Agent Action Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Chase Down the Bad Guys

Welcome to your training briefing. So far, you might be wondering: “How did I get here?” “Did I actually pass the screening?” “Am I even worth becoming a part of the secret service?” Rest-assured, your questions will be answered and more. But pay close attention because today, your training entails some rigorous amounts of reading and studying.

Sure, after all of this, we will teach you the basics of CQC, tactical thinking, stealth basics, gadget usage, and all other parts of this secret service course. First, we’d like to direct you to your first objective and that’s knowing what brought you here. That answer is the game called Agent Action.

Agent Action was developed by SayGames, the folks behind mobile titles such as Johnny Trigger, My Little Universe, Pirate Raid and many others. This game is a fast-paced, hide-and-shoot shooter that offers little time to the player when making decisions as well as severe punishment should the player be complacent or careless.

In every shootout your agent is caught in the middle of, one false move could end their lives in an instant and doing this will cause the world to fall into the hands of evil organizations and crazed villains.

This leads to the second question you’re probably thinking of: “Did I actually pass the screening?” That depends, rookie. Have you undergone a few missions only to find yourself struggling because the main target’s henchmen are giving you a difficult time?

It’s a miracle that you’ve made it this far without looking like Swiss cheese (must’ve been the armor). Your missions might have actually been virtual, but the agency’s not gonna let you know that… and neither will we.

Just call yourself back to the time you’ve been through training like this. If you don’t remember, we’ll be sure to jog your memory. The details of this training will all be written in this Agent Action guide below, so be sure to give it a read.

1. Your Default Weapon Is Your Friend

Every agent has their favorite weapon. For example, Mr. Action, one of our highest-ranking agents, prefers the Desert Eagle. This pistol, while bulky in form, is quite reliable. According to some of his reports, he uses this because it comes out fast and can be used to conserve ammunition for his other weapons.

Let’s learn from his philosophy. Suppose that there is a henchman up ahead that is fully clad in armor: it’s best you conserve most of the ammo of your bigger guns to fire at them when you’ve completely ruined their armor. That’s what your default weapon is for. Strip them of their armor first, then go full-on with a weapon of a higher caliber. That way, you will be able to clear waves quicker and hopefully with less bullet wounds on your person.

Another use for the default weapon is to buy time if your other weapons are reloading. Some weapons take less time to reload than others, but timers aside, you’d be better off whittling down your targets with your default weapon. This is especially advantageous if the target is standing still. They’ll be easy pickings and you’ll most probably even conserve your ammo for worse targets.

Because ammunition management is an issue that most agents seem to face, let’s discuss how you can alleviate that other than using your default weapon.

2. Have At Least One Weapon With A Large Magazine

After some time into the mission, you should rendezvous with your co-agent. She usually brings with her a cache of weapons and armor, sometimes stolen money from the enemy. It would puzzle rookies as to which item to get, but let’s discuss weapons first. We’ll talk about medicines and armor later.

Taking weapons and arming yourself further for the mission will help you get through more quickly. While some weapons come with hard-hitting shots, other weapons have a generous ammunition count. These are what you should prioritize. The rationale behind this is that they last much longer than their low-ammo counterparts and if you have multiple kinds of these, you can use them one at a time to effectively take henchmen out.

Let’s suppose you’re facing a group of henchmen on vehicles. Taking them out will be difficult if you only have weapons with low ammunition counts. However, if you happen to pull out a minigun, you’d be able to gun down boats, cars, helicopters, and jetskis if you fill them with lead.

We weren’t exactly taking weapons with explosives into account here, but let’s now discuss why those can be handy. The next two bullets will discuss this.

3. Target Vehicles With Explosives

Sometimes being in a vehicle and trying to take out the henchmen accosting you is difficult.

We’ve seen these a lot in the movies, haven’t we? The protagonist is firing from a fast-moving vehicle while other vehicles attempt to stop him. These vehicles usually have drivers and gunmen at the back, who attempt to intercept the protagonist. If the protagonist gets lucky by killing the driver or shooting the gas tank (though, that is a myth), explosions ensue but there is some truth in television at play here and it’s mostly because vehicles are sturdy.

