How do you play stealth games?

From my history with stealth games I have found five common schools of thought for stealth games:

The Ghost:
The enjoyment seems to come from the mix of tension and the thrill of going through the whole level without anyone knowing you were there. Thief II or Hitman how I would personify this play style.

The Hunter:
This play style focuses on staying unseen but taking out all targets in such a way that no one notices until everyone is gone. The enjoyment seems to come from the hunt. I think Dishonored is a great example of this.

The Monster:
This seems to derive from the power fantasy of being the monster in the shadows. Letting the enemy know you are there is done intentionally to spread panic or misdirection. Not many stealth games have systems for this. Mark of the Ninja has a great terror system.

jdzappa wrote:

The Trickster. This play style uses misdirection like the monster but without the high body count. Also, lots of disguises.

I imagine lots of noise makers with notes that say "Fooled you!"

The Shadow:
This seems to be a hybrid of Ghost and Hunter. The enjoyment seems to come from the knowledge that the player is a predator. This can be found in most stealth games or even non-stealth games that have some stealth mechanics.

The Action Movie:
This form of stealth seems to focus on the idea that there is no one left to identify the play. This generally starts out as another form of stealth then transforms into "No witnesses" usually in a loud and bloody fashion.

Now why did I Just make a bunch of arbitrary boxes?

I want to know how you play stealth games and why. We have only one descriptor for stealth games while RPG's have ARPG, JRP, CRPG, etc. As such if I want to recommend a stealth game to a friend it can be very hit or miss based on their play style. So I am trying to set a few base definitions to make it easier to see why people enjoy the genre.

Feel free to add more play styles that I may have missed or improvements to what I have listed.

I tend to play the hunter and the shadow but I love the monster. Pity that there are so few games that truly allow for it. Ghosting is fun but I tend to lack the patience to do it for a whole game.

My current stealth games are:
Dishonored 2
Hitman Blood Money and Contracts
Thief 2
Aragami
Mark of the Ninja

Thanks for your help!

"Hunter" all the way for me. I think this is because I enjoy exploration in games, and I like to eventually "clear" a level so I can break stealth and thoroughly explore at my own pace. At the same time, I want to meet the stealth game on its own terms, and remaining unseen is a fun challenge.

Stealthpizza wrote:

The Monster:
This seems to derive from the power fantasy of being the monster in the shadows. Letting the enemy know you are there is done intentionally to spread panic or misdirection. Not many stealth games have systems for this. Mark of the Ninja has a great terror system.

I think Batman does this, and definitely feeds the fantasy by having the people you are stalking progressively become more frightened in their voice cues. Also the later Splinter Cell games, which have "last seen here" mechanics as well as sometimes changing voice cues if people realize you are picking off their buddies.

The last Splinter Cell even formalized three playstyles: Ghost, "Panther" (which is sort of like Shadow and emphasizes killing quickly as well as stealthily), and Assault.

I think the genre is progressing such that we are seeing more games pick up stealth elements, and giving you choices on how to approach areas.

The save and reload stealth guy. :p

JohnKillo wrote:

The save and reload stealth guy. :p

The proper term is Save Scummer.

beeporama wrote:

I think Batman does this, and definitely feeds the fantasy by having the people you are stalking progressively become more frightened in their voice cues. Also the later Splinter Cell games, which have "last seen here" mechanics as well as sometimes changing voice cues if people realize you are picking off their buddies.

I will have to give that a go as I know I got it in a bundle at some point.

beeporama wrote:

The last Splinter Cell even formalized three playstyles: Ghost, "Panther" (which is sort of like Shadow and emphasizes killing quickly as well as stealthily), and Assault.

I think the genre is progressing such that we are seeing more games pick up stealth elements, and giving you choices on how to approach areas.

I did not know they had their own terminology. I am glad that different playstyles are being taken into account by developers.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/596985016570910433/6A2B4A9DB1953E6AB6BB7C7FAE47E457B1F9A936/) I am a monster

I play stealth games run n gun. Conversely I am not very good at or patient with stealth games and do not have a lot of them.

In truth I played stealth very well in Planetside. I was a scout/spotter for enemy positions. It is funny that I didn't need any XP or gold or item rewards for doing that in game for hours. The thing that drove me was the satisfaction of seeing my team thrive on the info and watching the cavalry come.

