Heisting

Genre: Arcade / Stealth

Players: 1

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Review:

Heisting is an Arcade-style game with some Stealth elements released on mobile devices in 2022 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024. In this game, players take the role of a leader of a criminal crew breaking into guarded facilities, taking out armed guards, and looting the place, only to spend their loot on upgrading their crew.

At this point, publisher QubicGames has made it a point to churn out a multitude of games featuring the same visuals at their core, with the same colorful but indistinct 3D humanoid characters in simple 3D levels. Astro Miner, Dig Deep, Mob Control, and now this… you could almost call it a style if it didn’t all look so generic. To its credit, Heisting does at least have a theme-appropriate soundtrack with a typical “heist/espionage” soundtrack, but then it kills any atmosphere that soundtrack creates by having your lackeys all respond when you direct them to grab loot by vocally saying in a silly dimwitted voice, “Ohkayy!”

The core gameplay has players only controlling movement, with all actions being context-sensitive and automatic. Stand in range on an enemy and you’ll automatically fire. Stand near cash and a timer will tick down for a moment before you automatically steal it. Stand near heavy valuables and a timer will tick down before one of your minions see it as a command to carry it. And stand near the exit for a moment and your minions will take it as a command to unload their loot and free their hands. In a typical level you repeat this process until either the enemies overwhelm you, you loot the place, or an alarm timer ticks down to zero and you have to leave early, the level remaining incomplete and needing another try.

This is where prep at your hideout comes into play, with players using cash and gems (yes, this game does have the stink of a former mobile game with microtransactions, no longer present on the Nintendo Switch) to upgrade their crew, get better weapons, and make the alarm timer take longer to kick in. While this gives players a nice feeling of progression, it is unfortunately also one of the game’s biggest flaws.

Fail any level, and you know you just need to keep grinding until your crew is powered up enough to defeat the task when you try again. Unfortunately, this means the game frequently doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with skill or clever decision-making, but repetitive grinding until you can brute-force your way past a previously-impossible level.

What’s a real shame is that this game actually makes a good attempt at adding some good variety, giving you levels that are more focused on combat, giving you levels that have you sneaking and going solo, having solo levels where you need to stealthily take out enemies. If this game’s structure wasn’t built around the mobile microtransaction model, it might actually be genuinely good.

As it is, Heisting is merely just fine. The variety keeps things interesting, and the simplicity makes this a more casual-friendly game, though the violence makes me hesitate to call it family-friendly. And because you’re meant to grind instead of learning any deeper gameplay, it ultimately makes for a shallow experience, perhaps good as a time-waster, but not much else.

tl;dr – Heisting is an Arcade-style game with Stealth elements where players lead a crew breaking into places, taking out guards, and looting, then upgrading their crew. This game’s simple and varied take on the topic matter has some good things going for it, but the grinding-focused experience built around the mobile version’s microtransactions makes this a shallow and repetitive experience, only good as a time-waster.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Monetization / Scam

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