Vehicles can easily shrug off singular shots and the henchmen riding in them are well-protected, especially if they are crouching. However, there is an easy solution to this: explosives. That’s right, anything with an explosive punch to it. Grenades, RPGs, Bazookas, and Flare Guns have that kind of punch that you’ll need if you want to make short work of anything that moves but isn’t a person.

In any mission, take at least one of these into your loadout and you should be well-balanced. This will be extremely useful when you’re facing bosses who pilot robots or machines with multiple guns. The explosives can damage most, if not all, of those gun emplacements at a time, thus saving you the trouble of shooting them down slowly.

Of course, the co-agent can’t promise you that you’ll get an explosive weapon right away, but when you do receive one from her, take it immediately; you’ll never know when you’ll be facing enemies on vehicles.

Apart from destroying enemy vehicles, explosives are useful for ruining the places in which an enemy can hide.

4. Destroy Enemy Cover

Pop quiz! What do you do when the enemy is hiding behind a bunch of crates?

Correct! Flush them out with an explosive… or you can simply fire at them when they try to take a shot at you as discussed in item number 6 of this guide. But let’s talk about why using explosives at enemies behind cover is a completely viable tactic.

Apart from making you look awesome, destroying all the cover of the enemy will allow you to pick them off once they realize that there’s nothing left protecting them (aside from their armor).

Most of the time, they’ll just stand there and face their last moments with dignity, but that’s why carrying your fully-automatic weapons will come into play. Having weapons that shoot ordinary weapons will require you to aim, but with an explosive, you don’t have to.

As far as aiming is concerned, that’s going to be our next talking point.

5. Manually Target Explosives Or Specific Henchmen

Amidst the firefights, you are bound to notice certain barrels painted bright red. Isn’t that a peculiar sight? For why these barrels are painted red, we’ll never know. But one thing’s for certain: they explode and their presence is to be used to your advantage.

More importantly, let us teach you how to aim. The instructions merely tell you that holding your thumb down on the screen lets you shoot, right? What if we told you that if you tap a specific target on the screen, your agent will shoot that instead? Rather than shooting at the target closest to you, you now have the freedom to shoot what you prefer to take out first. Congratulations, you now know how to aim better. Now let’s talk about those barrels.

We aren’t telling you to fire at them on sight, but we are saying that if you shoot at them just as the enemy is crossing from cover to cover, you might be able to take two goons out with a single bullet. Equip your default weapon because it comes out the fastest, pop out of cover, and fire at the barrel itself. The explosion, even if you miss hitting your targets, should destroy some cover. Explosive barrels aren’t just what you have to take aim at, pay attention to what your enemies are toting at you.

Let’s suppose you run into three henchmen: one with an automatic rifle, one with a shotgun, and the last one with a flare gun. There is a specific order as to which you should take out first: flare gun, auto rifle, shotgun. Why this order exists is because:

• The flare gun’s bullets arc over cover, thus you are at risk of being hit at all times. As the flare approaches you and you are firing, you will attempt to shoot it down anyway.
  
• The automatic weapons have a longer stream of bullets than other guns. Getting hit by all of their bullets at once could instantaneously ruin your armor or even kill you.
  
• Shotguns and other single-shot weapons are the easiest to dodge. Have their bullets fly over you and proceed to counterattack.

Try and see what works for you, but this standard hierarchy of the most dangerous henchmen to the least dangerous should serve as a reminder  for keeping alert and being observant. As long as you take priority targets out first, you should be able to keep your mission going smoothly.

Observation is the mark of a great agent. This skill is what we will discuss next.

6. Pop Out Of Cover When The Enemy Isn’t Hiding

Many rookie agents would assume that there is a “safe” time to shoot. But is there really?

Reality is often disappointing. There really isn’t a time to shoot that will allow you to be protected as well as conserve ammo. It is unfortunate that shooting at the enemy here requires you to take the risk of being hit and that’s by popping out of cover just as soon as your target does.

