Stealth
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I agree that Splinter Cell doesn't appeal to a lot of people, but Chaos Theory was amazing.
There was a certain degree of skill involved navigating a fairly linear level, as you had to carefully plan when to move, where to hide, who to knock out. It was a good game.
This is, if you're going for stealth rather than headshotting every security guard working nightshift.
There was a certain degree of skill involved navigating a fairly linear level, as you had to carefully plan when to move, where to hide, who to knock out. It was a good game.
This is, if you're going for stealth rather than headshotting every security guard working nightshift.
It's been a while since I played it, but I thought that Starcraft did a pretty good job of using all three corners of the triangle. I remember several missions where all you're supposed to do is not die long enough for help to come. I also remember sneaking into facilities to rescue allies.
So it is possible for a game to use all three corners and it makes for a sweet game, as anyone who has played Starcraft will agree.
So it is possible for a game to use all three corners and it makes for a sweet game, as anyone who has played Starcraft will agree.
Oddly, some of the best stealth I ever saw was in a game that didn't force you to use it...
Metro 2033.
The thrill of aiming your little throwing knife/shiv at the head of your opponent...and then sneaking up to the body to retrieve it. Getting caught, running into a vent for safety, sneaking out the other side while they look where you went into the vent, and ambushing them from behind. Good times.
And all the stealth was optional. I could have EASILY gunned my way through that level.
Metro 2033.
The thrill of aiming your little throwing knife/shiv at the head of your opponent...and then sneaking up to the body to retrieve it. Getting caught, running into a vent for safety, sneaking out the other side while they look where you went into the vent, and ambushing them from behind. Good times.
And all the stealth was optional. I could have EASILY gunned my way through that level.
Stealth games need to focus on psychological warfare. not that it hasn't been attempted. a game in which you sneak around tearing out throats shooting some dudes and disappear into a shadow until you find more of your other victims buddies to brutally kill. now what if every time they saw a body they would instead of uttering "There is a body here, I'll be cautious from now on." but instead reacted with a bit of shock and fear. I want to see a game where you can kill someone leaving blood spattered up the walls and then take the body and hide it in the rafters. I'd like to have an enemy arrive and see blood and lack of a body and move in closer to investigate, then while he searches to drop the body behind him. he would react as we all would and run away screaming and blubbering.
this may say more about me than it does about gaming but I promise I am not a serial killer of and shape sort or description.
this may say more about me than it does about gaming but I promise I am not a serial killer of and shape sort or description.
I totally agree with Mr. Yahtzee. But there is one aspect of stealth games, even the open ended ones, that really leaves me frustrated. The fact that many of them seem to rate you on your performance. It gets kind of frustrating because in order to get the best scores, the game reverts back to a completely linear path, often involving the use of an FAQ/Walkthrough along the way.
Batman Arkham Asylum did stealth really well in the story mode because there was no urgency or anything; you could take your time, herd the guys, and dispatch them in any way you saw fit.
But then get to the challenge mode, particularly the later challenges, and they all required such a specific set of tasks to be performed that you basically had to walk a very specific/linear path to take them all out and get the best "score". There was a little room for variance on occasion, but not much.
Batman Arkham Asylum did stealth really well in the story mode because there was no urgency or anything; you could take your time, herd the guys, and dispatch them in any way you saw fit.
But then get to the challenge mode, particularly the later challenges, and they all required such a specific set of tasks to be performed that you basically had to walk a very specific/linear path to take them all out and get the best "score". There was a little room for variance on occasion, but not much.
This is a great idea to me.
So... What about Metal Gear Solid? Or do I need to watch your review for it again and become very angry.
Calumon: I've never seen him angry... But I've heard stories.
Calumon: I've never seen him angry... But I've heard stories.
Evasion, huh? It can be very useful to ramp up tension, sure, but basing an entire game around evasion would be hard. Mirror's Edge was all about evasion, and failed. On the other hand, main reason for it's failure were mandatory fights, so not all hope is lost there.
And here, gentlemen, we have an actually good - i'd even say brilliant - idea.psychodynamica said:
He never said it wasn't a stealth game, just that it doesn't press his stealth buttons because it pratically forces you to cap every enemy in the head, which is true i guess. While i do love the Splinter Cell series i do agree with Yahtzee that stealth games are much better when you sneak into some place your not to be keeping deaths to a minimum and sneaking out without being seen because it's the real show of skill and much more fun and challenging and you can't do that on Splinter Cell.sravankb said:
I completed Splinter Cell: Conviction on Realistic without much hassle there was only one bit on the last mission that gave me a little bit of trouble and that was basically because i couldn't rely on stealth.
Sounds like a pitch-perfect description of the stealth segments of Arkham Asylum. Perhaps that game benefits from not being made up entirely of those stealth segments. I liked the demo of Splinter Cell, it certainly seemed much more casual that old Sam Fisher.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Oh man, as flawed as that game is I loved the stealth bits.Onyx Oblivion said:
The joy of killing off enemies one by one until you say "I can take them all out in a gunfight" and then trow a stick of dynamite is just fantastic.
