A Fantastic John Wick Simulator, but far from "Classic Stealth Game" (My thoughts)

[Duke Nukem]

After getting "Duality of Man", I would like to share my view about this game.This game calls itself a "love letter to classic stealth games", but it has nothing to do with Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, Hitman or Thief in terms of gameplay and mechanics, and the experience can't be more different. I will explain it in detail below.

First, the mechanism is rough and immature. Most of the stealth in the game relies on creating shadows and hiding in them, similar to Splinter Cell. But the concealment effect of shadows is unstable, especially when the enemy has a flashlight. The enemy sometimes turn a blind eye to the corpse under a light source, but sometimes may spot you standing motionless in the dark from meters away. There are many times that enemies being directly alerted after you exposed a small part of your body for even less than a second. Also, there are many objects in the scene that have shadows around them, but you still can't hide in them(or hard to tell if you can hide in their shadow), which makes the player's actions very limited, and sometimes even have to use perspective zooming to sneak (the enemy's field of view will increase and decrease with the zoom level).

In terms of sound, hitting a wall will alert the enemy on the other side of the wall. Why is the sound so loud? I don't know, although it's illogical. Why does lying on the ground make a thumping sound? I don't know either. Sometimes you will find that you are walking behind the enemy and they turn back for no reason. It may be because of the material of the floor. Walking on the carpet is quieter than walking on tiles or concrete. You need to walk slower. These meaningless mechanisms neither increase the sense of immersion nor reduce the fun of stealth to some extent. It is very common to be discovered by someone without paying attention and work for dozens of minutes in vain, especially if you don't save very often.

The second is the lackluster core gameplay. This game has only two playstyle(essentially): ghosting (one of the game's rankings, there is also this rating in Splinter Cells Blacklist), that is, not touching anyone, and different forms of assault. If you want to avoid mistakes and play comfortably, you have to touch nothing, hide in the shadows in a proper manner, and sneak your through your target. The assault style is a more interesting play style due to the variety of weapons and the high IQ of the enemy (mainly reflected in combat) AI, although your fragile health will not endure more than two or three shots.

The third, and most serious, problem is level design.

As we all know, one of the core elements of classic stealth games is the ingenious and interesting level design, such as the sandbox of Hitman. Good level design should encourage players to interact with it, and with a variety of route options, it can greatly increase the fun and desire of players to sneak. Intravenous 2 has a big shortcoming in this regard. Most levels seem to be open, but in fact there are only one or two "optimal routes", which are the stealth routes with the least resistance. Trying to explore other routes will face more enemies and higher risks, because many parts of a maps, while seems to be closely connected, are actually blocked by layers of walls or glass windows. If you want to break the windows to create other routes, you will risk triggering a large-scale manhunt across the whole map, and most of the time, this risk is not worth taking.

In other words, the level of this game is a pseudo-sandbox, which is essentially a very wide and "empty" linear level. Your stealth route is roughly fixed, unlike Splinter Cell, where there are a lot of routes for you to choose from, no matter what playstyle you are using(Ghost or Cheetah). It becomes more obvious when you look at Masterpieces, like Hitman series. If you don't care about these negative feedbacks and intend to play anyway, then you have to be prepared to memorize lots of enemies routes, walk a few steps, stop and wait for a while, get in a vent…and repeat. This will soon become a "patience trainer" and a "Vent Crawling Simulator". Although this can be considered a kind of fun, it is far from the source of positive feedback in classic stealth games.

Some minor issues are also worth mentioning. For example, sometimes you want to enter a room that requires a key card, but can’t find them anywhere, so you beat up two soldiers to vent your anger, and then you find that the key card is on them. Sometimes, you kick the door open in anger, and you find that the key card is on the table in the room---is this any different from throwing the key of a safe into a safe? For example, sometimes the room is here, but the key card is hundreds of meters away, with about a dozen enemies and dozens of light sources between you and it. What do you do? At this time, it is better to kick the door open or just rush with your Remington than sneaking half way through map… this is how things go from regular stealth to gun blazing.

Now that we're talking about big, empty maps, let's talk about more details.

Apart from stealth routes, the utilization of the map is also a confusing aspect. The map of Intravenous 2 is very large, but if you go stealth, you will find there are many areas that are not utilized effectively. There is a side quest in the late game where you first need to find a terminal to interact with, confirm the identity of the target and then kill him. In fact, the terminal is in a house a short distance from the south of your spawn point - the same location as the target. If the player does not explore and find collectibles (which is very likely considering the high risk) and simply evacuates, the utilization rate of this map is less than 10%, so what is the point of making such a large map? Since the player has no means to silently break glass or demolish walls, most rooms will not be considered as parts of stealthing routewhen sneaking, and so much space is wasted, unless you wanna try the assault style, but that's another matter.

The above problems seriously affect the playability and positive feedback of the game, which led to my physical and mental fatigue after playing for 80 hours and I didn't want to play it anymore.

As the trailer claims, this game is very challenging and very "hardcore", but this hardcore difficulty does not come from the carefully designed mechanism, nor from the carefully crafted levels, nor from the intelligence of the AI, but from the large number of obstacles deliberately arranged by the devs, including meaningless action sounds, crude light and shadow stealth system, extremely nervous AI and "challenging" environmental interactions. In other words, the hardcore of this game is a superficial and shallow hardcore. Rather than being "challenging", it is a direct manifestation of the production team's insufficient ability.

