I Expect You To Die 2 review: the most fun I’ve had solving puzzles this year

You’re not really a secret agent until you put on a funny hat and fake mustache while you’re trying to stop an evil conglomerate from filling a theater with poison gas. At least, that’s what I Expect You To Die 2 posits, and I think it’s about right.

I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and The Liar is a sequel to one of the first hit virtual reality titles, which was released by Schell Games in 2016 for first-gen VR headsets. The series riffs on James Bond and other classic super spy franchises. Using motion controls and a headset, you play a field agent whose missions invariably turn into convoluted deathtraps, and you have to escape using whatever objects happen to be nearby. Behind its tongue-in-cheek tone and colorful retro stylings, it’s a master class in translating an often frustrating genre for an often frustrating piece of hardware — and it’s the most fun I’ve had solving puzzles this year.

I Expect You To Die 2 descends from the kinds of classic adventure games that punish tiny slip-ups with a horrible demise. Like the original, it pits you against the evil organization Zoraxis, which has a mysterious plan for (obviously) world domination. Where the original game featured almost totally standalone scenarios, the six new missions are an extended cat-and-mouse game involving an actor named John Juniper. Juniper, voiced by Wil Wheaton, gets a genuinely Bond-worthy character conceit: he prepares for roles by commissioning an elaborate mask of the person he’s embodying, then wears it continuously until his premiere.

Larger narrative aside, each mission is a puzzle box full of secret compartments and props for you to throw around with your virtual hands. You do this all without leaving your chair; when something is too far away, you can grab it telekinetically with a button on your motion controller. If you know exactly how to solve each puzzle, an I Expect You To Die level might take a few minutes to complete. But as the name suggests, half the experience is watching things go wrong.

Poison gas was my worst enemy in I Expect You To Die 2, although I’ve also been sliced up by a sharpened pendulum, killed by a grenade in a dumbwaiter, and offed by an exploding cigar. Each failure just leaves you staring into a briefcase with a little slip of virtual paper explaining your cause of death, plus an instant restart button — so it’s not really a big deal. (You see essentially the same thing when you win a scenario, except that you get cake instead of death.)

I tend to find adventure games, especially VR ones, deeply maddening. When you’re already stumped trying to guess how developers want you to solve a puzzle, being stuck in a headset while you’re thinking through it is even worse than staring at a screen, and that’s hampered my enjoyment of other titles like The Room VR. Additionally, in the I Expect You To Die series, physics and motion controls add a layer of uncertainty to all your problem-solving. I got…