Stealth

I'm a big fan of the idea of stealth based gameplay, but I have yet to play a game where it actually felt fun to execute. I love the idea of sneaking up on enemies and taking them out silently, slowly clearing the area until you could run at full sprint with metal boots on through it without fear of being found. Dealing bonus damage for hitting an enemy from behind, or without them noticing you. These are all fantastic concepts that I am always excited to see are an option in any game I play.

The problem is that, most games I've seen handle stealth in two different ways, neither of which I enjoy. Either the game will set you back to an earlier point and make you replay all of what you just failed at, or it will allow you to continue but make you miss out on rewards or the "good ending." Is it my fault that I failed the stealth section? Most of the time, yes, absolutely. Sometimes, no, not at all. Sometimes the person I'm following decides to turn around and run back ten feet for no reason and with no warning, twenty feet from the end of the section, and I'm forced to restart entirely because of something entirely out of my control.

I might be a little salty.

But so far I have found very few games where I actually enjoyed the stealth gameplay. One of the only particular instances I can think of was in Skyrim, which is unfortunate, because for the most part I didn't enjoy the rest of that game. But it allowed you to sneak into areas, snipe or backstab enemies for bonus damage, and if your plans fell apart, you could always switch over to a heavier weapon and armor to fight them head on. I love that idea. Providing options and incentives to take them, rather than punishing you for not playing the way that the game wanted you to.

I feel like that's something that games should do more in general. Encourage, rather than punish. And I have played games that do that. Let you go to overpowered areas and get equipment from much later in the game, get more experience if you can survive the fights there, and in a few rare cases, even change the order of events of the story, or get extra scenes you may have otherwise missed. It's exciting to get to play games in new, unique ways. To get a different experience, even though you're still going through the same story.

Like in a stealthy manner, for instance.