This dynamic of anticipation and dread, combined with the stark contrast between the agent’s cautious exploration and the alien’s predatory stillness, brings an unsettling atmosphere to the game. It feels reminiscent of certain asymmetrical multiplayer VR experiences like Panoptic, where two sides use different strategies and abilities. Here, though, the tension is cranked up a notch because you never know exactly when danger will strike.

Mannequin Mayhem

Mannequin‘s gameplay offers more depth than it might first appear. What starts as a straightforward hide-and-seek game quickly develops into a mind game where both teams need to rely on strategy and communication. As an alien, one of the most enjoyable elements is setting traps. For example, one alien could purposely get caught moving, luring agents into the open where others are waiting in ambush. The aliens have a short dash ability, so the moment they get close to an agent, it’s usually game over.

For agents, though, it’s not so simple. Their detection equipment can help spot moving aliens, but they have to be careful with their shots—accidentally shooting a real frozen human means their gun jams, leaving them vulnerable to attack. This constant balancing act keeps the stakes high. I found this part of the gameplay particularly satisfying, especially with how easy it is to slip up as an agent if you’re overconfident.

What really makes Mannequin stand out is the emphasis on teamwork. Even after you’re “killed” and turned into a ghost, you can continue helping your team by scouting out aliens or agents and communicating their locations. This keeps the experience engaging even after death, similar to how Echo VR kept stunned players involved with team coordination even when they were out of action. The revive mechanic also adds another layer of strategy, with the potential for thrilling comebacks if your teammates are quick on their feet.

Frozen in Time

Visually, Mannequin does an excellent job at crafting an eerie atmosphere. The stylistic graphics complement the gameplay well, with its frozen humans scattered in mid-movement, as if life just paused around you. This is enhanced by little details like objects suspended in the air as though frozen in time, reminding me a bit of the surreal environments in Into the Radius, where floating objects give an otherworldly feel.

The color palette strikes a balance between vibrant and unsettling, creating environments that feel frozen in more ways than one. That said, the levels can start to feel somewhat repetitive. While the frozen environments are distinct, they don’t vary much between rounds, and the art style, while effective, could benefit from more diverse settings. Hopefully, future updates bring more variety to the maps, which would help keep things fresh for players long-term.

Listen Closely, or Else

If the graphics set the mood, the audio in Mannequin makes it essential to your survival. Spatial and locational audio play a huge role, especially if you’re playing as an alien. Your ears are your best defense, letting you track the movements of agents by listening for their footsteps or the beeping of their detection equipment. There’s a strong sense of tension as you’re frozen in place, relying on sound alone to plan your next move.

On the flip side, agents need to pay close attention to these same auditory cues, using them to pinpoint mannequin movements. The audio design is exceptional here, elevating the suspense and making every game feel like a high-stakes dance of patience and precision. In this regard, it shares a bit of DNA with stealth games like Phantom: Covert Ops, where audio is critical to both tension and gameplay. The way sound influences your decisions adds to the immersive quality of the game, making it as much about listening as it is about looking.

Live by the Community, Die by the Community

Like many multiplayer VR games, Mannequin’s longevity will largely depend on its community. The game has all the tools to be successful—a fun and accessible concept, depth for strategy lovers, and enough tension to keep things interesting. However, whether it thrives or falters will come down to the player base.

During my time playing, I noticed a mix of younger players and casual gamers, which isn’t surprising given the straightforward mechanics. The game doesn’t demand the kind of dedication you’d expect from more hardcore VR experiences like Population: One or Onward. It’s the kind of game you can jump into for a few rounds and still feel like you’ve had a good time. But without a solid community to keep the lobbies full and the matches engaging, it could be tough for Mannequin to sustain long-term appeal.

Memory Lane

For all the positives, Mannequin does have one major flaw that threatens to undermine its long-term replayability: the frozen NPCs aren’t randomized between rounds. Once you’ve memorized where the real frozen humans are, playing as an agent becomes significantly easier. If you have a good visual memory (like I do), you’ll quickly start recognizing which figures are NPCs, making it much harder for aliens to blend in.

This is something I pointed out during playtesting, and I was surprised to see it hadn’t been addressed in the latest update. Randomizing the placement of NPCs seems like a no-brainer for a game like this, where unpredictability is key to maintaining suspense. Until this is fixed, the game risks losing its edge for more observant players, and that could turn away some of its more dedicated audience.

