apparently mentally retarded and would frequently violate common sense in the face of imminent danger.

It was quickly concluded that if you're not directly in control of a game's protagonist, he should be able to be at least somewhat competent on his own. You know those movies where the hero is infiltrating the enemy base, and there's a hacker guy backing him on headset, warning him of nearby patrols and hacking into the surveillance system to turn it against the bad guys? How about a game with the premise that you're not The Hero, but The Smart Guy helping him along?

Imagine this: A highly skilled secret agent is tasked with infiltrating a heavily-guarded facility. He could probably accomplish this mission alone, but time is running short. You are a gifted hacker who is just discovering how to manipulate the surveillance system, which you will be using to monitor the agent's progress and help him overcome the heavily armed defense systems. He has you on headset, so you can give him intel and suggest how he should proceed.

Puzzles would be based around hacking into machines and manipulating them; for instance, disabling the laser tripwire grids or turning the gun turrets against the guards. If you get stuck in any one puzzle for too long, the agent himself will eventually come up a solution of his own, but you're in a race against time, and he can't overcome all of them by himself in the time allotted.

It's like a puzzle-adventure game, but from a different, hopefully unique perspective. What do you all make of this concept so far?

Addendum: Instead of a life meter, you would have a trust meter, which depletes when you steer the hero into danger, and replenishes when you help him solve puzzles and bypass security. If the trust meter runs low, he will be less likely to listen to you, and it's Game Over if it runs out completely.

edited 26th Jun '11 3:43:20 PM by Cysma

I think I've played a flash game like that

Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword plays a bit like that. You play as a Tactician who has been rescued by the female protagonist (in the first part) / hired by the male protagonist (second part), and now you are advising her/him and controlling her/his army to victory.

edited 26th Jun '11 3:15:03 PM by AceNoctali

Addendum added!

@Ace

It doesn't really have any effect on gameplay, though.

The closest games I can think of to that:

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (SNES) = An adventure game where you have no direct control over the character at all, you just manipulate the environment by shooting a slingshot to get his attention or move obstacles, etc. Some things would change his mood, which would in turn change how he interacted with objects. I really enjoyed figuring out how all the elements in the game could interact (almost like the Grow flash games), especially when things went wrong.

Also: Wonder Project J (SNES) and Wonder Project J2 (N64) - neither were officially in english but there are fan translations. Basically you had to raise a robot, and he'd interact with things differently based on his stats. Which meant you had to spend an ungodly amount of time changing them back and forth between levels even when you knew what you wanted to do - I eventually took a memory editor to the game so I didn't have to deal with that aspect anymore. I think I heard the sequel reduced or removed that element, but I haven't played it.

An old 3D puzzle game called Galapagos, where you click on the environment to manipulate it, allowing a Wall Crawling AI-controlled Robot Buddy named Mendel to proceed through the environment, which was full of deathtraps. It would respawn from certain points, and had a fairly sophisticated AI, which included the tendency to become somewhat neurotic if you killed it too much. Clicking on stuff (including Mendel, which generally gave a message along the lines of “watch out” or “get going”) was the only means of interaction, as the camera followed Mendel through the zero-g environment.

There's a very old, very bad game called Night Trap that sorta vaguely resembles part of your concept.

Except that it was freaking horrible, and was more or less a multiple-choice game; there was no gameplay, only you choosing what option to use.

edited 27th Jun '11 1:22:04 AM by SgtRicko

In other words, a typical FMV-"game".

Eh, I recall a relatively recent game where there's a woman escaping some facility, and you are in charge of helping her to do so, giving her pieces of advice, controlling some parts of the facility and watching stuff via survelliance cameras. I never played it, but I've read the press about it.

This one.

edited 27th Jun '11 5:16:19 AM by Aminatep

The game Experience 112 (or The Experiment in some countries) has you as the mission control guy helping a woman escape a ship filled with monsters and hazards. The catch is, you can't talk directly to her - you can only communicate by turning on/off lights to indicate where she should go, nodding cameras to say yes/no, locking and unlocking doors and so on.

Unfortunately the AI was a bit wonky - sometimes the woman you're helping would walk halfway across the ship to a room because you turned on the light, even though she had no way of knowing you did that. She also did typical bad-AI things, like walking into mortal danger for no reason.

Despite the flaws it is an interesting game, and if you're at all interested in this kind of gameplay you should check it out. It's quite rare, but you might be able to find a copy on eBay or Amazon.