And the beauty of playing it a second time, this time without killing a single one and sneaking past guards who are oblivious to your presence, more interested in killing the Nazis on the other side of the railway.
I have to admit on what Yahtzee said about splinter cell though, I played two of the games and at some points the guards looked like someone said "Stand there, yes right there. Why? So Sam Fisher has a clean shot at your head of course."
This is true even in multiplayer. Enemy comes barrelling across the map? Evade, evade, evade, don't let him know you have the perfect counter-unit to his assault until he's right on the door of your base, and then mercilessly slaughter him. Wait, he's trying to get away; do you pursue or back down? Suddenly you've switched from evasion, to direct combat, and now you can choose to back off or push the assault. All it takes is a Reaver or Seige tank dropped behind the enemy base with a spotter, and now you're performing a stealth assault. The triangle shifts back and forth without ever breaking or switching genre.hawk533 said:
Yahtzee, I think you're wrong about the bottom-right corner. When there is no direct hostility between player and enemy, you have a state of arms race. Arms race is used by many strategy and 4X games, such as Civilization and DEFCON, as well as occurring in MMOs (eg. two EVE corporations have an uneasy alliance). Now I know those aren't your favourite genres, but to disregard them is madness. Arms race is relaxing compared to the other three states, but it occurs constantly. To continue the Starcraft example above, Arms race is you and your opponent furiously researching, scouting and harvesting. When you send a harvester unit out into the field, you don't intend it to be attacked nor be attacked; at best your opponent will attempt to block it if he sees it, or mislead it across the map. A mix of arms-race and evasion/stealth.
Now, in a conventional action game, there's no "arms race" phase, as usually the enemy starts fully equipped and you have nothing to do but tech up. I guess the only equivalent is "side missions", like the races in Just Cause 2 and the glide/run events in Prototype. You're not attacking, evading, or stealthing, you're just kinda dicking around and it's really fun. Enemy can't even attack you in Prototype when you're gliding. There's conflict between you and the game (trying to get platinums is frustrating), but there's a player and an enemy and neither are attacking, you're just completing a static challenge. No direct conflict, not even indirect conflict.
I'm looking for a way to extrapolate this to other games which use this, but you're right in that the majority fail to exploit the full variety of gameplay available. The best examples I can think of for non-conflict that's still valid and fun gameplay are always presented as side-challenges. Balancing on precarious beams to get Skulls in Halo. Using the hovercraft to meet the All-Knowing Vortigaunt in HL2. It's very rarely that conflict-free arms-race/upgrade seeking is presented to you as a primary gameplay mode, just an optional (albeit sometimes necessary) section thereof. The majority of games have you upgrading and improving through direct conflict anyway - every JRPG and MMO knows it, it's called grinding.
TL;DR: Starcraft uses the full conflict triangle as described by Yahtzee. I believe there's a missing element of the conflict grid, which consists of the arms-race state, which is also underused.
Hmmmm....
The whole conflict triangle thing got me thinking about Uncharted 2 oddly enough.
See you begin that game in a very weak position and have to literally climb your way up through death and destruction. In fact you don't have a legitimate conflict with an enemy until about half an hour into the game. But the game does do a good job of making you feel less than all powerful at times.
There are plenty of evasion set pieces as well of slap dash plans that only succeed due to luck and skill. You can stealth it up a little bit, but those generally take a back seat to the action.
There are probably better examples of this, but really Uncharted 2 seems closest to your desired triangle to me....
The whole conflict triangle thing got me thinking about Uncharted 2 oddly enough.
See you begin that game in a very weak position and have to literally climb your way up through death and destruction. In fact you don't have a legitimate conflict with an enemy until about half an hour into the game. But the game does do a good job of making you feel less than all powerful at times.
There are plenty of evasion set pieces as well of slap dash plans that only succeed due to luck and skill. You can stealth it up a little bit, but those generally take a back seat to the action.
There are probably better examples of this, but really Uncharted 2 seems closest to your desired triangle to me....
I think in good games, the 3-act system isn't in the plot at all, but the gameplay. You start out in the first act, a completely new player losing constantly. Then you get to know what you're doing and start moving along a little bit faster, and finally by the end you're mopping the floor with challenges that would have destroyed you when you first began. You create the drama, the game shouldn't create it for you through the story. Maybe this is why I love old Megaman and Metroid so much: The story is a bookend, and everything important happens during gameplay.
This is pretty much the stealth sections of Batman: Arkham Asylum, except Batman doesn't kill and the baddies never run away. I don't play a lot of stealth games so I don't know if any other games do this, but the bad guys have adaptive AI that change according to the situation. The bad guys always start out cocky, then become more and more panicked as you take them out. You would love it.psychodynamica said: