[CW: rant] What in the hell defines a 'stealth' game?

[Guest]

It start with flashback of me remembering how single mistake in Splinter Cell forced me to reload a checkpoint... which is frustrating to say at least and I almost want to throw my controller because of it.

Fast forward to now, and I am very confused on what defines one game as a "stealth game?" I am thinking to skip the whole stack of Assassin's Creed because it bears the 'stealth' genre on the franchise. But my memories of finishing the first game, and some impressions after trying it again was the lack of any punishment for failing at sneaking behind someone and more rooms to get guards out of sight if ever being caught.

Then Dishonored chimes in and I am just as confused because the game berates me with rating systems (gosh I hate those things.) and then also immediately make all the guards within the vicinity jumpy as a punishment for my hasty take-downs. I start to have a feeling that it kinda wants me to submit myself to get a perfect playthrough by forcing me to retry the very same thing again BUT this time try doing it differently and...

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!

And to be fair I am absolutely hammered in any other genres, but gosh what even is 'stealth' means for video games now? I have to admit every games I tried will find its way to get stealth aspect into it... SOMEHOW!

[Dandelion Sprout 13]

My rule of thumb is that if the game in some way resemble Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2, then it's stealth.

[Fog13k 4]

On 12/9/2022 at 1:18 PM, fudgesiclesxd said:

It start with flashback of me remembering how single mistake in Splinter Cell forced me to reload a checkpoint... which is frustrating to say at least and I almost want to throw my controller because of it.

Fast forward to now, and I am very confused on what defines one game as a "stealth game?" I am thinking to skip the whole stack of Assassin's Creed because it bears the 'stealth' genre on the franchise. But my memories of finishing the first game, and some impressions after trying it again was the lack of any punishment for failing at sneaking behind someone and more rooms to get guards out of sight if ever being caught.

Then Dishonored chimes in and I am just as confused because the game berates me with rating systems (gosh I hate those things.) and then also immediately make all the guards within the vicinity jumpy as a punishment for my hasty take-downs. I start to have a feeling that it kinda wants me to submit myself to get a perfect playthrough by forcing me to retry the very same thing again BUT this time try doing it differently and...

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!

And to be fair I am absolutely hammered in any other genres, but gosh what even is 'stealth' means for video games now? I have to admit every games I tried will find its way to get stealth aspect into it... SOMEHOW!

Assassin's Creed can hardly be described as a Stealth game, 1st one was, then Stealth become more and more optional to the point where people love to actually be detected so they could sword rip everyone.

Dishonored is more of an Immersive Sim where Stealth is only one of the ways to accomplish your missions.

I would say that Stealth games are the ones who punish you hard for being detected, it must give you a lot of tools to be avoid being detected and in opposite fashion, limit the Action mechanics to the point where detection almost mean a game over.

All in all the game has to avoid being fun once you go gun blazing.

 

[novigamer1029 0]

I believe that a stealth game is a game where you need to or can avoid or be unseen by enemies to achieve the objective.

Like MGS 3 or Splinter Cell games up until Double Agent.