Talking isn’t my jam, especially over the phone. Ask anyone around me, if I have nothing to say I’m usually the most awkward in the room. So when it came to playing a game where the only way to win is to communicate, my anxiety gremlins started destroying the head they live in rent-free. To my surprise, as my partner and I got over the initial urge to yell profanities at each other’s failures, Operation Tango from studio Clever Plays is actually a truly unique combination of fun and frustration that I don’t dread turning on my microphone for.
Operation Tango
Developed By: Clever Plays
Published By Clever Plays
Available For: PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/ Series X/S, PC (Steam)
Operation Tango is an espionage-themed asymmetrical puzzle game. Picture being in a 2-person virtual escape room. Only instead of an annoying dungeon master, most of the voices coming through your speaker are the sound of miscommunication among friends. One player assumes the role of the “agent” meaning they’ll be doing all the physicality of the game which is really just running and hitting switches while a second player is the guy in the char, “the hacker”. The hacker does most of the keystroke work in puzzle solving by inputting codes, turning dials, being the navigation, and navigating their own virtual cyberspace paths.
In the game, as the agent infiltrates buildings you’ll need to connect to nodes, find I.P addresses, while dodging boobytraps. Your partner the hacker will monitor you via security cameras, open doors, operate elevators like Ving Rhames or Simon Pegg in the Mission Impossible movies. You’ll need to communicate constantly and meticulously with your partner as for every part of the game you’ll each have half the necessary info and control
While the narrative of Operation Tango is a thin layer of two nameless spies trying to save the world from identity assassination; the selling point of its co-op gameplay is stellar. Having a second person to play is a must as there is no A.I partner available. Developer Clever Plays implements just about every cross-play feature available so even if your friends are on the wrong side of your console/PC war you can find someone to play within your inner circle. There’s also a growing Discord channel set up by Clever Plays to help you find someone to play this game with.
Even when you play with someone in the same house the experience isn’t completely seamless. We were in an upstairs-downstairs setup across a PS4 and PS5, while connection via game servers was fast, the audio communication did have a slight but noticeable lag to the point it just became easier to shout at each other.
The game is a strange mix of fun and frustration. Some of the puzzles you’ll encounter seem simple enough to solve but finding shorthand to communicate is hard. Difficulty especially ramps up when there’s a timer crunch on puzzles. One of the puzzles early on involved me yelling number combinations to my partner before they reset and they only had odd increment dials to input numbers with. Maybe it’s a bit sadist but games like these tend to be the most fun when you let your friends have it when they fail their part. It can definitely bruise friendships but if you remember it’s all in good fun then that’s what you’ll get.
While the fun of Operation Tango is short-term, what you do get is expertly crafted. Small details like looking at information through a character’s iPad or watching your hands push items in first-person as you have to run to extraction organically give the game a true danger feel.
As someone who doesn’t game to be social and cringes at the idea, I was surprised by how much fun I had with Operation Tango. After playing with friends and once with a rando from Discord across its multiple missions, I can say with certainty that Operation Tango is a weird time. That’s not a bad thing, in fact, it’s a welcome break from the mindless ultra-competitive isolation most online games actually give players. At a $19.99 MSRP with an included “friend pass” that allows someone you know to play with you for free, Operation Tango is one of the most uncanny gaming values in 2021.