A Mannequin with Potential

Mannequin is a unique and suspenseful multiplayer experience that brings a fresh concept to the Quest’s lineup. The game offers moments of high tension and strategic depth, with its simple yet effective mechanics. The graphics, while not groundbreaking, create a memorable atmosphere, and the audio design is top-notch, integral to the core gameplay.

That said, its future success depends on two key factors: the community and continued updates. If the player base stays active and the developers address some of the current issues—particularly the non-randomized NPCs—Mannequin could become a go-to casual multiplayer experience. For now, it’s an entertaining game with a lot of potential, and with a free trial available, there’s little reason not to give it a shot. Whether you’re a kid looking for some fun or an adult who enjoys casual, strategic gaming, Mannequin has something for everyone.

Note: I’d happily give it a 7.5 if they add NPC randomization! So if you’re reading this at some point in the future when that’s been done, then it’s a 7.5!

Boater Cell

Your job, generic agent, is to infiltrate somewhere or other and stop the Russian terrorists from unleashing a fiendish thingy or somesuch. We aren’t really here for the plot or characters. There are some bad people, in a forbidding, abandoned facility. They need to be stopped. Thankfully, the whole place is flooded, and you’re a kickass black ops type. Stuck in a kayak. 

Yes. The unusual and excellent conceit at the heart of Phantom: Covert Ops is that the player spends the whole game stealthing around, shooting and hiding, in a kayak. What must have been a challenging elevator pitch turns out to be a superb way of utilising the virtues of VR, and sidestepping a lot of the problems that some people have with it. By making the player remain sedentary and yet still empowering them with convincing movement, it opens up the playing field a little to people who might otherwise find the immersion a challenge due to motion sickness. It’s canny, but more importantly, it works fantastically well. 

Oars of the Patriots

In real life, you plonk yourself on a chair with some arm room. Maybe you can even sit on the floor with your legs stretched out for additional immersion. Hell, why not go the whole hog and seat yourself in an actual kayak before donning the headset? Lockdown affects us all in different ways; they can’t touch you for it.

In the game, you’re sat with everything you could need within arms’ reach; Silenced pistol on your chest, sniper rifle down the right of the boat, paddles to the left, and a pair of binoculars, which act as your scanning mode and camera, resting on your lap. They all snap back into their cradle positions when you let go, and everything functions as you might hope. The scope on the sniper takes a little bit of self-calibration to get used to, but once you’ve done so, it feels second nature. Like the general design philosophy in the game, everything feels designed to convince rather than be needlessly fiddly, from the simple but satisfying paddling mechanics to the straightforward, chunky act of reloading the guns.

Wet Works

There are a couple of unexpectedly delightful treats in here. The first, thankfully, is the movement of the boat itself. Paddling and manoeuvering feel amazing. nDreams have completely nailed it. It’s the best of all worlds, working as you might expect even if you’re au fait with real kayaking, but also accessible and functionally sound for the game, too. There’s something deliciously right about not quite making it into the reeds you use as hiding spots, and pushing off from some scenery (or frantically paddling in one direction) to conceal yourself before a searchlight sweeps over you. The movement is also quite pleasing at speed. There’s an elegant method of quick turning and even drifting in the water, which is excellent fun.

The second is the real emphasis on stealth and non-lethality. The game stresses this during the first level – it genuinely wants you to distract and avoid most enemies rather than shoot them outright. Whilst it still gives you scope (haha) to utilise those rewarding headshots on some targets, the focus is definitely on infiltration rather than body count. It’s one of the things that increase the replayability of the levels, too, as the game scores you on just how stealthy, accurate and quick you’ve been, with many individual stats for each. There are also hidden objectives and collectables to find on your way through, too. While the game can be whipped through in about seven or so hours, the levels are designed to be revisited. There are also online leaderboards; that perfect stealth run is dangled like a jaffa cake in front of you at every turn. I think it’s pitched just right. The playing time means that the water-bound gimmick never outstays its welcome before the game’s story runs its course, but there’s excellent value for money here too. 

