Now Playing: I Expect You To Die (VR)

I must admit, I’m kind of disappointed by I Expect You To Die. It’s a VR puzzle game with a spoof James Bond twist. It’s a seated experience in which you must complete various missions, each in a unique location with its own unique objectives and puzzle to solve. They are, to a degree, virtual escape rooms – you have to figure out the correct order of actions in order to complete your objective and escape with your life.

The ‘I Expect You To Die’ title is entirely appropriate given that you’ll likely die several times on each mission before you discover the correct solution. There’s no checkpoints, so every death will result in a complete reset. This may be understandable given how short each mission is – 5-15 minutes on your first play, including the time wasted on death related restarts. 

On one hand, this approach makes sense within the context of the game’s design and setting, but it can also be incredibly frustrating and actually discourage the exploration and experimentation that would make a virtual escape room puzzle fun to solve. In I Expect You To Die, any ‘wrong’ action nearly always results in an unavoidable player death, forcing a mission reset and restart. This, initially, is somewhat amusing, as you see all of the various ways in which each puzzle is designed to kill you, but it does become rather irritating as you try to progress.

 

As I said, it feels counter-intuitive to the design of a virtual escape room puzzle because any attempt to deviate from the ‘correct’ solution nearly always results in a death and restart. Yes, an escape room will typically only have a single solution, but there may be multiple ways in which a player can discover that solution. In I Expect You To Die, however, there’s really only one correct order of actions the player must take to complete the mission.

This turns the game into what can be a rather tedious system of trial and error as you continually die and restart each mission until you figure out what the correct order of actions may be. There’s little to no scope for player creativity. If anything, the game actively discourages it. You’re expected to die and restart as many times as necessary until you figure out the correct order of actions to complete the mission. 

The game does give you little hints and clues and obviously, common sense is going to be a factor, but there’s a lot of random and unavoidable deaths that trigger simply as you explore and attempt to interact with various objects within each mission. There’s no warning or obvious indications that your interaction will trigger a failure state. It just triggers and you have to die and restart, now aware of what not to press or do.

 

I don’t want to exaggerate the issue – like I said, each mission, even with several deaths and restarts, only takes 5-15 minutes to complete. I’m just disappointed by how linear each mission is. It was rare that I felt like I’d really figured something out and solved the puzzle in my own way. Instead, it was more like I was just testing different combinations of actions until I struck upon the correct order required to progress. To me, that’s not a sign of a good puzzle game – when the solutions are obtained not through your own ingenuity, but instead by exhausting all the incorrect solutions until you find the correct one.

Visually, I Expect You To Die looks pretty decent. The presentation is very good, with each mission accessed via your virtual spy office in which you can collect various ‘souvenirs’ from each location. These souvenirs are kind of like mini-objectives on each mission (including a speed run) and do give I Expect You Die some replay value – but not much.

I wasn’t expecting a substantial VR experience, but when you can clear all of the missions (7 in total) in under two hours, that’s not exactly great value, not when you factor in the asking price. I picked up I Expect You To Die in a sale and I’m glad I did because if I’d paid any more I think I would have probably refunded it.

 

I don’t want to be too hard on I Expect You To Die. The presentation, music and VA are all very good. It certainly doesn’t feel like a ‘cheap’ VR experience. The problem is, whilst everything surrounding the core of the game is pretty good, the core itself – the puzzles – are rather weak and disappointing. I still had fun playing through I Expect You To Die, but I felt like I was desperately trying to dredge what enjoyment I could out of it, rather than letting the game entertain me.

I’ve written a longer review of I Expect You To Die than I do for far more substantial games and experiences, but I guess that gives you a sense of how disappointed I am by it. I really like the concept of VR escape room style puzzles. One of my favourite VR experiences was the Belko Experiment VR promotional game. Despite being a free download created primarily to advertise a movie, it offered a more elaborate and substantial puzzle to explore than any of the missions in I Expect You To Die.

It didn’t rely on cheap ‘die and restart’ tricks. It didn’t rely on trial and error gameplay to progress. It let the player explore at their own pace, be creative and figure out how to proceed and survive on their own. That’s what I Expect You To Die is lacking and that’s why I can’t really recommend it. If you see it on sale, I’d still say it might be worth a punt. You’ll get at least two hours of mild entertainment out of it. But that’s about all.

5/10