That would be my ultimate stealth game. If they could somehow incorporate the dynamism of the tug of war between the sides of a game like Planetside with some sort of perk, item or leveling system. Then have classes with different scouting strengths and weaknesses and what types of cavalry they can call in and perhaps make it gothic fantasy themed. (Diablo or Hellgate London)

Features I'd like to see:
movement - air drop, glider, grappling hook, jet pack, parkour
enemies - normal, hero, brute, giant, boss, world boss(?)
combat - emphasis on indirect combat but you will have gadgets (escapes, decoys, caltrops, debuffs)
structures - follow Planetside's mold with minor peripheral buildings that buff when controlled

I guess it would be kind of a cross between Shadow of Mordor, Planetside and Mechcommander 2. Marry the mission structure of Shadow of Mordor with Mechcommander 2. Take pieces of all three with regards to unit types. Look at Planetside and Mechcommander 2 for inspiration on armor and armor penetration or anti infantry vs anti vehicle and even perhaps anti air. Movement feel and style from Shadow of Mordor while looking at the feature set of Planetside's suits. And the dream would be to have unit/squad customization like in Mechcommander 2.

I play stealth game just like Allen on the podcast described today as I went running. I'm all about being stealthy, until I get caught to many times - then I murder them. I love the idea of being all stealthy, not being seen, getting in and out - but I don't necessarily have the patience for it. So I do my best and when that fails I go on a rampage - returning to stealth when the witnesses are gone.

Dishonored 1 and 2 were forgiving enough that I could still get the low chaos endings.

maverickz wrote:
JohnKillo wrote:

The save and reload stealth guy. :p

The proper term is Save Scummer.

No, I believe the politically correct term is 'Save-Crawler'.

I'm a Save-Crawling Hunter by nature. I'd love to try being a Ghost, but I just don't have the patience.

I try to be the Ghost. This inevitably leads me to being a Save Scum-uhh... Save Crawler because I'm really not good at it for most games. And this is also usually the reason why I end up not sticking with stealth games - I don't like being spotted and dealing with that, but I also don't like the constant restarts of save-scumming.

The problem with the Ghost playstyle is that only some games are fun when you play them like that, but it's something of a default-best-outcome. When not Ghosting becomes a failure state but isn't much fun, that's a problem.

I ghosted the original Thief, but it's actually fun and nerve-wracking to play that way. (On a good level, anyway, but Thief has a ton of good levels, especially if you include the many excellent Thief 2 fan missions.) Thief has a lot of tools for recovery, too, so even if you break stealth you can recover without killing anyone if you really want to.

Of course, Thief at its core is about controlling space. Hunter is in some ways the most natural playstyle in that game, and it fits well with my personal inclinations. Gradually and quietly clearing obstacles as needed, tidying up the map.

How well that works depends on how the game supports getting deeper behind enemy lines. Though guards in Thief can and do call for backup they're spread out enough that getting deep inside and getting spotted isn't fatal (and you can hide again).

On the other hand: XCOM 2, while not an immersive stealth game, has a stealth mechanic. But as soon as your team is spotted once your team's presence is known. So getting too deep can end up with you getting attacked from both sides. Contrast this against Invisible, Inc. where your team can evade some enemies--and probably should, since most take-downs are only temporary.

Gremlin, you put into words what I've always felt about the Metal Gear Series and now about Dishonored. I always hate seeing my grades in MGS. And now I dislike being semi-punished with High Chaos. I understand why it's there, but I still don't like it.

@halfwaywrong - Are you sure you're no good at it? Or are you just impatient? I've said on other threads that what I don't enjoy (and don't have the time for anymore) is the endless watching of guards patrol patterns.

At the moment, I only play once a week so every minute my character is passively observing is a minute wasted for me. It is for this reason that I'm currently playing Dishonored 2 on Easy. I can't justify getting to the end of what might be only a 3-hour play-session having learned lots, but without having achieved anything.

When I was playing nightly a few years ago, I didn't feel this pressure. I'd happily spend a couple of days learning a section/level of Demons Souls or whatever. Why? Because I'll probably complete it tomorrow. Now, I'm looking at next Saturday...

