Cut to pieces, shot in the chest with a laser and electrocuted by a lemon; these are just a few of the ways I died while playing I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine, the latest installment in Schell Games’ James Bond-inspired VR puzzle game series.
INFORMATION REVIEW
Platform reviewed: Meta Quest 2
Available on: MetaQuest, Steam VR
Release date: August 15, 2023
Agent Phoenix, who miraculously survived his last mission facing Zoraxis in I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and the Liar, has returned to continue his work for the Agency. Their latest mission is to find the missing Doctor Prism; she is a former Agency scientist who she left to focus on her robotics work, but her knowledge of her former employer and being the architect behind the telekinetic implant in every agent’s head make her a target. But she doesn’t need Agent Phoenix’s help: she has her own army of robots of her own. Prism is ready to prove once and for all that her inventions are superior to any other agent and will eliminate anyone who tries to prove her wrong.
This adventure looks like the greatest in Phoenix. The story was the most compelling of the series. There’s a variety of immersive new locations to visit, including snow-capped peaks and underwater lairs, each filled with puzzles, traps, and other interactive elements that are a pleasure to play with in VR. And when the game recalls a classic I Expect You To Die mission, the concept kicks into high gear; we’re no longer solving puzzles in a stationary car, we’re dealing with Prism’s traps while speeding along a highway.
A great success of I expect you to die 3: Gear in the machine is that the series’ puzzles continue to feel like fun challenges rather than maddening roadblocks. My failures have always felt like my own, and the deathblow is toned down by the game’s humor. It helps that some of my misadventures inspire solutions to the puzzles I tackled later in the level, making me feel like I’m learning and improving rather than just stumbling on my adventure.
And given the espionage theme of the game, I appreciated that the best advice for finding a solution to a puzzle I was stuck on was always to ask WWJBD? What would James Bond do?
The similarities to James Bond go beyond the game’s setting and trappings I expect you to die 3 with a gorgeous opening theme and title sequence that looks like it was lifted straight from a classic spy movie. Every opening theme of the I Expect You To Die series was great but Gear in the machineit’s on another level and I can’t help but take a break every few minutes as I write this review to hear it one more time.
Mass-produced puzzles
Unfortunately, I expect you to die 3 suffers from feeling a little too repetitive, not only in terms of being too similar to what’s come before, but also not feeling like there’s enough variety within the game itself.
The best thing
I Expect You To Die is at its best when there is a frantic to its puzzles, and this is no longer true in the final segment of the sixth mission. Without giving too much away, you’re tasked with managing an ever-changing board of buttons and switches, while also trying to solve a number of unrelated puzzles that demand your attention. It’s chaotic. I love it.
As Cog in the Machine treads new ground for the series, many of the difficulties Agent Phoenix faced gave me déjà vu. I’ve had to deflect lasers to damage important equipment, defuse a bomb under live conditions, and hastily prepare an antidote for a toxin before it kills me, difficult situations I’ve found myself in before while filling in for Bond.
I know these are spy movie tropes – and exactly the sort of puzzles you should expect in a spy-themed puzzle series – but after a few rumors, I was hoping that Schell Games would find more unique ways of presenting traps that we’re becoming familiar with. Because once formidable situations are losing the stakes they once carried and tending to become mundane.
Case in point, you’re presented with a surprise grenade during a mission. When something like this happened in I expect you to die 2: The spy and the liar I panicked, simmered it a few times in my hands, and blew it up at least twice before I figured out a clever fix. In I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine the grenade appeared and I dealt with it in five seconds, with barely a beep on my Fitbit’s heart rate monitor.
It also doesn’t help that many of the missions feature Prism’s mass-produced robot agents as your opponent, with each having an identical set of skills (read: Agent Phoenix’s tools of destruction) at their disposal. Again, while each engagement had unique elements, there were also many similarities that made situations feel like you were going through the motions rather than solving a puzzle.
Perhaps partly due to this repetitiveness, I felt the Cog in the Machine missions were simpler than previous entries in the series. The game’s side quests help provide some of the challenge I craved when the main game fell short, but I wish I’d struggled a bit more – I loved the trial and error gameplay that was afforded by the previous entries and was left disappointed by his absence here.
Your bonus mission, if you choose to accept it
If you want to make your way through the game’s story, which consists of six main missions, you can finish everything in a few hours or maybe even less (it entirely depends on how quickly you can solve the puzzles in front of you). But there is plenty of replay value for those of you who want to become a bona fide super spy.
Each mission has six bonus objectives to keep you coming back for more. First, there are three side missions that give you special tasks to complete that are unique to each level; they include finding alternative (typically non-intuitive) ways to solve one of the mission’s main puzzles, serving your accomplices the correct food or drink, or taking a less destructive approach when facing Prism and Zoraxis.
Then there are the hidden robot statues and ghost coins in each level. The statues are usually hidden in plain sight; simply explore the level keeping your eyes peeled (paying close attention to dark nooks and crannies) and you should eventually come across all six. Ghost Coins are a little more complicated to find and usually require you to solve a hidden puzzle or two to earn them. If you’re having trouble, look out for the Phantom’s mark – it’s the best place to start your search.
Finally, each mission has a target time that you are tasked with beating. Some of these time limits are no joke, and you’ll need to know the stage backwards if you want to finish fast enough.
Speaking of ending up ticking off one of these extra special assignments, you’ll need to complete the level successfully. Leave the mission early or die before you get to the end and it won’t record that you’ve completed a challenge, forcing you to try all over again.
Accessibility
I expect you to die 3: Gear in the machine it’s one of the most accessible VR games out there.
To begin with, just like the other titles in the series, you play the entire game while seated – you never need to get up and walk around to solve any of the problems Agent Phoenix has to deal with. Additionally, as Agent Phoenix you can interact with the world using your telekinetic powers which help further reduce the amount of mobility required to complete your missions.
There’s also a robust suite of audio accessibility settings including closed captions and audio display, plus a chat log so you can read what’s been said at your own pace. Also, while there are no colorblind settings, you don’t need to identify any colors to solve the game’s missions.
As far as VR comfort settings are concerned, this game features helpful vignetting to reduce motion sickness when moving in vehicles like car and gondola. As someone who can get motion sick easily, I found this to do more than enough to keep my nausea at bay: I could play for hours at a time and only had to stop when my Quest 2 ran low.
How we reviewed I Expect You To Die 3
I played I expect you to die 3: Gear in the machine on my Oculus Quest 2 with my playthrough taking me about eight hours. This included completing the entire main story and attempting to complete as many bonus challenges as possible. I played with the comfort controls on their default settings. I found that performance-wise the game ran well with no noticeable hitches and the load times weren’t very long, although they were noticeable.
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