Lake Beater

Whereas Espire 1: VR Operative loaded all the tropes of the stealth-action genre into a game and failed to understand or execute them properly, Phantom: Covert Ops has a strong design ethic and focus that never overreaches. Within the limitations of boat stealth, the devs have done a solid job of exploring the possibilities. There’s sniping. There’s sneaking. There are moments of panic and action. It’ll be great to see a sequel that allows some evolution of these ideas in here. How about rope arrows so you can pull bodies into the water to conceal them, for example? I will say that if, like me, you have been intrigued by the idea of Phantom since it was revealed, that it will not disappoint.

Phantom: Covert Ops promises Metal Gear-style gameplay in a kayak, and it delivers, with good pacing, rewarding gameplay and decent options for replayability. If there’s one major niggle in the game, apart from the shocking decision not to call the protagonist ‘Canoe Reeves’, it’s that the plot and characters are all so po-faced and forgettable. Metal Gear leavened its austere and creaky plot points with eccentric characters and a sense of the absurd; apart from collecting incongruous toy alligators, there’s no playful imagination here. This character blandness is even highlighted by the stunt casting of David Hayter (Solid Snake himself) as the wincingly predictable, if well-voiced, villain General Zhukov. Whilst it’s all done very well, with nothing standing out as sub-par, it’s also pretty forgettable in terms of world-building. But the actual second-to-second experience is great, so we’ll not beat on it too much for that. 

Rainbow Slicks

The graphics and overall presentation are good for the Quest. The menus are really sharp, and the loading screens make use of text overlaid in 3D to make them less static, which is a surprisingly under-utilised trick in VR. There are some impressive vistas, and while the water and lighting effects are predictably lacking compared to the PCVR version, there’s nothing that distracts from the experience at all. There’s nothing that will wow, perhaps, but everything does its job well. The audio is good, with plenty of atmosphere. The game recommends headphones, and I do too. The music is the sort of tense-but-forgettable fare you will probably be expecting of the genre, but some of the environmental ambience is terrific and sells the gameplay well.

It’s worth pointing out that the title is cross-buy with the Rift, so if you want a few more nifty graphical perks and you’re able to make use of Oculus Link, then that’s an option. Whilst nothing here graphically will live in the mind when you’re done, the experience will – and that’s the whole point.

SPY HARD

One of the main appeals of the stealth-action genre is the sense of immersion, even in traditional pancake games. The desperate tension of crouching behind a crate, waiting for a guard to walk past, hoping you’ll have the chance to take him out before he alerts others… Marvellous. There are superb examples of stealth gaming in VR on Steam – Unknightly and Budget Cuts are both stunning, and offer the sort of experience I’ve just described. In VR, that tense immersion is increased a thousandfold, as you physically crouch behind boxes and aim for those headshots. Espire 1 wants you to feel those things too but seems to fundamentally misunderstand what makes all the games it’s emulating so great.

METAL GEAR HORRID

The first and most glaring misstep it makes is, sadly, the actual core conceit of the game. The player character is not physically present in the levels themselves. Instead, he is remotely interfacing with stealth action robot frames (or ‘ubermarionettes‘ as the game would have it, chortle..) via VR.

The devs have made much of this ‘virtual theatre’ system, enabling people who suffer from VR sickness to customise the interface. This way, the in-game view appears to be little more than a 3D overlay on top of a static room. All of these aids can, of course, be switched off for more immersion, but the entire story and setting of the game goes out of its way to remind you that you aren’t ‘there’. Some terrorists have broken into the facility where the Espire units are made, and it’s up to the player to control a hacked unit and take them out. It’s a terrible idea that completely works against the nature of immersion in a stealthy setting. There’s no thrill in the scenario at all. It’s such a low-stake premise to start with that, even if the rest of the game were a rock-solid, well-designed take on the genre, it would take a while to regain its footing. But it isn’t, so the game stumbles from its first hurdle onwards and keeps on tripping over itself, and it’s heartbreaking.

THE SPIES WHO BUGGED ME

I don’t know about you, but the one bit of stealth action games I can do without is constant chatter. There you are, trying to sneak up on a guy, about to consign him to oblivion, when, suddenly, the Codec/earpiece/communicator cuts in. Basil Exposition from British Intelligence decides to bend your ear for half an hour about what it is you’re doing, what’s going on elsewhere. Perhaps he’ll spout some bullshit quasi-philosophy. Well, Espire 1 thinks everyone loves that, so puts more of it in, but without any of the panache or weirdness of the likes of Hideo Kojima. Or even Michael Bay. 

