My first impression of Stealth Bastard Deluxe was it was as if the video game Splinter Cell decided to have love children with the Minions from the animated movie Despicable Me. In this 2D stealth game, the normal tip-toe skulking around corners is eschewed for some fancy hand-eye coordination and speed necessary to make it out alive from a facility that seems hell-bent on killing poor ol’ unarmed Stealth Bastard.
Stealth Bastard himself is a parody of Sam Fisher, complete with a paunch and on top of that, he is a clone. This provides a brilliant explanation on the unlimited number of lives you get while attempting a level: Stealth Bastard IS expandable. Players will need to use the dynamic lighting and shadows as cover, while they jump, crouch, and make poor attempts at running with the objective of unlocking and heading to the exit on each level.
The level design is borderline devious, and while not impossible, some thinking is required. Occasionally, messages appear on screen and these are strategically placed. These messages are not really hints as some of them are there just to mock the player and their seemingly suicidal attempts with Stealth Bastard. Yup, the poor dude is stuck in a dead end job which guarantees death at every turn, no wonder he has a tagline that reads: Tactical Espionage Arsehole.
But for the players, deaths are half comedic timing, and half brain teasers waiting to be solved, and this game has plenty of these moments. Players are timed for their efforts and if you managed to successfully crack your head over a level, I recommend you try a second or third time just to see how fast can you go with your solution in order to make your mark on the global leaderboards. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Cameras, lasers, turrets, robots…the whole works (including boss fights)…are out to get you in the Facility, so it pays to stays to stay sharp in this game
Stealth Bastard Deluxe comes with its own Level Editor, so players can create and post up their very own user-created levels. If you are not the type to make custom levels, you can download those created by others from the online level repository. This brings about a different aspect of replayability to Stealth Bastard, aside from trying to improve your times for the existing levels in the game.
Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Stealth Bastard Deluxe at a 4.5 out of 5. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, especially if you are fan of stealth games and puzzles. The game is available on Steam (for Windows PC) at a special price of USD 8.99 (ends December 6th, after that it’s USD 9.99), so check it out over here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/209190/
A review code was provided to Nineoverten.com for the purpose of this review.