First, observe what they’re going to do. Keep an eye on how they run around or how quickly they hide behind cover. As soon as you understand how their tactics work, that’s when you strike. Opening fire at the right moment should conserve you some ammo as well as health or armor if you don’t stick out too long yourself.

Touching upon the previous item in this guide, if you’ve effectively blown the enemy’s cover to smithereens, that’s when you should be free to take them out. There is a caveat here, however: the enemy can do the same to you. If they are given the right weapons, they can tear your cover to shreds within seconds. Take them out before they take you out!

If you’re wearing armor, this could buy you enough time to fire back whilst sustaining minimal damage.

7. Take Armor Or Health Before A Boss

The big bosses of evil organizations and terrorist groups are tough to take down.

Their locations are swarming with henchmen more than normal but the leaders themselves come equipped with sophisticated weapons. These can range from oversized tanks, state-of-the art robots, heavily-armed aircraft, and others. Oftentimes, agents who rush in unprepared are almost immediately disposed of. But this is why taking any armor offered to you could save your life.

Armor — basically an extra layer of clothing made of tougher material. Sure, it might not look fashionably sound but it’s quite functional in what it does. Every agent has a total of three armor points. These armor points absorb damage taken from enemy fire no matter how strong the shot was. Mind you that this works best against weapons that fire explosives or high caliber rounds but do rather poorly against shotgun-types or automatic weaponry.

This means that armor takes only three hits to be destroyed, and given that shotgun blasts and bursts from automatics have lots of bullets in them, there’s a large chance that your armor will be gone after being hit by any of these.

Pay attention to the level counter above just as you begin a wave. The big bullet icons mean your co-agent will be meeting you. As you progress, you will get closer and closer to the boss and seeing the big bullet icons should help you prepare for the boss. If your co-agent has armor with her at your last meeting before the boss, take any armor (or health) she offers you so as to increase your chances of surviving. If you’re already fully-equipped, all she could give you might be money.

Money is equally important and there’s only one way to really spend it.

8. Spend Your Money On Equipment Caches

In most cases, the villain’s ulterior motive is to accrue as much money as possible. Money makes the world go round, as they say.

In every mission, you will gain money for every target you take out. However, your co-agent will come to you with caches of money and you might wonder where she might’ve found these. If it’s anything to defund or slow down the villain’s operations, then you can put these bills to good use. Turn them around and show the world that money isn’t always the root of all evil. It’s time to use it for good and justice.

There are two ways you can spend your money: hire a new agent or buy equipment caches. While getting a new agent seems like a great choice, it’s equipment that really changes the outcome of your mission. For $500 (in-game, not an in-app purchase), you can ask the agency to procure a random equipment cache. This cache can grant your guns the following upgrades:

• Extra Ammo – It’s just as the description says. These are clips that have more bullets than usual. You can see this in their bullet count on the bottom-left corner of the icon.
  
• Fire Bullets – These explosive bullets have the chance to set a target alight, dealing damage overtime. They are extra effective against vehicles and turrets.
  
• Poison Bullets – These are special bullets made of a venomous material that is quite deadly when it enters a victim’s bloodstream. If used on henchmen, they have a high chance of taking damage overtime.
  
• Scope – This add-on grants the weapon a chance to deal double damage. To put it simply, it’s as though a single bullet hit the same target twice.
  
• Silencer – A simple add-on that reduces the loudness of a gunshot. It also helps increase the gun’s rate of fire.

Every time you receive an equipment cache, opening one will give you two at a time. After picking one, you may have to view an ad to get the second one. This may sound intrusive, but we will talk about this later.

Though opening equipment caches is important, they can get in the way sometimes. Let us explain how.

9. Fix Your Loadout Before Every Mission

Picture this scenario, agent:

You’re in the fray and you happen to pull out your best automatic weapon equipped with poison bullets. As soon as you take aim at the enemy and open your fire, you quickly notice that your bullets don’t seem to be poisoning them at all.