There are no fewer than four irritating voices in your ears while you are trying to stealth it up. They sound so bored and boring that it’s a bit like listening to a recording of a staff meeting at full volume. There’s a tech support guy with the name of Englebert Dechter (who is, yep, you guessed it – Northern Irish), who just sounds like he’s waiting to get off work at a call centre. There’s your boss, as well as some other person who is utterly surplus to requirements but is always sticking her oar in. Then, of course, there’s the ‘quirky’ Japanese-sounding system voice of the ubermarionette (tee-hee!). I think they wanted this to be weird and endearing like the HEV voice in Half-Life, but it’s not only narratively nonsensical, its also just really badly done. 

DO YOU EXPECT ME TO TALK?

I can’t express how irksome and constant all the voices are – and they always lower the stakes even further. In one particularly aggravating sequence, just as you’re getting your bearings with the game’s systems, your ‘ubermarionette’ (guffaw) gets hacked so you can’t use your trigger finger. Meaning the devs want you to use your fists for the next bit. Again, the endless inanity of the radio chatter makes this sound like a call to a tech support line rather than an urgent hand-to-hand struggle for survival. One of the voices says something as crass as ‘just as we’ve got it back up and running they go and mess with it, it’s so irritating’… Again, low stakes tossery of the worst kind. There’s nothing on the ‘ubermarionette’ (snigger) to suggest the trigger finger doesn’t work through this sequence. The fingers on your virtual virtual hands flex and tighten as usual, so it just seems like an afterthought, like so much else in the game. 

FROM RUSSIA WITH BUGS

Attacking the game’s design might be a moot, point, though, given that the systems are so badly broken that it makes any kind of measured approach a waste of time.

The AI in a stealth game doesn’t have to be amazing, it just has to be convincing and consistent. The schizophrenic idiots of Espire 1 are neither. Sometimes they spot you from across the level and raise the alarm. Usually, the guards will surrender if you approach them from behind, whether you’ve said ‘freeze’ or not, which is for the best as the voice commands usually don’t work anyway. Sometimes the guards face the wall in the middle of a firefight, and you can just walk past them. I regularly had them call off a search for me whilst I was shooting them in the face. It’s so abysmal that it’s almost impossible to list all the bugs, errors and poor design choices here.

SPLINTER HELL

Unlockable abilities, like the now well-worn scan/detective vision mode, are introduced gradually through the levels. Yet, they have such a short battery life and long cooldown that you just stand there like a lemon waiting for them to recharge before you can progress. It’s shoddy work that feels like there hasn’t actually been a decent design document for the game. It feels more like a jumble of ideas that no-one has seen fit to cohere into a solid vision.

Worst of all, however, is that the player is so overpowered that stealth is nearly always the worst gameplay option. The baddies fall easily and drop guns with plentiful ammunition. The alarms happen so arbitrarily (because the game is so broken) that you’ll shrug them off and start firing – if the guards notice you at all. The worst thing about being in a firefight and getting shot is one of three voices constantly nagging you that your ubermarionette (hahaha) is damaged and that you should find a quiet spot and heal yourself. 

QUANTUM OF HORRORS

I haven’t played the Steam version of the game, but on Quest, it’s bland-looking at best. The menus look like abysmal low-resolution placeholders. Their childish icons and primary colours that really make it feel like you might be infiltrating a Tomy factory rather than a top-secret installation. The setting itself is so generic that it could be anywhere or anything; there’s a bit of low-key cribbing off the N64’s GoldenEye, but nothing you won’t have seen a thousand times before. In one room and one room only there’s an out of place texture of some rubbish and a soda can on the floor. This seems arbitrary until a few rooms later when Dechter exclaims ‘look at the state of the place’, which is pristine. Another corner cut.

Graphics aren’t even decent enough to be solid and bland – you’ll see a lot of clipped and muddy textures and more glitches than can be counted. 

WHAT WAS THAT NOISE?

The sound, apart from the dreary voice work, is completely generic and forgettable. One curious design decision is to make the walking sound of the supposedly stealth-based ubermarionette (snicker) a weird rattly jiggling noise, a bit like its made of dry pasta and string. It’s… Not good. 

