Stealth

[Gunner 51]

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.

I think this would work absolute wonders in an Aliens Versus Predator game. Personally, if I was a Marine - I wouldn't feel so cocky about taking down the Predator if I saw my squadmate's skinned body hanging upisde-down from the rafters. I certainly wouldn't dismiss it with a "Don't let your guard down, Marines."

 

[Captain Spectacular]

I thought Arkham Asylum covered the three sections pretty well.

You use direct combat when squaring off against a horde of joker's goons in various arena like sections. You use stealth when presented with a room full of armed thugs so they don't spray you brains all over arkham's rusted walls. And you evade enemies throughout most of the latter part of the game once armed thugs become almost instantly aware when you take someone out. I honestly would get stressed out at times when I found myself stuck in a corner when they became aware of my presence.

 

[veloper]

Sneaking is not you attack/enemies not attacking, because they'll fight when they spot you, so it's not so different from for example cocademons not being able to hit you, because you learned how to strafe (a matter of skill).

That brings us unexpectedly to a new idea in videogaming!

you attack/enemies not attacking:
The player character is attacking enemies who are trying to hide/escape/run away, or alternatively just trying to tag them in the kid version.

Really just the oldest kid game on brought into the digital age and so it might just work. Enough varied tools and NPCs that can sneak and not run into walls and you could have a nice challenge.

 

[MortalForNow]

Good article, I agree that open stealth games such as those are often the best and linearity just destroys the creative impulses that come with the gameplay type.

On a completely unrelated note, your comment on tension in Animal Crossing only makes me think of how Tom Nook, Bookie: The Game would play.

 

[kaedis]

This may have been covered, but I am at work and rushed so consider these to be drive-by-comments.

1) When games have you sneak into a facility to steal data, not kill guards, would this not be considered player not attacking/enemy not attacking? It is not the most common mode of play, but I believe it does exist.

2) Let me see if I have this straight:

Ebert has a point that games are not art because they do not use the classic cinema style of narration.

Games are in fact not using this style because it would not be fun.

Conclusion, games won't be art until they stop doing what they are already not doing.

....What?? I am sorry Yahtzee, I think your logic train took a dirt road at the end.

3) Are paintings not art? They surely do not follow the cinema template.

4) Same questions for pottery, statues or architecture.

I normally love these articles but this one seemed a bit rushed and poorly thought out.

...or maybe I have just been staring at 3D models too long today.

 

[SaintWaldo]

And consequently that adapting videogame stories to films is as futile as stitching a dog's head onto a horse's body to create a creature that can both fetch the newspaper and win the Grand National.

Unless, of course, that movie is Hitman. That movie did all the above and also found time to woo and bed someone's mum. I'm not saying whose.

 

[Jjkaybomb]

But, Yahtzee! you mentioned Beyond Good and Evil being a good game in an early review (alongside cake and belgium and something). Yet it has elements of that bad stealth you've just decried, namely the stealthing being a linear corridor with nooks and crannies whose only purpose is to serve stealth (and house some rats). Although the game does have the flavor of shadowy entity breaking into a stronghold soooo... *thoughts wander off*

*shrug* I know I really liked Beyond Good and Evil.

 

[GrinningManiac]

Interesting.

Veeeeery interesting

Will "Space Game" include the three corners of this triangle?

 

[Fen_]

The Sands of Time trilogy mixed these styles. Not exactly in the theatrical order or anything, but you fought a lot, would switch over to running from the Dahaka, fight some more, run some more, and in the third they even had some stealth aspects.

 

[shiajun]

I even think Beyond Good and Evil did the square thing, not just the triangle. You have the evasion, the stealth, the direct combat, and then all this fiddling around taking pictures, playing games or just exploring to find pearls, with no enemies.

And yes, as was said before, the entire Adventure genre relies greatly on chatting around and thinking through. That's as much a teaparty as you can get. Flower takes the relaxing, nochalant attitude to the extreme.

I'll have to agree with Yahtzee though, the current skew towards attack/attack is huge and denies the creation on interesting gameplay styles and/or inmersion techniques.

 

[Shjade]

But there is something to aerial view stealth, that was the reason Commandos was so awesome.

I was waiting to see if someone would remember Commandos. That's a pretty good example of a game with evasion and stealth, though there wasn't much in the way of direct combat (due to being outnumbered in most levels by, what, thirty to one?) unless you could hijack a tank.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Extra Punctuation: Stealth

Sometimes stealth games can involve lovely tea parties.

Read Full Article

I liked Art of Theft you made. A half way decent version could no doubtly be made in that Unity 3D engine.

 

[aaron552]

Honestly, it would be great if a game properly employed all 3 elements of conflict. Pure run and gunning gets boring.

Beyond Good and Evil has all 3. There's 2 types of direct combat: on foot and in the hovercraft; although the direct combat in the hovercraft is a bit of a joke until the finale

Spoiler

at which point it's a spaceship, not a hovercraft.