I'm a Hunter/Shadow hybrid. I'll try to play any FPS style game this way. Even Borderlands

I do like it when a game supports the Monster, though. The Batman games are the best I've experienced in doing this.

I've said on other threads that what I don't enjoy (and don't have the time for anymore) is the endless watching of guards patrol patterns.

This. I like games that have lures that allow me to kite patrolling guards away from their route for a stealth kill. There's an immense satisfaction in breaking an impenetrable, overlapping defense piece by piece this way.

Stealthpizza wrote:

My current stealth games are:
Dishonored 2
Hitman Blood Money and Contracts
Thief 2
Aragami
Mark of the Ninja

Thanks for your help!

There's a glaring lack of The Dark Project, hopefully just an oversight

If I'm running through a stealth game more than once, for the first run I'll go as a Hunter. There's something satisfying about being able to run willy nilly around a level, high heels (Garrett!) clacking on the tiles, because you've eliminated all resistance.

Second run through will be as Shadow, unless I get sick of save-scumming.

There's one aspect of the Thief series that I think gets overlooked, but it's genius: the fact that you might as well utilize all of the store-bought tools during each level because the only gear you'll have in the next one is stuff you can buy with that mission's loot. It keeps the game balanced, because you can't have 50 fire arrows stocked up for the last level, and there's less of a "don't waste ammo" concern during each mission.

The Hunter, Definitely the hunter

*bonks thread on the back of the skull with a blackjack and drags it into a shady corner*

Running Man wrote:

There's a glaring lack of The Dark Project, hopefully just an oversight

Well thief gold is installed, but not active as I came late to the PC party and my first love is Thief 2. I fear Dark Project suffers for not being my first love.

I do agree the idea of punishing the player storywise is silly as the punishment for failing in a stealth game is either death or the terror of fleeing from guards.

So far this is interesting to me that so many comments are influenced by lack of time to ghost a game. This seems to lead to more violent approaches. Just make sure no one finds the bodies.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/534012628897360619/586A8E0139784E642A52D0FC7EBC041524BF62C7/)

Running Man wrote:

There's one aspect of the Thief series that I think gets overlooked, but it's genius: the fact that you might as well utilize all of the store-bought tools during each level because the only gear you'll have in the next one is stuff you can buy with that mission's loot. It keeps the game balanced, because you can't have 50 fire arrows stocked up for the last level, and there's less of a "don't waste ammo" concern during each mission.

Yeah, that part is great. Plus it ties the loot directly to the outcome of the mission: That extra bit of shiny gold might buy you the moss arrow you can really use.

But at the same time, Thief is about the soft failure: just like getting spotted doesn't automatically lose the mission (and can be part of a calculated strategy of distraction) missing some of the loot doesn't lose the game.

I like Thief 1 better than Thief 2 in a number of respects--the Thief 2 story isn't as tight and some of the missions suffer for it--but the thing that Thief 2 has going for it is that the bulk of the fan missions use it as the base. And there are over a thousand fan missions out there--people are still making new fan missions.

I should also mention The Dark Mod has been a standalone release since 2013 and just got a big update this year.

detroit20 wrote:

@halfwaywrong - Are you sure you're no good at it? Or are you just impatient? I've said on other threads that what I don't enjoy (and don't have the time for anymore) is the endless watching of guards patrol patterns.

Haha, well now you mention it I don't think there's been a pure stealth game I've been really into since I levelled up from gamer to gamer-with-job, so maybe the impatience plays a bigger part than I had considered!

I've probably played each of those styles just in the Metal Gear Solid series. My favorite stealth game was Tenchu for the first Playstation.

I think the last time I tried to play it I found the controls were horrible and the AI detection was very wonky. Luckily I can still remember how the game felt when I had no issue with the controls and I knew how to stay hidden. I was hoping that Assassins Creed was going to eventually become my dream version of Tenchu. Now I think the best I'll ever get is relearning the controls for the PS1 and also there is a decent PS2 game.

Honestly I think most stealth games are designed around the Hunter style of play. I've tried many styles of play but most often it feels like the designers want you to kill things methodically until you either stop caring about being seen or you can just move to your objective without fear of being seen.
*Minor edit for use of the wrong word.

