Unseen Diplomacy 2 Review – VR Spycraft That Tests Your Patience

Unseen Diplomacy 2 Review

Unseen Diplomacy 2 from Triangular Pixels is their latest VR offering in the secret agent/spy genre. You play as the head of a secret agency in dangerous times. Evil-doers are afoot and out to destroy the world. You have to complete missions, manage your agents and use intel to find out your enemy’s plans in order to save the world.

Unseen Diplomacy 2 features a real-life scale obstacle course that uses every inch of your play area. You can also play the game seated, but there is the rub with this game. It is obvious that the designers intended Unseen Diplomacy 2 for room-scale play rather than seated play. The developers created the game world with real-world movements in mind. They encourage you to move physically through the world – walking, climbing, crouching, and sometimes even crawling.

The game boasts it creates a holodeck-like experience with its innovative environmental redirection system. This allows you to experience a game level much larger than the recommended 2-meter square area of your home. The game makes the most of your home space and will do so automatically by adjusting the level design on the fly. It’s a pretty neat technical trick to be sure, but creates a fundamental flaw.

Since the game generates levels to fit your play area, the environments are very constrictive. In the game world, you are either in small rooms, narrow connecting corridors, or air ducts. There are also ladders and elevators. Despite the global threat, the cattle chute nature of the level design makes everything feel claustrophobic.

Cell Shading

The game employs a cell shaded style that works well in VR. The game needs less graphical power because it doesn’t require texturing on objects. Instead, a stylistic approach like that used by Borderworlds or Roboquest game, gives the world its sense of identity. Heavy, thick black lines on everything give objects their sense of presence.

Unseen Diplomacy 2 builds upon its predecessor by introducing a campaign with missions. Even better, you can choose the order in which you do them and where in the world you start. The missions vary in content, such as procuring items or information. The overall goal is to gather intel on the enemy counterspies to find out their endgame. You can either challenge or evade enemies based on mission conditions. The strategy element comes from the doomsday countdown that is ticking away. Ideally, your spy will be in the proper place already as you narrow the location of the final showdown.

As in any good spy game, you need gadgets. Unseen Diplomacy 2 takes its inspiration from the 90s. So each item has one and only one specific function. You have a variety of tools to choose from, such as wire cutters, a blowgun – for disabling security devices such as cameras and robots, a screwdriver, and form flow device that creates new wires to hack security alarms and locks. These all come with their own variants, not all of which are ideal. A squeaky pair of wire cutters could inadvertently attract the unwanted attention of a security bot.

When you’re on a mission, there is a lot of information to keep track of. Things such as objectives, maps, threats, and notes. This is where your spy watch comes in. Not only does it handle all that, but the watch also acts as a communication device with headquarters. It can send digitized versions of any photos taken. You also have access to the game options, too.

Spy Trade

Besides gadgets, spies also need disguises. Not only do disguises let you gain access to restricted areas, but they also provide cover from enemy surveillance. Plus, like gadgets, they have their pluses and minuses. Some may have more pockets or health and make you more sneaky. Others may offer less than you would normally.

Your spies will need all these spy tools because enemy security is ever vigilant. Bots will take your picture and report you. Other bots will respond to alarms to attack you. Besides bots, there are obstacles designed to burn, slice, pierce or crush you if trip them. You must be ever vigilant!

All of this sounds grand and a great recipe for an exceptional espionage adventure, but the game stumbles in execution. There is a general lack of polish that hinders and frustrates. This is especially true of interactions with your gear and the spy watch. Everything is clunky and cumbersome. Picking objects from inventory is frustrating. Grabbing the right object is only the start. If you drop the object, getting it back is a pain. There is no proximity grab. You must physically crouch down to the object before you can retrieve it. While this may be accurate to real life, it does not make for enjoyable gaming.

There is further aggravation in just handling objects. When you finally grab the right object, it is not in the right spot or orientation. So you must manually reposition it. The accuracy of object use frustrates too. Cutting wires is difficult because positioning the cutter blades is cumbersome. The same holds true for all the other gadgets. The blowgun suffers from this problem too, doubly so because it is your defense against bots and cameras. Too often you will fumble with getting the proper grip, leaving you open to attack. Another annoying interaction is with doors. They close too fast. If you are thinking of approaching an open door slowly, forget it.

Frustrating Controls

Then there is the spy watch. Accessing the menu is easy enough, but not so the individual functions. There are eight buttons, and getting the right one to activate feels like playing whack-a-mole. Sometimes the button you want to press doesn’t register, or another button reacts instead. You take all these clunky object interactions together, and the frustration level gets high in very short order.

It’s too bad the game has these rough edges because conceptually there is a fun spy versus spy mechanic here. Veterans of the first game may not find the same level of frustration. It is vital that you do the tutorials before starting the campaign. The campaign should remain locked until players complete the tutorials.

Unseen Diplomacy 2 is available on Steam and Meta. There is no mixed-reality mode. For all you spy types out there, if you have a high patience level, this game may provide you with the wanted tension and thrills.

***Steam Game Code provided by publisher***