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Hide and Go Sneak - The Rise Of Stealth Gaming
Thanks to Slate for its article discussing why stealth elements are now integrated into some of the most interesting new videogames. The author argues: "10 years after Doom, the rampant weapon-play can start to seem tedious. Kill your enemies, reload, kill some more, reload - man, what a drag. You become a pacifist for the weirdest possible reason: not because the virtual violence seems so awful but because it's so bloody repetitive", before suggesting that, although "many of these games do, in the end, require you to resort to at least some violence", an "unexpected benefit" of stealth titles such as Thief: Deadly Shadows is that "Your aesthetic experience becomes much better. Most lightning-fast 'twitch' shooter games are so fast-paced you barely have time to notice how wonderfully detailed the 3-D world is... Stealth turns gamers into tourists."
Don't forget that online games are moving in the direction of turning themselves in virtual realities, and that most games are adding "online" capabilities to them (or are fully online)...
It's just a predictible step to the future...
Mind Booster Noori
Yeah, but it's part of the game. Actually, that's why I like Counterstrike quite a bit. Death is permanent for that round...no respawning, so you have to be careful. Not necessarily always sneaky, just careful. Can't expect to just be able to respawn and run back to do some killing, and you know that the people you kill are going to stay down until the round ends. It makes camping more legitimate, in my opinion.
Stealth games regularly force you to slow down, to observe, to go carefully. I spent over an hour going through the Theif III demo, if it was the type of game where I just had to go around and kill everyone, it probably would have taken me less than ten minutes.
The cynical part of me thinks stealth is popular with game developers because they can slow the player down and stretch a 5 hour game to 20+ hours.
The whole stealth thing is seriously getting old. How many metal gear solid games are out there. Add splinter cell, tenchu ninja game.... whoopie.
This market needs more team play like wolfenstein enemy territory and the bloodfest will be all worth while.
I say let the best strategy win. If you weren't meant to hide in a weapon-unreachable spot at the top of the tallest tower and shoot everyone with guided missiles, then they shouldn't have put those elements into the map.
It's just that game writers have given up trying to write a decent one. How many good shooters have come out in the past few years? Maybe three. I'd kill (no pun intended) for a good one. Halo 2 and Doom III are definitely on my 2-get list.
Another sad turn is the move away from having multiple weaker monsters and towards one big monster. Yeah, it's really hard to animate twenty baddies coming at you in one room with today's expected quality, but I fondly remember certain levels in Doom II where you'd run around with hordes of monsters chasing your ass. I'd be willing to sacrifice some quality for that experience.
Shooters are plain boring, and I have not found one I liked with the exception of Hitman II. And it wasn't the genre, but I kinda got a kick from the storyline and backdrops.
Thief is an overmilked cow. Sorry, but it is. If Deadly Shadows was the first Thief installment you played, and you're completely oblivious of other fun things people put in other contemporary games (such as character buildup and improvement over time) and you're still too new to computer games to understand what "game balance" is and why (or whether) it's important, then hell yes, Thief is a great title.
But let me point out the following:
1. This is a third installment of the game. It boasts nothing new from the first two, except for a nicer physics engine and visual candy. This is good for a GOOD game, but BAD for a game that has a large amount of serious design problems. Read on.
2. Even on expert mode, the game is just too damn EASY. I'm not against giving the player options, I'm against all of them doing such a tremendously good job solving the problem. It renders proper choice of technique (read: require player to THINK) useless. You don't need to think which way is best to solve a problem. All of them are. Douse the torch, or sneak when the guard is on patrol, or clobber him and hide the body. Or head-shot him with a broadhead. Or flashbomb him and run past. It's not like he'll alert every other denizen of the map if you do. On a sidenote, the game is damn too forgiving.
3. The game does not reward excelence, meticulousness. Obtaining >90% of the loot doesn't require you to be attentive to small details so much as just be systematic.
4. It's ONE OF THE MOST REPETITIVE GAMES I HAVE EVER PLAYED. Probbably more than Doom 3 will be.
5. Character enhancement? Leveling? where?
6. AI - In Thief III everybody is a combination of Sherlock Holmes and a retarded cockroach. Someone will see an object, turn away, you grab it, he turns back, sees its not there, and he'll not raise the entire house. If you leave a door open however, he'll call a guard (which will come, peek in the shadows, find nothing and forget the entire thing).