I love stealth games and am a hardcore MGS fanboy.

I'd say in my 100 hours of TPP, I approached missions initially as a Hunter as you put it. As I moved more to the sandbox approach and trying to get S ranks, I moved toward the Ghost style.

Then there's the style where I dive repeatedly out of multiple cardboard boxes to f*ck with the enemy and then detonate the c4 I strapped to their back when I got bored to take out him and his five best friends. Whatever that style is.

I'm currently playing Invisible Inc and i would fall into the Running around And Crying a Lot catagory. That game has a way of ratcheting up the tension that just gets me so bad.

Mainly i try to avoid guards completly, but it can be pretty difficult to do in that game (at my skill level at least). As someone mentioned above, knocking out a guard is only temporary, so you either have to invest one of your precious agents sitting on the KO to keep it active, or leaving and knowing they will wake up to set off a hunt. You can also just shoot them, but i always feel bad so i don't (also, it ratchets up the alarms even quicker which means bad things happen).

I've been playing MGS V lately. I kind of want to be a Hunter (though I might try for non-lethal takedowns) but often end up just running and gunning, especially if I can find a high point to work from. I do try to break contact and work around a flank but once I've started blasting I tend to just keep it up. I just don't have the patience to carefully pull targets around corners with distractions and then knock them out; I might do that for a while until I work my way to a dominating position but once I've got one out comes the sniper rifle.

I've also played through Sniper Elite 2 and 3 but there I'm mostly a Monster; those games are pretty much about finding a good spot and bringing down the Smiting Finger Of God anyway.

If you tell me it's a stealth game, then no-kills ghost is always the ideal. Depending on what the game allows, that goal might not even survive past the title screen. For the purest (read: most like Thief) stealth games—Thief series, Dishonored series—I try for Ghost, and save-crawl enough for a minimum of (non-lethal) casualties.

Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, and Tenchu games, it's Hunter/Shadow: it's more expedient to silently take out most obstacles (usually lethally, depending on what the game provides) rather than risk circumventing them without the time and space for soft failures like Thief provides.

Shadow is pretty much the default for every game that has some degree of stealth mechanics: Elder Scrolls, the Metro series, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, etc; unless the game has a terror aspect to be exploited, like Mark of the Ninja or Far Cry 2, in which case it's Monster.

In a cardboard box.

pyxistyx wrote:

The Hunter, Definitely the hunter

*bonks thread on the back of the skull with a blackjack and drags it into a shady corner*

Ditto. Full hunter. I sometimes start with aspirations of going for Ghost... and then the first situation where it's easier to get murdery than it is to sneak past and the murdering commences. And once I've done the first one well, might as well just do the rest of'em, right?

Which option is the "badly, and with yakkity sax in the background" option? Because that seems to be my general experience with anything stealth.

I usually start out Ghost but end up devolving int Action Movie after I'm detected.

shoptroll wrote:

Which option is the "badly, and with yakkity sax in the background" option? Because that seems to be my general experience with anything stealth.

Yeah. I start trying for Hunter, then spend a while on the spectrum between Action Movie and Benny Hill Chase Scene before remembering that even though I want to like stealth games, they're really not my cup of tea.

It depends on the game.

If it's a Thief game, I want to ghost as much as possible.

I tried to play Dishonored the same way and it was painfully un-fun. Dishonored just doesn't provide the same affordances to play that way. You *can* ghost, but that's really more of a self-challenge for advanced players, and it works against the designed path of the game. Dishonored is a murder ninja game. Once I understood that and stopped trying to play it like a Thief game, it was ten times more fun.

I start out as The Ghost, but then I get bored and morph into The Action Movie at the worst possible time which ends up with me as The Leeroy Jenkins.

I definitely go "ghost mode" with a hint of hunter (but I always incapacitate enemies, never kill them). This is something I looooove doing in the Dishonored games. Whisking from one hiding spot to another. Sure, there's a lot of quick saving, and reloading involved, but I find it sooooooooo satisfying.

Just catching up on this thread but I would like to offer one more description - the trickster. This play style uses misdirection like the monster but without the high body count. Also, lots of disguises.