War of Stealth – Assassin

Genre: Top-Down Stealth

Players: 1

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Review:

War of Stealth – Assassin is a Top-Down Stealth game released on Nintendo Switch in 2021. Interestingly, while this game and the game that’s simply titled Stealth both come from the same developer/publisher pairing of Plitka Games and Kurenter, the two games approach the genre very differently. This game seems like it was clearly inspired by the likes of Metal Gear Solid, although the story here has elements of various genres, from cyberpunk to zombie films.

Visually, the presentation here is pretty good, with some interesting-looking levels and some decent lighting, although the game has an overall “jankiness” that makes these visuals far less impressive. The subdued synthesized soundtrack works well enough for the game as well. However, whatever points this game gets for its presentation are lost with its absolutely horrendously bad English, which is perhaps the worst I have seen in a videogame since the 8-Bit days.

No, this needs a whole paragraph of its own. Seriously, the English here is terrible on a whole other level. It’s bad enough that sometimes you need to pause for a moment and re-read the instructions you’re given to try to understand them. Bad enough that it makes the game’s plot seem like it was written by a child. Whether it’s the game telling me to get a “riffle”, or even the game’s description announcing “You play for a soldier who must come in to a secret base and take information about they work”, you’ll find yourself wondering at every step of the way why this game’s creator couldn’t manage to find a native English speaker to go over this game’s script to ensure that it wasn’t… this.

Unfortunately, the same lack of polish extends to the gameplay, and in countless ways. I don’t even know where to begin. Enemies have a cone of sight, but that cone seems to act independent of where they actually see. Enemies seem to endlessly respawn in some areas, leading to the potential to gather together an ever-expanding pile of bodies as you take them out. When you go to take out an enemy, you could find yourself simultaneously starting the door-unlocking minigame at the same time if you do it near a door, as both are triggered by the same button. Speaking of things being too close to one another, good luck searching multiple bodies close to each other, or searching a container close to a downed enemy.

The problems here run all the way down to the core interface, which is unwieldy and counter-intuitive. Moving an item from a container to your inventory inexplicably requires highlighting it, holding down the X button, and moving to the slot you want it to go to, which seems unnecessarily convoluted compared to simply selecting the item and then selecting the slot to move it to. Moving the camera angle requires pressing in the right analog stick and then moving it left or right, which is awkward and gets it fumbled up with the control for aiming.

These are just the issues I can think of off the top of my head, folks. I’m not even referring to my notes here.

Despite all its many, many, many flaws, War of Stealth isn’t without its positive qualities. When it actually works as intended, the core Stealth gameplay is good, and the visuals look surprisingly good for a game that is otherwise so amateurishly constructed. Unfortunately, those good qualities cannot save a game that is so severely lacking in polish, proofreading, and basic common sense about how a proper control scheme should work. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that War of Stealth is unplayable, but you certainly shouldn’t play it.

tl;dr – War of Stealth is a Top-Down Stealth game seemingly inspired by Metal Gear Solid, but unfortunately it suffers from severe gameplay issues both in its overarching design and in its basic gameplay, and if those didn’t make it clear that this game was created by someone clearly lacking the skill to meet this game’s vision, you’ll have no doubt left in your mind upon seeing the absolutely laughable broken English in every sentence of this game. While the game isn’t without some positive qualities, those are no reason to waste your time with this broken mess.

Grade: D-

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