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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."
"You become a pacifist for the weirdest possible reason: not because the virtual violence seems so awful but because it's so bloody repetitive"
I play Q3 with a coworker nearly every day. The fun of the stealth mode isn't because it isn't repetitive, but because making him say "PUNK!!!" never gets old.
"Derp de derp."
Yeah, but sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to walk around the corner so you can sneak by him can be pretty damn tedious also.
For the record, Doom is my favorite game of all time.
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.
"Kill your enemies, reload, kill some more, reload - man, what a drag."
That is why doom features the CHAINGUN! Cut out the reload part for 100% fun!
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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