Invisible, Inc. Review

Time is running out, I've got a few precious seconds before the guard wakes up, notices the body of his friend and all hell breaks loose. I had this whole thing on Lockdown, Central was pleased, everything was going to plan - one mistake - one mistake and you're going to pay for it, for a lifetime... if you get out alive that is.

Not so Invisible this time, Miss. Inc.

Klei are one of those developers who never fail to impress me, first I saw their game Shank, and Shank 2. Then Mark of the Ninja blew me away with its steady mix of platforming, stealth, murder, and outright clever design. Now they're taking turn based spy-infiltration gameplay to the next level, with their XCOM-like Cyberpunk spy game: Invisible, Inc on the PS4. Sure it's been on the PC, but now it's on Sony's console with the expansion bundled in, and it's absolutely engrossing.

It's hard not to draw comparisons with XCOM really, since they're both turn based, both rely on tactics, and both have similar action-point resource management systems in play. But whereas XCOM relies on you blowing the hell out of every alien you come across, Invisble requires you think like a spy in order to survive. It's not about shooting your way in, or out. Guns bring complications, sure, you can use them if you have them, and lethal options are there - the cleanup crews that go in behind you once you're out though, they want a mission payout cut and you're going to pay through the nose to make your botched infiltration murder-joy spree go away.

Everything you do in the game has a cost, your agents actions have a point based economy and opening doors to peek through, KO'ing guards, hacking terminals, and using abilities all draw from your pool of action points. Run out and you'll need to end the turn to get more, this hands control over to the CPU's AI hostiles, and late game you can run into some incredibly tough opposition.

The idea of Invisible, Inc is pretty simple, you're on the back foot out of the gate, something went wrong and your last op wasn't just compromised, so was your HQ. Central, the woman in charge, is on the run with Incognita, a genius-level AI construct. Incognita only has a limited supply of power on her backup generator before she's offline, Invisible Incorporated needs to get back at the Corps that did this, steal everything it can, make enough money to survive, and find a new place to lay low.

You've got only 72 hours to do this, and the clock's ticking out of the box.

Everything you do consumes time, flying across the globe to embark on a mission sucks away those precious hours.

You're going to fail a lot of times, and each time you do, you gain experience from the previous run, unlocking new things, agents, and more.

Failure isn't just END GAME, it's a chance to get better and better.

Spend money in the game on your current playthrough and you can unlock better stats for your agents, but if you fail, time runs out, or the Agency just needs retiring, you'll start from level 1 again with your agents. You keep any unlocked agents though, losing all augments and so forth.

Procedural Spy Game

It's gorgeous, it's fludily animated, it's got some great cartoon cut-scenes and some superb voice and audio work.

Invisible, Inc isn't just a great looking game with stylish characters, superb animations, and really solid writing. It's also a really clever game, creating procedural layouts for each location every time you play, you're not going to be able to memorise layouts, guard patterns, or anything to give you an edge - it all changes.

The missions you undertake on the world map are all randomly generated too, barring the first few which act as a tutorial to ease you in. You might get tasked with stealing data, money, augmentations, or dozens of other missions as you progress through the tightly structured campaign.

It's a delightful single player experience that's frenetic in one way, and incredibly relaxing in another.

I don't really want to delve too deeply into the gameplay, since it does a wonderful job of teaching you about the mechanics as you play. What I'll say is that it's easy to play, but really hard to master, it's delightfully evil in terms of layouts and what can happen in those missions.

Why? Because you're always against the Alarm Level of the map you're on. Once you beam in, the Corp you're invading is trying to detect you. It knows that Incognita is there with you, using her to hack the various systems (ala Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or any decent Cyberpunk scenario), opening laser fences, knocking out cameras, and so on.

As a way of making the game more interesting, Klei have decided to raise the Alarm Level over time in the mission. Each milestone segment of the meter switches things up, perhaps more guards, new cameras, re-activated old systems you've knocked out. It makes no two games the same, and it makes you think on your feet.

Loot you get in mission can be traded mid-mission with a useful NPC character who will also sell you gear you might require.

Variety, the spice of Espionage!

There's a plethora of game modes for you to enjoy, and a huge swathe of custom options to play with out of the gate. DO NOT BE TEMPTED to alter anything for your first game, yes, there's a load of neat things you can mess with, BUT, honestly it'll dilute the experience and give you some really bad habits for playing the game proper.

Stick with Normal mode, and give Invisible, Inc a chance to win you over with the core gameplay first.

Otherwise you'll not get the full experience.

Mr. Not Bond, I presume

It's a truly great game, a cyberpunk espionage tale with a neat story, some real stakes, and most of all completely addictive gameplay. It's capable of sucking away hours and hours of your time, pulling you back for just one more run, or one more safe...

There's loads more to it that I could cover, really though, just get it and play it.

That's my advice. 

Oh and: CLOSE DOORS BEHIND YOU!

Now I need to go rescue a gal from a cell elsewhere in the world, perhaps she'll join my Agency, and perhaps this time we'll get what we want!

3

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1

And go!