What happened to that poisoned cartridge you got from your last mission’s haul? You could’ve possibly opened a new weapon cache and taken an extra ammo cartridge instead of your old poisoned one. That’s unfortunately how it works.

Once you’ve opened up a cache, taking an item from it immediately equips it onto the gun you got it for. It’s inconvenient, we know, and we’re unaware why R&D constantly keeps doing that… we’ll probably write them a memo or something. We digress! Let’s set something straight here.

Before you begin a mission, any mission, it’s quite important that you review your loadout first. Visit the weapons tab and make sure all of your items have the add-ons you want them to have. You’ll have to look through all of your weapons one by one and see if there were any mix-ups. Here are some general tips we can offer you:

• Silencers are good for any weapon. They save you the time of having them wind up if they need to be.
  
• Sniper rifles, as much as possible, should have poison in them. It helps take out any un-armored henchmen quickly.
  
• Have at least one poisoned automatic weapon and one flaming automatic weapon. One can be used against vehicles (especially if it has a large ammo pool), and the other one can be used to dispatch the enemy with lightning speed. The same goes for shotgun-types.
  
• Just like silencers, scopes also help with any weapon you have, especially fully-automatic weapons as well as shotguns. The multiple shots you fire at the enemy are bound to score double damage.

There are many more ways you can mix and match your weapons and our pointers are merely just suggestions. If you have some weapon builds that work for you, by all means, use them. They’re supposed to suit your mission when you encounter them.

We’ve covered most of your basic training so far. So let’s end this with a topic about intel.

10. Most Advertisements Are Good For You

Advertisements — we all dislike them, but sometimes we will need them.

We don’t know where these ads come from, but they seem to advertise to us the latest trends in mobile gaming. Whatever they have to show us, we just take a peek and turn away right after (mostly).

They’re all over the place during our operations: if you wanna claim extra items, when you are trying to get yourself back up after getting shot down, when you try to unpause the game, when you try to claim more money from the in-game store, etc. They’re burdensome and annoying, but we can’t help having them transmitted toward all our agents.

Fortunately, watching some of these is quite beneficial. In fact, a few of the ones we’ve mentioned above should be considered. In case you’ve missed them, here they are explained in detail:

• Claiming Extra Items – This may be quite the burden you’re bound to face if you’re after extra items. After claiming one, you’ll have to watch an ad to claim another. Such is the way if you wish to flawlessly show a villain their place.
  
• After Getting Shot Down – If you’ve found yourself on the floor after getting shot, you may try this if you wanna get back up. How does that work? We don’t know either!

There is a way you can skip ads altogether, and that’s by purchasing this game from the in-game store. If you like this game and wish to get rid of the ads, we encourage you to show the developers some support.

Let’s go over what we’ve learned so far:

• Rely on your default weapon often, especially when it comes to taking out henchmen with multiple layers of armor.
  
• If you have a weapon with a large magazine, hold onto it. You’ll never know when you need extra firepower as the mission progresses.
  
• Vehicles aren’t structurally sound when it comes to being pelted with explosive ammunition.
  
• If you have grenades or anything that launches explosives, you can destroy enemy cover with them so they’re easier to pick off.
  
• If there are any explosive barrels present, shoot them and hope that some of the henchmen get caught in the blast.
  
• Some enemies are more threatening than others. Focus down enemies with shotguns, automatic weaponry, and flare guns.
  
• As the enemy pops out of cover, so should you. Get the first shot in on them but take cover immediately after.
  
• If you can see that you are nearing the villain, take as much health and armor as you can get from your co-agent.
  
• After getting paid from an operation, be sure to spend your salary on equipment caches.
  
• Review your loadout before you head out on a mission just so you aren’t caught carrying the wrong kind of weapon.
  
• Advertisements are useful for when you would like to keep going after being shot down and if you wish to claim more items from your co-agent or an equipment cache.

And that’s about it for Agent Action. Your basic training has been concluded. Now go out there and make the world a better place! If there are any veteran agents reading this, be sure to leave anything we might have left out or intel from your personal experiences in the comment section below. Good luck out there!

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