The rise of James Bond in the ’60s begat many homages and imitators, with a blend of movies, TV shows and strange parodies along the way. There were a sea of knock-offs, homages and subversions on various tropes and character types with various degrees of success. Shows like Get Smart from Mel Brooks were proof that you could take a spy show and make it dramatic, while also rooting it in comedy. Other attempts at spy movies like Neil Connery’s OK Connery became staples of B-movie mockery over the years.
The spirit of that time frame has never quite been captured in game, however, as even the official From Russia With Love game got the license right, but didn’t nail the whole vibe of the spy genre from that era. I Expect You to Die’s VR games have come the closest, but focus more on traps than heists. Heists have become more en vogue in gaming thanks to the GTA games, with San Andreas lighting the spark for them and GTA IV and especially V taking them to new heights with how intricate the operations can be.
Spy thrillers and capers were something that gained in popularity across the world, with Japan getting a manga and later 50+ years of anime shows, TV specials and theatrical films out of Monkey Punch’s Lupin the Third. Inspired by Maurice LeBlanc’s Arsene Lupin novel character, Lupin III has become one of the most-parodied figures in anime and the Lupin bloodline even gets a nice homage here in the form of he French thief Larcin. Deceive Inc’s love of all things spy thriller shines through from the moment the game is started up and bold art deco designs flood the screen. Here, the goal is to either work as a solo act or as part of a team to retrieve a briefcase from a hot zone and extract it. Solo has permadeath, but it allows you to queue up for another match.
Like a lot of games using heists as their framework in a sub-game, Deceive Inc features a few different phases. The insertion phase is where the player gets their initial disguise and one can go with a civilian disguise or better yet, a staff disguise to make faster progress. you may also go with a VIP guest disguise to change up the character interaction dialogue and perhaps make faster progress than even staff depending on the disguise. Moving on from phase to phase requires getting to a certain hacking point total from interactive areas on the map, with fast areas only yielding a single point, while you can gain more points on areas that take more time to hack into.
Stealth is key because you want to avoid getting swarmed by civilians by blowing your cover as that opens the door to other agents to take you out. Getting the briefcase requires hacking three vault terminals either on your own or with allies ideally. Enemies can also hack them, leading to you having to hope that they get killed and can’t grab the case. A time limit of twelve minute keeps things speedy as after that point, the vault is unlocked and it’s a free for all for the case and then the extraction point.
The blend of stealth and hero shooter (or I guess villain shooter in this case) is interesting as it allows the game to played differently from other games in either sub-genre. For the most part, playing carefully is the key to success – but if you’re caught, then you have to get into hero shooter mode and take folks out to survive and wait until your cover re-activates in a few seconds. You can lurk around the area and try to find a power-up to speed the process up, but it’s usually only useful if you’re in a minimally-crowded area early on in the mission.
Different play styles allow each character to feel distinct. Some are better at long-range attacks while others excel at deception and speed. In that regard, it reminds me a lot of Lupin III heists where each character has their own role to play in the heist. Having someone who can brute force their way through combat is nice and may be more fun in the short-term, but isn’t as efficient as someone who can blend into the background easier with better disguise skills.
Visually, it holds up nicely on both regular PC hardware and on the Steam Deck. The exaggerated art style holds up nicely on the small screen and the art deco-influenced menus are easier to read on the small screen than I would’ve expected going on. No matter how fast the action is, there’s never any slowdown and the on-screen prompts for every interactive action in the world help make it easy to avoid forgetting what button is needed to do things like gather resources.
The soundtrack is fantastic for a spy thriller, with a lot of retro-sounding music in place that would be at home with a Bond movie score, but nothing quite as bombastic as a 007 opening song. Each character has small voice clips to help give you an idea as to their character and it allows the cast to stand out more. The sound design as a whole is strong when it comes to weapons and attacks, with a blunt melee attack sounding more forceful than just about everything in the game at the expense of that being a short-range attack and one that leaves the player more open to retaliation without the benefit of distance like a firearm.
DECEIVE INC does a fantastic job at what it’s trying to do, but is something that will take some getting used to for both fans of stealth and hero shooters. Hero shooter fans will have to retrain their brains to a slower pace for the action, while stealth fans have to prepare for faster-paced action when the going gets rough. That kind of diverse play is one thing that helps keep longer play sessions interesting alongside the large maps. There are only a handful of maps available, but they’re so vast with so many nooks and crannies that you never feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over. DECEIVE INC is a must for anyone with a love for classic spy fiction, or who just loves the GTA V format for heists.
