Tanukitsune

The sneaky stealth game thread.

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I've owned a few stealth games and hated them up until one day I decided to give Splinter Cell a second chance and... it clicked with me? All of the sudden I understood how the game really worked and how to play and loved every moment of it.

Everything became like a puzzle and it became incredibly satisfying to take out enemies with only my wits, every room was like a puzzle to me!

Right at the end of the first game, I reached the final room where there was a full troop pointing guns at the door waiting to gun me down the moment I opened it. I panicked for a second and failed a few times until I hid in the shadows, made noise to attract a guard to open the door and then throw a grenade from the darkness when he returned to his post next to the other soldier.

IT FELT SO GOOD!

I gave the Riddick games a chance and while the action sections were hit and miss, once again, I loved the stealth sections.

I bought the Splinter Cell HD Collection just because, well... I have a thing for retro collections, but also it had Pandora Tomorrow, which wasn't in the Steam collection.

I just finished the first game again and I did much better than I expected and it confirmed than I now love stealth games, so the question is... What have I missed?

Thief, Hitman, Metal Gear are the only titles I can think of, there has to be more, right?

And of course I'm also interested games like Deus Ex or Alpha Protocol in which you can play as a stealth class.

I may be lacking in the funds department now, but it can't hurt to add them to my "buy later" list! :tup:

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution was the best stealth experience I have had in a long time, or indeed ever.

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Well, I'm sneaking around stealing stuff in Skyrim if that counts. In fact it's probably the most perversely satisfying form of sneaking because the rewards are pretty high with some of the stuff you can steal. It's a shame the world isn't so reactive, I mean it's almost comical in a sense, but can't say it's spoilt my enjoyment or the hilarity that ensues when a shopkeeper follows you around his store.

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So it's easier to steal than in Oblivion? I had forgotten about the Assassin's Guild missions in Oblivion, man, those were fun!

Hopefully I'll be able to be sneaky and a wizard? I don't want to chose! :eek:

Hmm, with a little luck the new Deus Ex will be on Steam holiday sale?

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I've owned a few stealth games and hated them up until one day I decided to give Splinter Cell a second chance and... it clicked with me? All of the sudden I understood how the game really worked and how to play and loved every moment of it.

Everything became like a puzzle and it became incredibly satisfying to take out enemies with only my wits, every room was like a puzzle to me!

Right at the end of the first game, I reached the final room where there was a full troop pointing guns at the door waiting to gun me down the moment I opened it. I panicked for a second and failed a few times until I hid in the shadows, made noise to attract a guard to open the door and then throw a grenade from the darkness when he returned to his post next to the other soldier.

IT FELT SO GOOD!

I gave the Riddick games a chance and while the action sections were hit and miss, once again, I loved the stealth sections.

I bought the Splinter Cell HD Collection just because, well... I have a thing for retro collections, but also it had Pandora Tomorrow, which wasn't in the Steam collection.

I just finished the first game again and I did much better than I expected and it confirmed than I now love stealth games, so the question is... What have I missed?

Thief, Hitman, Metal Gear are the only titles I can think of, there has to be more, right?

And of course I'm also interested games like Deus Ex or Alpha Protocol in which you can play as a stealth class.

I may be lacking in the funds department now, but it can't hurt to add them to my "buy later" list! :tup:

Chaos Theory is one of the best games ever made and I love it so much, Clint Hocking did good work with it.

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Well, that's part of the HD collection, but it comes after Pandora Tomorrow, right? I'd hate to get spoilers by playing them out of order, although I'm pretty sure that

either Sam's daughter gets kidnapped or they make us think that for a second for dramatic tension or they'll kill one of his crew, probably both.

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Oh, I thought this thread was going to be about Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole. It's a fun stealth platformer with some sweet pixel art.

Also, yes, stealth is a weirdly fun element in games. I wonder why being all hidden ninja is so appealing — is it just another power fantasy thing? I guess it is for me, since the appeal usually is not that I can get past the enemy unseen, but that I'm able to strike out of the shadows and take out a large number of enemies one at a time, slowly adding to my secret pile of dead nazis. I'm going to install Commandos 2 now.

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They might not be classified as stealth games, but the original Rainbow Six games and the first Ghost Recon games belong to my absolute favorite stealth games. Specially hostage rescue missions were unforgiving when falling out of stealth mode.

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Oh, I thought this thread was going to be about Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole. It's a fun stealth platformer with some sweet pixel art.

Also, yes, stealth is a weirdly fun element in games. I wonder why being all hidden ninja is so appealing — is it just another power fantasy thing? I guess it is for me, since the appeal usually is not that I can get past the enemy unseen, but that I'm able to strike out of the shadows and take out a large number of enemies one at a time, slowly adding to my secret pile of dead nazis. I'm going to install Commandos 2 now.

Isn't the fact that you're so powerless, yet you still survive why it's so appealing? Then again, that's pretty badass, so I guess it is a power fantasy in a strange way.

Speaking of ninjas, I just remembered those ninja games for PSone, I can't remember the name, but weren't they the only ninja series in fix you actually had to use stealth?

Is Commandos a stealthy game? I'm pretty sure I own that series!

They might not be classified as stealth games, but the original Rainbow Six games and the first Ghost Recon games belong to my absolute favorite stealth games. Specially hostage rescue missions were unforgiving when falling out of stealth mode.

