I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine Review

That Austin Powers fellow gets into a lot of action-packed, dangerous scenarios doesn’t he? Well, what if he couldn’t move from wherever he happened to be sitting, and had telekinetic powers? And about 100% less Burt Baccarat. Well, then you have I Expect You To Die! And since it’s 2023, now you have I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine! That’s right, Agent Phoenix is back from a brief stint of “being presumed dead”, ready to take on the evil Zor and make the world safe again.

In case you’ve never come across the series before, I Expect You To Die 3: Cog in the Machine is a VR puzzle game which sees you sitting in a variety of chairs across several locations, and trying to not die. Mainly, you’re going to have many traps to overcome, some of them quickly, otherwise you’re going to die and have to restart the mission.

I won’t bury the lede here, I really enjoyed the first two games for a variety of reasons. However, just because I enjoyed previous games, don’t take it as read that I liked this one! In fact, you should keep reading to find out what I really thought, skipping right to the end is for agents of Zor, you’re not one of those are you? If you are, you have to tell me.

Donning the hat and gloves of everyone’s favourite telekinetic spy, Agent Phoenix, you start small by being tasked with investigating the disappearance of a scientist. An important one, mind you: she helped create the thing that gives you your telekinesis! That’s right, as I keep saying, you can move things using the power of your mind! Okay, you have to point at them, but then it’s a simple matter to move objects or make the important things hang in place so that you don’t lose them. After all, who knows when you might need a recipe for a poison antidote to be within easy reach?

However, It’s not always easy to aim your reticle at the exact item you want to grab, and seeing as you’re sitting and not allowed to move, it’s often difficult to achieve a better angle. To be honest, most things are easy to grab, it’s mainly the hidden objects that require a bit of work to get to.

Each mission will see you defying death from a variety of causes, just like the previous games. It’s not just poisoned sandwiches and taxidermied bears armed with crossbows this time! Now there are entirely new ways to die; and you will. You die, then restart the level with the knowledge that grappling hooks conduct electricity, for example. That’s the point of I Expect You To Die 3 as well as the name, learn by doing! Sure, you may hate that you spent 30 minutes working things out before you got killed, but it could be worse! You’ll find out the Target Time is like four minutes and wonder how on Io that’s even possible since it took you four minutes just to finish mixing a cocktail…

Of course, you can just play through I Expect You To Die 3’s six missions and be done, but then you’re only playing half of the game. There are hidden items to find and side quests to complete — can you serve a robot its favourite drink? There are also different ways to complete each mission to make it worth experimenting, as well as the aforementioned speedrunning pace.

I’m not going to spoil the locations that you visit, but they’re suitably “super secret spy” places. The story spans six missions, each in a different kind of chair in a new locale, and they’re all very well designed and each location looks fantastic. It’s the sort of over-the-top, overdesigned, timeless aesthetic you might expect from the best sort of spy-fi (science fiction but with spies).

The voice acting is stellar, and the music is fantastic. Absolutely no notes, and I’m so glad that you can literally just sit there and listen to the music while in the office. Oh, and you can replay the opening title sequence which, much like the previous two, is spectacular.

While fun, challenging, and hilarious, I Expect You To Die 3 is unfortunately not perfect. The loading times could be better, and there was the occasional stutter despite it being natively on the Meta Quest 2. But that’s about it! I had a blast playing it, and I really look forward to I Expect You To Die returning.