What are the best Stealth Games ever made?

Years / Decades:

70s , 80s , 90s , 00s , 10s , 2020

Genres:

2D Platformers, Board Games, Bullet Hell / 2D Shooters, First Person Shooters, Flash, Horror, Indie, Metroidvania, MMOs, Point and Click , Racing, Real Time Strategy, Roguelikes, RPGs (Turn Based), Simulation, Sports, Tabletop RPGs, Visual Novels

Welcome back. This part of the series will be primarily focusing on genres. So far I have [Action RPG, Arcade Game, Third person shooter, Action, 4X (Civilization-like), 3D Platformer, Dungeon Crawler, Card Game, Text dungeon, Souls-like, Rhythm, Survival, Sandbox, Shoot/beat 'em up, City Builder, Adventure, Puzzle, Fighting, Turn Based Strategy, Real Time Tactics, Grand Strategy, Handheld, Walking simulator, MOBA, Tower Defense, Miscellaneous, and Casual] as available genres. Let me know if I missed something, and I will try to get it added.

This is eventually all going to get compiled into one megathread for people who want gaming recommendations from Chapos specifically. Other consoles and genres will come in sporadic subsequent threads. Please contribute to previous threads if you missed them. This is meant to be an exhaustive list.

Expanding on your choice(s) is definitely a plus. Not everyone knows about or has played non-mainstream titles.

39 comments

The original three Splinter Cell games, especially Chaos Theory.
The games have terrible politics, but hand-wringing over media consumption is the 69th form of liberalism.
- politics in games are only important if:
  a) you can call the devs 'based' (disco elysium)
  b) you can make fun of the game for being the equivalent of the missiles with progressive labelling on it (the call of duty pronouns shit)
  
  Or it's Six Days in Fallujah or comparable in terms of awfulness.
- Seconding these, they still hold up pretty well. Also the bad guy in Chaos Theory is essentially the founder of Blackwater who is starting a war so that his mercenaries corporation can get paid, which I appreciate even if all of the voice actors in that game did racist accents for their characters.
- "I haven't seen you laughing this much since Reagan" has got to be the best worst line ever uttered in a video game.

Thief: The Dark Project is a first-person stealth game which has never been surpassed, either by other types of stealth games or by its imitators. Its appeal is not only in the challenge of navigating an environment unnoticed, but in the environment which is actually being navigated. The world is unique and interesting and you learn about it organically by eavesdropping on its normal inhabitants' conversations and rifling through their personal writings.
- Thief isn't the best stealth game only because that's Thief 2.
  
  I think TDP is better, personally.

Dishonored and Dishonored 2 have to be some of the best. While not stealth they actually do let you play in an aggressive nonlethal style.
- I felt punished by Dishonored for doing non-violence. The lethal toys were more interesting and offered a lot more options than the not-murdery ones. At the end of the game I was frustrated that I was putting in extra effort while also locking out half of the games mechanics and powers because I wanted the not-"Pile of twitching corpses" ending.
  
  Dishonored is the perfect 2 playthrough game imo, the first time is stealthy and the second time loud and aggressive. Dishonored 2 makes it even easier to do that because there are two characters each with unique skill sets: play the first time through as corvo and play stealthily, and the second time through as emily and play loud.
  
  That was definitely an issue with the first Dishonored, but they did a lot to address it in the second game. You have a lot more ways to knock people out besides choking and sleep darts, and Emily's set of powers has some which are really useful (like Domino)
  
  I love how the game wags its finger at you because you want to have fun with the toys it provides you with. Like, idk, maybe make the nonviolent route more fun?
  Compare this to something like Undertale, where the evil route being shite to play is the point.

Obligatory Deux Ex, for the stealth and the politics. The open levels are also done really well, having different ways to do something in a game without some of them being shit is really difficult
- Dx1 has the best stealth mechanics in the series, no I will not be taking questions.

Arkham City is the best stealthy Batman game if you like capeshit. Stealth is not the goal of the game; however, if you play stealth you are rewarded with easy knockouts of harder enemies if you can time/position yourself right. Some of those enemies -- esp with guns -- are a pains in the ass otherwise.
Lots of opportunities to use shadows from weird bits of terrain so it feels a lot more organic than more linear stealthy games.
- easily my favorite of the series. the challenge mode in city had the best replay value of any of the games imo

Dishonored is great despite having a lame ending no matter what you do. The "disappear enemies" perk completely destroys any challenge in the game though.

MGS3
Hitman World of Assassination trilogy
There you go

Metal Gear Solid V is my favorite game of all time. Kojima Productions, after a half dozen iterations, turned a series with really janky gameplay into one that plays as smooth as butter, set across three open world environments that have tons of ways to navigate, things to do, ways to fight or stealth, and has more guard interactions than you're likely to find without a hundred hours of experimentation.
Some people complained about the story, but I loved most of it. The couple places where Kojima decided to go full edgelord are the only parts that don't work for me, outside of those moments the characters are distinct, and the plot is suitably strange, that it's on a level above any of the series' other entries.
The only problem with it is that they sectioned off Ground Zeroes into it's own game. Imagine if the Tanker level for MGS2 had been sold for $40. Plus the way Konami (and Kojima) treated the devs for this game is absolutely criminal, it all leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like most AAA game development.
- I still want a few new takes on the ‘mother base simulator’ style game. If it could be communist guerrillas, that’d be great.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory has to be one of the best. Sam Fisher at his peak before Ubisoft made it shit.

MSG 2
MGS 1

metal gear 2, metal gear solid series, tenchu series, sekiro
fun note: don't ever play the original metal gear without a guide. there's a part which just requires you to start punching every fucking wall in the game to look for the next place to go.
- Tenchu! I was just thinking that reading through these. We need a new almost realistic ninja stealth game.

Most of the really great choices others have said (Thief, Dishonoured, Hitman) So I'll just say playing stealth (especially archer) in Skyrim VR is by far the best way to play it.

Shadow Tactics Blades of the Shogun and Desperados 3, both by Mimimi Games are like the old Commandos (and Desperados) games of old.
In the same vein there's also Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood which is like all the previous ones, but you're in the 11th century robbing from royals and giving to the poor. This shit was my jam back in the day. Pain in the ass to get to work on a modern PC though, even with the GOG version.
- Second Shadow Tactics. Not a personal favorite but it does what it does pretty well. You have a small team of ninjas that each have their own abilities and strengths and you have to figure out how to move through levels, defeat enemies, and complete your objectives with the limited tool kit you have.

Mark of the Ninja is fantastic. Side scrolling, great platforming and tool options and a decent story as well.
It's a Klei game so you know it's gonna be good.
- fuck yes, mark of the ninja is amazing.

Invisible Inc Invisible Inc Invisible Inc, go get Invisible Inc you libs
It's turn-based stealth through cyberpunk corporate offices, in some ways similar to xcom but for pure sneakiness, but it's so damn well-done in every respect, it just sticks its landing on all its mechanics etc better than any game I've seen.
The turn based stealth is so damn slick, but I think its real achievement is absolutely nailing the risk/reward curve. The clock is ticking to higher security measures and you want to steal more shit so you overreach and fuck up - you’ve got all the time in the world to think it out, maybe you’re fucked but more often than you think you can let out all the stops and pull off the most ridiculously heroic hail mary to get your people out of there, and it feels so damn good when you do. So many “hard” games with permadeath etc just end up making you super risk averse and slow and it’s super boring, this one actively pushes you to ride right on the edge of catastrophe and I love it. Even better with the expansion pack too

Well obvs Metal Gear: Solid, the game that originated the concept.

39 comments