Espire 1: VR Operative really wants to be compared to GoldenEye, but turns up to the stealth party half cut, wearing clown shoes and flashing LED glasses.

If Espire 1 is in this state and deemed fit for full-price release, I can’t even imagine what it must have been like when they decided to delay it. Even if the next few months were spent patching out the clear problems with the engine itself, there’s nothing of note about the game at all beyond its asinine writing and execution. It was perhaps bound not to be able to live up to the hype, but this is poor beyond all comprehension.

[Editors Note: Due to the many bugs present in Espire 1 when it was released, we postponed working on the review until the first patch was released to give it a decent chance. Due to some circumstances on our part, two more updates were released by the time this review was completed, both of which were taken into consideration when reviewing the game. For update release notes, check out the Tripwire Forums.]

How would you describe the concept of Ninjato? 

Ninjato is a dark take on being a ninja in 15th-century Japan, with a heavy focus on stealth, exploration and of course combat. We want you to experience what it’s like to be a low ranking shinobi of average skill, where you’re considered expendable if you fail your mission. We want there to be a strong element of fear in going against stronger and heavily trained opponents – such as samurai – if you’re discovered and the chances of death are incredibly high. Objectives are meant to be difficult so the player can make their own choices in how to complete their mission. Avoidance is the key to completing tough assignments, but sometimes that’s not always possible. 

Is there a storyline in the game? Who is the main character?

There will definitely be a storyline in the game, but it’s up to the player to figure out what’s going on. Due to the nature of VR, you will be able to explore in order to overhear important conversations, steal documents describing the current events, and go against your mission orders to uncover hidden agendas. As to who the main character is, we’d like to keep that a secret. This is the era of famous and well-known warriors after all such as Hattori Hanzo, the Fuma ninja clan and, of course, Musashi Miyamoto. Perhaps they may be involved in some way…

Why make Ninjato in VR, as opposed to other platforms? 

The nature of VR is exciting, and the ability to overwhelm the senses is perfect for people to experience the sensations of conflict and fear in an up-close and personal manner. Every action is more tangible in VR, where even sliding open windows and doors feel satisfying due to the sounds and vibrations felt in the controllers. For the first time, we feel like this is the perfect opportunity to showcase what it might be like to actually feel like a warrior in Feudal Japan.

Preview	Product	Price
	Oculus Quest All-in-one VR Gaming Headset – 128GB	$495.00	Buy on Amazon

The Oculus Quest has a couple of ninja games currently. Have you tried playing Sairento and Ninja Legends, and do you have any thoughts about them? 

While they are wonderful games focused on instant and fast-paced action, we want to stand apart as being a stealth game with heavy exploration. Many VR games are leaning towards wave-based gameplay where you stand in one place while the targets come toward you, such as Ninja Legends, Beat Saber, Pirate Trainer, etc. Sairento has a futuristic and cybernetic feel which is great, but it’s not the style or type of gameplay we would like to focus on.

Besides combat, which actions do you consider to be essential for building the characters and story in Ninjato?

VR interactions are everything. The simple act of being able to slide open a Japanese screen door, walk out into the field, and leave your ninja village should make you feel connected to the world. If you want to climb up on the roof to see what’s up there, we want you to feel like you can. Finding hidden doors and panels reward the player with new weapons, items, and information about the world. Part of feeling connected is simply allowing the player to interact with objects in fun and interesting ways. One such thing is simply allowing the player to wear different hats you might find throughout the game. It really makes you feel connected to the character.

The gameplay demo shows ninja stars, swords, and staffs. Have you experimented with creating any other types of weapons?

Usually, once you have one type of working weapon, others are easy to create. For basic weapons, we would like to include swords that need one or two hands to wield. We also have working kunai, sais, blowguns, smoke bombs, and caltrops so far. There are many other types of weapons we would like to include such as chain weapons, nunchaku, and the famous kusarigama, but we have yet to experiment with the physics for these yet.

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What kinds of environments would you like to incorporate into the final game?

We would like to stick with a lot of the basics you see in Japanese movies. Temples, villages, Japanese castles, and forests are main environments we’ll focus on at first. There will be a fantasy twist to the game at some point, but that’s a heavy secret at the moment.