There are evasion sections, as Yahtzee mentioned; but they're optional. And there are many stealth sections, although the insta-kill-if-discovered bots make them require constant repetition, which isn't fun.

I don't believe the game really suffers overall, for including all three (plus more) gaming styles. It suffers for being the too-short first part in a trilogy that may never be completed... =[

 

[Truehare]

About the "three corners", I think the first two Gothic games use them all to an extent. (EDIT: Yeah, I know, the third game kinda does it too, but it's not as well implemented. And the Orcs are just wimps!).

When you start, you are too weak to take on virtually very enemy you'll come across, and you'll be running away a lot. As you level up, you start being able to single out one enemy from a pack (which involves some stealth to do properly), but if you try to take on the whole pack you'll be mincemeat in no time. Then, as the game nears the end, you are an unstoppable killing machine who can face an entire platoon of Orcs without a single scratch.

And, different from other RPGs I know, the enemies don't get tougher as you level up; they are all around, and you can bump into powerful ones right at the start if you're not careful.

That is one of the reasons why I love those games so much... And that's why I'm enjoying my new acquisition, Risen, so much as well.

 

[A1]

Once again you've come up with another interesting article Yahtzee. I applaud you for correctly pointing out that anime is a medium and not a genre. I get the impression that this is something that a sizable number of people don't understand. But even so I don't think that the term "animation style" is the best way to describe it because different anime titles generally have their own distinctive visual styles. Or in other words I think you're using the word "style" in too broad a sense. I think a better term might be "kind of animation", or "form of animation", or something like that.


And if games are all about conflict then how exactly do you explain "The Sims"?

 

[Fortesque]

Id REALLY like to play Theif 2... But I cant seem to get the fucker to work on Windows 7

 

[Bruce Edwards]

It's interesting that a few (or maybe one) poster has pointed out Metro 2033 as a game which allows you to organically experience all three corners of the triangle, as I was about to point out STALKER a a game where I have performed similar feats of sneak/evade/murderdeathkill.

Actually, Fallout 3 is another example of the genre. I remember evading many enemies through my early levels, getting sneak kills during the mid levels, and pretty much running up to and murdering face on everything at high levels.

Perhaps apocalyptic games tend to display this triangle is because they are designed to be pseudo-realistic - i.e. ammunition is limited, you can't just duck around the corner and heal up in 5 seconds when you get shot, etc.

 

[Erniesrubberduk]

Splinter Cell Conviction as a a stealth game was alright, what I actually thought about it was that it was more like the "Predator" gameplay of Batman Arkham Asylum and that it wasnt really about sneakinng past everyone but more of determining when to pop out of the shadows to strike and take people down and thats what I really actually liked about Conviction because it was just Arkham Asylum with guns

 

[Erniesrubberduk]

So basically, the perfect game for Yahtzee is a sandbox stealth survivor horror with platforming elements. And tits.

Actually that sounds like a really fucking awesome game

 

[GodKlown]

Holy hell I HATE when they throw in unneeded stealth into a game, or force you to use stealth. Snooping and pooping isn't acceptable in every game, and while every game doesn't feature it, there are entirely too many that do, and often without good reason.
Splinter Cell has been a thorn in my left butt cheek for a while because of how it forces you to use stealth, even to the point where you CAN'T EVEN KILL SOMEONE.
Granted, the run 'n gun genre is a bit overdone, but occasionally I prefer to spray 'n pray over having to hide behind a box in the shadows for a half an hour before strangling some dingleberry, then getting noticed by someone across the map! There are plenty of flash games that require you to only use stealth, never kill anybody, and make it to a certain point on a map to continue. If you get noticed, you get bum-rushed by everyone on the map.
I didn't like Arkham Asylum because of the level of stealth that was required. Ok, swooping down from the rafters looked cool in the movies, but totally sucks when you are doing it in real time because of how long you have to wait for just the right conditions before jumping down to break some fool's neck and then quickly zipping away before you get noticed. That sucked for me... mostly because I stunk at it. I always thought I had a good opportunity to snap some spines, but I always got caught by another guy and gunned down in short order. Kinda made me hate Batman for a while.

I don't mind a game with a decent cover system... I don't really see much of that in stealth games. Granted, Splinter Cell does feature this, and it has come in handy. But to combine stealth and cover... it almost blurs the line between which is which sometimes, and can actually make playing the game more complicated when the system can't tell which you are trying to do. I feel there should just be two positions behind a cover: either the left or the right. None of this waiting in the middle crap because it usually takes that half a beat before the system realizes you want to peek over the top to shoot someone, and often that is all it takes for them to run around your cover and shoot you in the head while your character is stuck squatting behind a box looking like a sitting duck.
I like Hitman because at least you can kill anybody and everybody who is or appears to be a threat. You can duck into an alley or a room to avoid them or surprise them when they come looking for you. Why this isn't more of a consistent system is beyond me.