Intravenous

This has to be one of the best damn action stealth games I've played in years maybe even better than the last couple of hitman games & I love hitman, I was looking for a solid tactical shooter with heavy emphasis on stealth I came away more than satisfied with the experience.

I had fun with Intravenous despite its discordant design elements. There are some strange design ideas that don't mesh. While most stealth games rely on the player having more awareness and knowledge of enemy position than the AI Intravenous hassles the player in ways that seem annoying rather than deep. For instance, the player can see through walls having complete awareness of the map, You can zoom the map out to see even more of the gameworld but doing so makes actually playing and aiming tedious and overly difficult. Unfortunately there is no quick zoom out command. So you either play with the proper camera placement and have a dubious awareness of where enemies are or you zoom out and your looking at ant level stuff. Another weird choice is the night vision. When enemies are in dark areas they are practically impossible to see so you use night vision....ok but then any light areas are blown out to the point of blinding you. Is that realistic? sure, but why then give the player omniscience to see enemies and environment through walls? I played on the "true" difficulty which makes the enemies lightning fast in their reactions and they almost never miss their shots. If not for running and shooting which will cause some spray they will always hit you. The AI is fairly realistic in the sense that they will examine opened doors, lights that have gone off, noises etc. They are however overly aggressive. If they notice an open door they will not only investigate but will start roaming the map and recruiting other NPCs to form a posse. You can try to exploit the AI in various ways and one clever addition to the game is the AI behavior when you try to camp in a building, after a few rushes they will start camping too and take positions surrounding your holdout. Ghosting is the optimal route. I would prefer if the player did not have omniscience, being limited to a cone of view with slower enemies would make the sim element and stealth more realistic.

Although on the screenshots it might look like a top down shooter like Police Stories, the gameplay is much closer to Metal Gear - if you don't avoid enemies or at least use supressed weapons you will see the reload screen pretty quickly. This is not to say you can't go loud from time to time, but you need to find a nice spot to ambush enemies because once they hear you they will group and come rushing at you. The easiest way through a level is to pick the enemies off quietly one by one or if you are skilled enough - avoid them entirely. It is a great game where you need to plan your movement and stay in the shadows.

I'm writing this as somebody who originally bought Intravenous on Steam and decided to double-dip on the GOG version because I want to support DRM-free games and the developer. In short: this is a delicious throwback and one of the best stealth games in years, to boot. Intravenous hits the sweet spot of "easy to learn, hard to master" with enough frequency for its lesser stages to be easily forgotten. There aren't too many tools at your disposal, but each is worth trying out in its own right. There's also a solid dichotomy of brute force and never-seen-once sleuthing that makes each stage replayable past the initial charm of trying not to stay detected. In fact, replayability is one of the things that Intravenous does best. There is a swath of options to play around with, from the ability to have a custom difficulty mode to mutators that both enhance the already solid gameplay while making it wonderfully stupid at the same time. This is all bolstered by the superb Artificial Intelligence, which makes the best of the combat/stealth dynamic without ever making either side feel too unbalanced. All of that is great, but: the story is more of an afterthought, and if you're a sensitive person, my recommendation is a 50/50. The narrative is that of a pretty standard B-Revenge-Movie. It gets better as it goes along with a few neat twists, but it isn't nearly as consistent in its delivery, unlike the gameplay. As for this game's content, if you are a person that's sensitive (I.E., you get offended easily), you might want to watch a few gameplay videos to evaluate whether or not you can handle some of the filthier dialogue in this game before making a purchase. I don't personally believe that it's offensive enough to take away from the overall experience, but that's an opinion that might differ from person to person. All in all, this is a superb sophomore effort from developer Roman Gelebenkov, and I eagerly await whatever project he might work on next.

You sneak in through the window, and creep up on the unsuspecting criminal sitting in a chair across the room. You knife him in the throat, and quickly rush to the light switch to kill the lights. But just then, a guard outside spotted you through the window! He is going to alert the others! Thinking quickly, you throw your knife through the window, killing the guard instantly. But now you have to hide his body, or else more thugs will be on alert. You go pick up the guard's body, and toss him in a dumpster. Hopefully no one notices the blood trail you left.... This game is a total blast. In many ways, it is reminiscent of Hotline Miami, but with much more in the way of stealth mechanics, and much more interesting enemy AI. It's also a game you can play many ways. My friend beat the game with a total run-and-gun style (on the hardest difficulty!); no attempt at stealth. I'm enjoying a very quiet, stealthy play style (knife and silenced pistol, no armor). You can prioritize taking out a ton of enemies, or you can simply sneak by many of them. You choose your equipment before each run. You can go in with full body armor and assault rifles, or you can go in with a knife and taser, and an EMP gun for dealing with video cameras. The equipment you carry heavily affects your stealthiness. The story is "meh." Hotline Miami has a cooler story and a much more artistically interesting "vibe." But this game has FANTASTIC game play, and I find it a MUCH superior game play experience to HLM. I enjoy playing the same levels over and over... sneaking around, taking out the baddies. It's a thrill. I don't play games for the story, I play to enjoy playing. This one is very compelling. I highly recommend it!