What is your timeline for completing the game?

We’re terribly excited, so we’re aiming to complete this game within the next year if possible. If our team grows or people would like to see certain features implemented that timeline could increase, but it’s hard to determine so early in development with this particular project. There are a lot of unknowns we have yet to encounter.

Featured Header Image by MichaelWuensch from Pixabay

The developers, nDream, today released some Phantom: Covert Ops gameplay walkthrough footage, and we have to admit, so far it looks pretty good!

Here it is! Join nDreams Game Director Lewis Brundish as he tells us more about Phantom: Covert Ops!

Are you excited about this? We are! Well, we’re also hoping we’re getting Splinter Cell on Quest, but until that happens, we have Phantom to look forward to!

Here are the game’s highlights, according to the official page:

General Description

You are a Phantom: an elite and deadly covert operative with a single night to prevent all-out war.

Dispatched into remote, hostile wetlands in your tactical kayak, utilize military-grade weapons and equipment to evade and neutralize the enemy threat.  Immerse yourself in a gritty and authentic arena of war across an intense campaign in VR. Engage your targets lethally or infiltrate unnoticed from within the shadows: it’s your mission to execute your own way.

DEADLIER ON WATER

Freely traverse the water in your military kayak, across rich, flooded environments.  Experience innovative and tactile on-water VR traversal using your paddle to stealthily move and steer through hostile locations.

BECOME A PHANTOM

Experience the tension and thrill of becoming a lethal military asset in VR. From dragging your paddle through the water to aiming down the scope of your rifle, everything is driven through 1:1 player movement and body awareness, delivering a new level of immersion.

STEALTH ACTION

How you plan and execute every mission and encounter is your choice. Move silently across the water, sneaking through reeds and beneath enemy walkways, or ambush hostiles in exhilarating combat.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

To keep busy until then, we recommend you check out our ‘Best of the Quest‘ roundup!

The Basics

A port of an episodic mobile and console game, Republique VR combines the stealth gameplay of Metal Gear Solid, the simple puzzles of Resident Evil, and the highly hackable surveillance system found in Watch Dogs. You indirectly control Hope, prisoner of a mysterious underground facility.

By taking over surveillance cameras, you’ll be able to open doors and help Hope stay out of sight of guards. Occasionally, she can fight back with tasers and pepper spray. Later in the game, you’ll use the facility’s surveillance system to engage in devious tactics. Most of these are straight out of the totalitarian toolbelt, like smearing your enemies in the press using stolen blackmail material.

Since République VR wasn’t built from the ground up for VR, you’ll often feel removed from the action. Major cutscenes play out on a giant phone hovering right in front of you. Fortunately, the story is interesting enough that you will be captivated throughout, even if you’re enjoying it from a distance.

Gameplay

During gameplay, your perspective is often perched high above the environment as you peer out through surveillance cameras. The result is a kind of 3D diorama, or maybe theater in the round. It doesn’t help that the camera view will automatically switch to another location as Hope runs, causing momentary disorientation.

Visually, the game is interesting to look at, with a stylized layover when you are searching for hackable items like doors, alarms, and computers. The facility also contains some gorgeous 3D environments, like an elegant library and an imposing hall of statues. However, the mobile origins of Republique VR mean that the character models are a little blocky, animations can be awkward, and backgrounds occasionally resemble a flat backdrop.

The audio fares much better in the jump to VR. The entire game features extensive spoken dialogue, plus audio clips to go with each of dozens of collectible items in the game. This vast amount of lore lets you dive deeply into the world and characters, and it’s optional if you just want to focus on the main storyline and objectives.

Longevity

With five episodes each lasting 1-2 hours, Republique VR offers more gameplay for its price than a lot of other games on Oculus Quest. The vast amount of collectible items, plus a handful of alternate modes, means you’ll be able to replay the game several times. Republique VR even contains one significant storyline choice that will alter your objectives in the final episode.

Last Words

If you don’t mind that this console and mobile port lacks physical immersion, Republique VR is well worth the price. The thoughtful storyline and stealth gameplay are exciting, with well-delivered voice acting. Evading guards and hacking an escape route for Hope often feels tense, even if you play the entire game sitting down in a comfortable chair.