I had completely forgotten about that series, isn't it more strategic and about a SWAT team?

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So it's easier to steal than in Oblivion? I had forgotten about the Assassin's Guild missions in Oblivion, man, those were fun!

Hopefully I'll be able to be sneaky and a wizard? I don't want to chose! :eek:

See for yourself, the game should be awarded double points for allowing this;

rt5aUdijAN8

:clap:

...and this;

6PG2CPSxE_0

:deranged::blink::grin:

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I had completely forgotten about that series, isn't it more strategic and about a SWAT team?

Yes it's a tactical shooter. And the best way to operate is by sneaking and being silent. As for the SWAT teams, they all have to be stealthy.

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Yes it's a tactical shooter. And the best way to operate is by sneaking and being silent. As for the SWAT teams, they all have to be stealthy.

It's going slightly off topic, but if we're going to talk tactical shooters, Swat 3 and 4 were pretty amazing games. More games need a YELLING AT DUDES TO SURRENDER mechanic.

Anyways, the Thief games and Deus Ex games are my favorite stealth games. I love how flexible those games can be about your approach, i always found the heavily scripted trial and error design of Splinter Cell to be very off-putting.

Kind of thrilled that Eidos Montreal is now making Thief 4.

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Isn't SWAT kinda a sequel to Police Quest? I think I have the first game in the Police Quest Collection.

All I remember the Sargent yelling at me for skipping the intro. :erm:

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They don't become real games until SWAT3. That series changed genres twice. From bad FMV game to Commandos rip off to really good tactical shooter.

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Wow, I'm loving Pandora Tomorrow so far, the train level was epic! :tup:

It seems to have improved a little too, enemies aren't as sensitive, but to counter it, it's easier to trigger an alarm?

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Metal Geeear?

I don't have much to add to this right now, except that I do enjoy stealth games. I often find them much more believable - I can accept a dude using stealth and clever tricks to infiltrate somewhere and take out a bunch of guys without warning, more then I can accept a one-man-army full-frontal assault.

Even in stuff like World of Warcraft; a lot of the quests seemed to make so much more sense for my rogue, to be sent in alone to assassinate some warchief or other, then escape again unseen (the only drawback to this method-of-awesome being the lack of xp farmed, so you level up much slower).

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Hmm... I'm playing Riddick now and I just can't be bothered with the stealth somewhy. I remember enjoying it when I played the original (non-Dark Athena version). Perhaps it's just that everything is so familiar that it's no longer interesting, so I'm just cruising through the action parts, shooting heads off. Also could be that I played on hard previously, which made stealth more important.

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I guess stealth when it's more tactical, it's less fun the second time because you already know what to do?

But I loved the first Splinter Cell the both times I played it.

Hmm, I think Metal Gear might be one of the reasons I didn't like Splinter Cell the first time I played it, since it wasn't like Metal Gear I got confused, panicked and gave up? That sounds like me back then.

Can you play any of the older RPGs in a stealthy way? Can you sneak and backstab everything or do you just become the guy with high agility that throws knives?

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The MGS games remain my stealth games of choice, with #3 probably being the high point. Incredibly tough yet satisfying. :tup:

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Sound AssCreed count? It barely rewards you for being stealthy and it never let's you kill a target and get away scott-free.

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Stealth is very much an option in #2 and indeed many missions insta-fail if spotted. Brotherhood takes this even further.

The whole game is about being a stealthy assassin and almost all missions involve sneaking up on someone and killing them, so yes I'd say it counts. :woohoo:

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Played some more Riddick and the stealth seems totally broken. I don't know if Dark Arena introduced new bugs or what, but I remember it being better. It was probably never the best stealth game, but now it's like this: I hold the Shift (walk) button which is supposed to roughly mean "walk silently" or else there is no point to it at all, and a fucking noisy mech guard can hear me from 30 meters away. Only crouching makes any kind of silence happen.

In another situation, I moved behind a guard who was scripted to have his back to me until I kill him, as silently as possible, and a when I got to a couple of meters distance from him, he turned around and attacked me. I guess it is possible that there was a camera that caught me and he noticed the camera doing funny things, though.

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Played some more Riddick and the stealth seems totally broken. I don't know if Dark Arena introduced new bugs or what, but I remember it being better. It was probably never the best stealth game, but now it's like this: I hold the Shift (walk) button which is supposed to roughly mean "walk silently" or else there is no point to it at all, and a fucking noisy mech guard can hear me from 30 meters away. Only crouching makes any kind of silence happen.

The crouch is very specifically the stealth mode, the game makes a big point of it. "Walk" in this context would be equivalent to holding the analog stick halfway out. Remember, it was a console game first. (Also definitely not even the first game to make a distinction of specifically crouching being the only way to be stealthy.)

In another situation, I moved behind a guard who was scripted to have his back to me until I kill him, as silently as possible, and a when I got to a couple of meters distance from him, he turned around and attacked me. I guess it is possible that there was a camera that caught me and he noticed the camera doing funny things, though.

It's possibly a walk and crouch thing to minimize noise?

Regardless, for all the things i love about the Riddick game, the stealth actually isn't one of them. It can be very finicky and very binary. It was ahead of its time in a lot of ways, introduced a lot of ideas that have trickled down into many other games, but on its own it definitely feels like an evolutionary step. I don't think it ages especially well, feeling both impressively modern and a bit clunky and dated.

Still love that game though.

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