VICE Undercover Preview

I’m a fan of the 1980s aesthetic, not gonna lie. I was born in 1983, and it charms me every time I hear synthwave music or see neon signs. But are these the only reasons to get excited for this point & click narco-thriller called VICE Undercover?

In the interest of not burying the lede, the Steam page has an AI disclosure message on it. It explains that the images used for the database were “enhanced” with AI, solely utilising a base of photographs taken by the team. It goes on to say that the AI images were not used as-is, merely acting as a starting point. It’s just unfortunate that some of the photos don’t appear to have been altered enough, as some of them have a certain “shiny” quality which some generative AI are known to have.

So what’s VICE Undercover about? You play an undercover police detective who is sent into the legitimate office of a known criminal for one hour per day. That’s when the criminal goes for lunch or something, it’s not too important, all you have to remember is that you have one hour to accomplish tasks, and that’s a real hour. If you finish early, then all the better.

The majority of the game is spent on the computer, using Amigo OS and special police hacking software to gain access to their databases and emails. Your colleagues at the police station will send you instant messages about things that they want to know, to help with cases. You’ll then search through the information available on the computer and append it to the associated case files. But make sure you’re accurate!

There are two types of request: optional and urgent. If you get the optional ones wrong, there’s no big issue, but get an urgent one wrong and it’s game over. Worse, there are no checkpoints, so if you’re 40 minutes into a day and get the last bit of info wrong, you have to restart the entire day all over again. Sure, since you now know what you’re looking for, you can get that time down when you reattempt it, but I find it very deflating to lose literally tens of minutes of progress in something.

It’s not all Amigo OS stuff, as there are drawers to lockpick, safes to bust, and the internet to restart. The master switch is in a server room off to the side, which incidentally you can hide in if required, so if you lose connection, you know where to go.

VICE Undercover is an interesting game, which requires paying attention to all of the text. There might be voiceovers in the full game, but in the version I played it was just music. Really good music, I should add. But yeah, if reading isn’t your strong suit, you won’t get much out of this game. However, if you like reading full backstories on the criminal element as you try to work out who the sub-lieutenant of a gang is, then keep an eye on this.