Budget Cuts Sneak or get downsized

Getting around is the best idea in the game. Instead of just teleporting, the TransLocator lets you send a portal to a spot and look through it first: check what a robot is doing, watch its patrol, then decide whether to slip through or wait. One moment you are crouched between cubicles, you bounce the locator ball off a wall to land behind a doorway, and a guard walks past without ever seeing you. Crawling across the floor and peeking over desks is far more nerve-wracking than pressing a crouch button, and because you move through portals rather than sliding, the game stays comfortable in VR. Sneak, or go loud and rambo your way through. Both work.

TransCorp is a mega conglomerate that manufactures cost-cutting robots, and you are the cost being cut. Your job was stamping papers and filing files; now it is sneaking through departments full of spindly security robots, hiding in air vents and arming yourself with whatever the office offers: throwing knives, scissors, staplers, an ashtray if the mood strikes. Nearly everything can be picked up, opened or rummaged through, drawers and papers included, and the robots have a weight and physicality that two years of polish shows in. The writing is dry and funny in a way that will feel familiar if you liked Portal, right up until the late-game stretch turns genuinely frightening. The tone swings, and it earns it.