From my personal experience, the greatest fun of this game is not stealth, but fighting with the AI. Rather than spending hours sneaking and getting a "ghost" rating, shooting light bulbs everywhere in the map, turning off the switch, and then imitating John Wick in the dark to stab people with a knife or punch and kick unsuspecting enemies gives you much more fun, not to mention you can loot money. When playing in assault style, running between buildings with a lot of sensitive enemies behind your back, with powerful electronic music in your ears, waiting for an opportunity to fire a few shots, throw grenades, and place mines to ambush people can give you a sense of accomplishment and positive feedback. When you finally killed everyone on map, looking at the corpses, wood chips and broken glass on the ground, and the soundtrack returns to calm, you know it's time to start looting and cleaning up the battlefield.


My evaluation remains unchanged: if you come here with the mentality of playing a "classic stealth game", you will probably be greatly disappointed, but if you like stabbing people in the dark, weapon modification, looting, shooting against smart enemies or bullet time, then I recommend you to try this game. I don't know how well these elements fit with those "classic stealth games", but I must say that... it's hard to find a John Wick simulator better than this game, really.

[BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane]

>Most of the stealth in the game relies on creating shadows and hiding in them, similar to Splinter Cell. But the concealment effect of shadows is unstable, especially when the enemy has a flashlight.

This is as it was in SC. The absolute classic of modern-fi of stealth games.

>unlike Splinter Cell, where there are a lot of routes for you to choose from

Have you actually played SC recently? It's mostly linear levels from the first to Blacklist with entry and exfil routes going in line and do not usually circle back, with some small variations from level to level. It's also exactly the Vent Crawling Simulator and Pipe Crawling Simulator, especially some later levels in SC1. Gunplay is basically non-existent, enemies are dummies and there is no AI present at all, you just complete a series of obstacles that masquerade as enemies with guns.


There are some obvious nuances of game design present in IV2, but all of them are in-context so not worth really talking about as it's only worth talking about the 'total package' that is the game.
There are a lot of words in this critique but i sense this is just trolling or some heavy emotional investment.

[KestreL]

It's said above but Splinter Cell never really had more than a few routes to choose from

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

it has nothing to do with Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, Hitman or Thief in terms of gameplay and mechanics

if I recall the game says it's inspired by the original Splinter Cells, Deus Ex and Dishonoreds, i haven't played the latest deus ex nor the dishonoreds but the gameplay mechanics are fairly similar to splinter cell, conceal yourself in the shadows, sneak behind guards and be aware of the sound you make

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

Why does lying on the ground make a thumping sound?

the sound you make is affected by your current speed, if you walk it feels like your character goes prone silently meanwhile if you were running it's more like the character is falling to the prone position thus making more noise since your bodymass is hitting the ground instantly at least that's how i imagine it

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

This game has only two playstyle(essentially): ghosting & assault

Like most stealth game it also has the "panther" playstyle, or aggressive stealth as some may call which is basically trying to kill everyone without getting spotted, you can also try to do that the non lethal way which makes it harder, also you are not forced to play a certain playstyle, you could ghost at the start then go assault if you get spotted and then go panther when things cool a little you could go silent killing the guards looking for you

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

Most levels seem to be open, but in fact there are only one or two "optimal routes", which are the stealth routes with the least resistance. Trying to explore other routes will face more enemies and higher risks

obviously the game having no verticality takes away a certain dimension but the level design allows you to take many different branching paths, taking the path of least resistance is a thing for all stealth games, especially if you try to kill no one.
most stealth games are "casualized" to a certain way, if you make the stealth easier by "dumbing down" the AI or making it too predictable then the stealth has greater possibilities but feels less challenging, and the downside of it is that the combat gets really easy, which is why the combat in this game feels very satisfying because it benefits from the smarter AI that could be detrimental to some people for sneaking around.
also exploring more routes and facing to more enemies and higher risks is not new, it's a thing for most games to have bigger risks and bigger rewards (in game money or rare weapons) and discovering new routes with more enemies could appear as more difficult at first but since the "puzzles" of the enemy encounters are different they could also be easier to solve or provide you with a feeling of satisfaction if it ends up being the opposite

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

ometimes you want to enter a room that requires a key card [...] you kick the door open in anger, and you find that the key card is on the table in the room

my guess is that it is to prevent bugs in case the player manages to enter the room without keycard but ends up being blocked because he doesn't have it to exit the room, my only complaint is that you can't guess from the topdown perspective which guard has a keycard and what type of keycard is layed out in a room (no color code)

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

the utilization rate of this map is less than 10%, so what is the point of making such a large map?

like i said above, the game has multiple playstyles so you could replay the map with them or trying to steal every items, kill everyone etc...

Originally posted by Duke Nukem:

mental fatigue after playing for 80 hours and I didn't want to play it anymore.

i don't see how that is a negative, you manageing to play 80 hours means you were interested for that much time, it's not a shame to stop playing a game because you think you've done everything and sucked all its juice, especially for an indie game that can be completed in a dozen of hours!