“Why do stealth games have to suck?”

I’ve been playing plenty of games lately, but I’ve been having trouble coming up with things to write about them. I was considering raging about Star Ocean, but realized Squash already did that months ago and I should have reread his thoughts before submitting myself to it's horrible everything. I thought I could rant about The Conduit’s horrendous level and encounter design, but the internet is already full of that and no one really cared then. I really liked ‘Splosion Man and wanted to gush over it a bit, but I don’t think I had anything terribly meaningful to say. Saying how much I liked it doesn’t lead to a very interesting read. I’ve also been playing Aion with a bunch of my friends. It’s refreshing to actually play an MMO with a group of real life friends rather than making them along the way, but the game is basically just World of Warcraft with wings and I don’t really want to write about that. I started Batman: Arkham Asylum the other day though, and it’s piqued my analytical bone a bit. It’s a fantastic game, albeit a few strange storytelling/immersion techniques, but what got my attention is its approach to stealth gameplay. I’ve never liked stealth games in the past, but this and the new Splinter Cell have completely changed how it’s done and I’m very excited for it.

Like I said, in the past I’ve generally avoided the stealth genre like the plague. I’ve always found them tedious and boring, but lately I’ve given them a bit more of a shot. I finally tried the Metal Gear Solid series a couple years ago and love it, but I played them as aggressively as possible, always opting to run in with a shotgun when the opportunity presented itself. I also dabbled with the multiplayer mode of one of the Splinter Cell’s of last gen, but never once even started the single player campaign. I thought those games looked incredible, but definitely not for me. I also checked out Velvet Assassin a few months ago and well, here’s what I thought about that. It basically summed up nicely all that I hated about the old stealth genre. Arkham Asylum on the other hand seems to be the start of a new one.

The stealth sections of the game allow you to move very quickly, drop in and down a foe then grapple out before anyone else realizes what happens. They give you a myriad of ways to take down foes as well, multiple types of batarangs, triggered explosions, glide kicks, inverted takedown from fixtures above, and the good old fashioned punching in the face. These tools really allow you to not just take out your enemies, but to toy with them. For instance, you can string a baddie up in the air, and then chop him down with a batarang in front of another enemy for the sole purpose of freaking him out and seeing what he says afterwards. All these options combined with the ridiculously versatile grappling hook allows for so pretty amusing and most importantly fast paced stealth sections that are like nothing I’ve seen before.

Batman isn’t exclusively a stealth game, it has one of the more interesting and visually impressive combat system I’ve ever seen, and some brief platforming sections. All three are fun, but after around the halfway point of the game I started to notice that they could all be a little more robust. Still, they are good enough that I am glad they decided to leave them all in rather than take out one to really focus on another.


Now the Splinter Cell series is known for being incredibly tedious, requiring meticulous planning after several trial and error sessions to learn an area. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s an insanely popular series, it just never interested me. Ubisoft’s newest addition to the series however is taking it in a very new direction. It is still very much a stealth game, but it now focuses on a similar style to Batman. Drop in, kill a target or two using the new mark and execute feature and then break line of sight and do it all over again. There’s obviously a lot more to it than that, but that is the essential change that I’m so excited about.

Both these games took the genre that required you to sit in the dark for three minutes working out a bunch of dumb guards set paths and turned it into something fun and awesome. By allowing players to have a much more fast paced and offensive approach to stealth they have made something very enjoyable, that is completely different than just about everything else out there. I am thrilled by the new direction and can’t wait to see what others do with the mold. As the speaker for the Splinter Cell: Conviction presentation said at PAX, “Why do stealth games have to suck?” I wholeheartedly agree.