Let's put this in contrast: Let's look at the Competition.
A. HITMAN series.
They too didn't change much for the last two installments. With them however, I consider it to be a GOOD point.
PRO: The game most definitely rewards excelence. On the "Expert" mode (i.e. Finishing all levels with "Silent Assassin") It's HARD (read: more challenging and less boring). Technique choice is critical in many situations to do a clean job. Not every technique is good for every situation. This is so not only because [some] hitman weapons make significantly more noise and ruckus, but also because of proper level design.
CON: While level-up doesn't exist in Hitman, you do get better weapons and are allowed to stash them and later take them with you on missions, but only if you wish to replay the missions a second time after you completed the first time with the default weapons. I did however find the "side-goal" of bringing a weapon back each mission to enrich my stash quite fun.
PRO: Excelent level design.
CON: You only notice how excelent the level design is if you play hardcore and attempt Silent Assassin. The casual player can just easily barge through, and the levels are untolerably easy.
PRO: (I don't believe I'm saying this but after a bit of thought I'm firmly resolved on this):
You can't save more than X times per level.
Usually I stress this is a cheap, sorry and pathetic way for devs to artificially extend the amount of playing hours a game contains.
I'm making an exception here. In Hitman the ability to make only so many saves forces you into taking care and doing things right, and generates suspence. I LOVED IT. Really.
B. Deus-Ex. (1, not 2!).
Deus-Ex was NOT a sneaking game. It could be though. It was a successful combination of about 4 types of games, of which sneaking was a major one.
If we only look at aspects of it that are present in sneaking-only games, we find excelent level design (which you could replay 3 times and find new stuff you haven't found before each time you play it) and very good rewarding of attentivene
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If you find Thief to be too easy, I suggest you make it harder for yourself. One of the BEST things about the Thief series is you can make your own rules. One of the most popular and widely accepted difficulty increasers for Thief is that of "Ghosting". Ghosting is basically one rule:
:)
Never, EVER be seen (fully spotted).
Of course, lots of people add additional rules to make things even harder. Popular choices include:
Never kill anything not human, or never kill anything at all
No knocking guards out, or a KO limit (usually one per level).
No stealing things infront of guards even if they can't see you
Never leave physical evidence/leave everything as you found it (arrows, open doors, no dousing torches, etc)
Never arouse visual suspicion ("Did I see something move?" etc)
Never be heard (VERY hard to do)
Sometimes you'll hear players mention "Pure ghost" or "Lytha style", which is basically the idea of a perfectly invisible ghost. Never ever alert anything to your presence, and never leave a trace. Its insanely hard to Lytha every single level, but with time and patience it can be done. In general though, everyone creates their own style of ghosting. You just try to never leave a trace of your actions (other than all the missing loot) thats acceptable to your standards. Myself, I try to always think about "the morning after" scenario. As in, what would the guards say the next morning when everything was found missing? Thus, no one can ever see me (no description). One KO per level (one guard saying "I got knocked out" sounds like an excuse for sleeping on the job: two or more hints of a thief), with the exception of drunk guards (Benny!) who would probably pass out on their own anyways. Noise is OK, but I try to keep it tame and (if possible) explainable. Bumping a cup off a table (a rat?), or opening an unlocked door to the outside (wind?) is good, but throwing furniture around and stomping around the place is unacceptable. Also, I rarely leave a trace of my presence. So that means no unretrieved arrows, very few torch dousings, almost all doors closed, etc. No killing either: i'm a thief, not a murderer (plus, arrows sticking out of someones body or a slashed throat is kind of obvious). Undead and non-sentient animals are generally exempt to my rules, since they won't tell anyone they saw me -- BUT, I try to play as if i'm more afraid of them (which ain't hard to do). So where I have no problems walking right behind a guards back, I try to keep a good 6 feet or more between me and the undead. Its definitly a challange, but its also a hell of a lot of fun.
The point is though, you can make Theif games anything you want. Some people play by the stock rules. Some people like to kill or KO everything that moves while hopping around like a bunny, while others can never be seen or heard. Some like rushing through a level as fast as they can, others won't leave until they've stolen everything that isn't nailed down. Do whatever you want - the real rules of the game are totally up to you.
I almost believed author Clive Thompson until he called, at the end of his article, Manhunt "another superb recent stealth game." Recent, I can believe. Supberb, not so much.