10 Awesome Old-School Video Game Features We Don't See Anymore
3. Stealth Games
The 2000s were truly the stealth years for gaming.
Whether a game was a full-blown stealth sim along the lines of Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, or whether hide and sneak mechanics were crowbarred into the most unlikely of games just to ride this wave (Windwaker? Really?), stealth was everywhere.
Typically having the player get from point A to point B without being seen or heard by guards, this brand of game play was slow, methodical, and deliberate. The emphasis on hiding in the shadows certainly explains why the Batman Begins movie tie in game chose the Splinter Cell approach.
Hiding in the rafters or dangling upside down from overhead pipes until a guard has passed often saw the player sit idle for minutes at a time; a concept unheard of by the Fortnite generation.
Should the light or noise meter on your HUD go above a certain level, you’d been spotted, and alarms would blare whilst backup arrived to outnumber you ten to one, so you’d better hope your silenced pistol was loaded. The tension was palpable, the pay-off well worth the stress.
These games just don’t exist anymore.
Sam Fisher is - ironically - in hiding, and the Metal Gear and Hitman series’ have arguably devolved into more traditional action games, catering to the more transient attention spans of modern gamers.
The closest we’ve had to a true stealth game in recent years was the fantastic Alien Isolation, but even this leaned more toward horror than stealth, with the sneaking and hiding not about gaining a tactical advantage, but simply trying to avoid a shocking, grizzly death.