If you grew up on spy movies, like I did, then you know that espionage is pretty bad-ass by nature. From the spy themselves who are heroes in their own ways, the gadgets they possess, their modus operandi and the whole infiltration aspect, to the villains who are always plotting huge schemes that end up in pretty much everyone outsmarting each other, it is hard to be part of that world (as a spectator of course) and not have your jaw drop every 10 minutes. But there is a medium which can channel the world of espionage better than movies, and that is of course through video games. Watching James Bond do his spy thing is pretty good, but living it as someone like Solid Snake does a better job at making you feel the emotions and the tension of a sneaking operation. Never stop sneakin’ is a tribute to the whole espionage aspect and delivers an experience which I can describe as “Blazing fast sneaking on super steroids”.
Developer: Humble Hearts
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release date: December 14th, 2017
Price: $14.99
Never stop sneakin’ is a stealth game by the creator of “Dust: An Elysian Tale”. You play as an agent from the Department of sneakin’ commanded by Major Milestone wit the objective or rescuing ALL the presidents which have been kidnapped. All the president from the continent? From the world? No, ALL the presidents from ALL time. If you already think the setting is pretty nuts, then I must say you are in for a treat my friend! NSS is a game that parodies everything from stealth games and makes up for a hilarious experience.
The best way to describe the gameplay is as arcade-like stealth. Each map is an arcade level and your objective is to infiltrate deeper and deeper into the enemy base until you reach the end of the level. The levels are procedurally generated and usually have a certain “theme” to them, from snow bases to jungle operations, the maps are constantly changing. The levels are arranged in sets of 3 levels, with 3 having a boss that must be defeated in order to proceed. At the beginning of the game you only have to beat 2 sets per run, but as the game progresses you’ll have the chance of attempting missions with many more sets to beat. The arcade nature is best coupled with the portable nature of the switch, because you can squeeze in some missions during your daily commute or with any other bite-sized chunk of time you stumble upon.
Perhaps my favorite part about the game is how it plays. You use the stick to move and….. that’s it! Literally the only thing you can do in terms of controls is move around. This emphasizes the movement aspect of sneaking and even allows you play with one hand controlling either analog stick or even the touch screen. Surely there’s gotta be more than just moving around in an enemy base like taking out enemies, right? Well yes and no. The game will have you moving around the base undetected, however if you can sneak behind your enemy you will automatically take him out with your sneak blade. Think of it like being a ninja and going through enemy territory skillfully taking out every guard with swift blade strikes.
You do have weapons other than the sneak blade, however they function as more of an emergency tool. The sub-weapons include bullets, EMP grenades and smoke grenades. You can’t manually use them, but they will automatically trigger when you are seen by the enemy. If a guard spots you, then you will instantly shoot a bullet at him, or if a turret or camera sees you, then you will use an EMP grenade that takes out all the machinery in the vicinity. Smoke grenades are what I would call a sub-sub-weapon, they only trigger when you are out of bullets and serve a similar purpose by stunning the guard when they spot you. Obviously these sub-weapons are very limited and have to be procured by taking out enemies or hacking the base. Perhaps my favorite aspect about the sub-weapons is that they do look pretty bad-ass when they trigger. If you think about it, they only trigger when you actually mess up, but the end results makes it seem that you pulled an even better maneuver than just plain sneaking. I have a hard time trying to think of another game where mistakes look even better than optimal play.
Aside from moving around and killing enemies, you also run around the enemy base acquiring intel. Scattered around the enemy base are computers that you can hack by standing in front of them. Doing so will show a progress bar that when filled will award you with whatever that spot contains. Rewards range from ESP, to packages, or even sub-weapons. ESP is also found in the form of green/yellow dots scattered on the map, think of it like the dots in pac-man, going around every corner of the map will reward you by collecting this dots which increase your ESP.
You can probably see by now how each level plays. From beginning to end you go around the enemy base, walking through every corridor to collect ESP, hacking every computer and taking out every guard or turret to clear a path to the end of the level. Some enemies also drop keycards which allow you to enter secret rooms which have better rewards and usually award you “perks”. These perks gradually unlock as you progress to the game, and give you benefits like scavenging more ammo or HP, to even more powerful end game perks like a stealth camo or the nano-plague. Perks are lost when you exit a mission, but serve the purpose of making you very strong as the mission progresses. With some luck you could be procuring straight OP perks that will make it extremely easy to clear the level. You could also completely whiff and get near useless perks that will not help at all, such is the nature or arcade games and your success will be dependent on how good you are adapting to your strengths.
Other than acquiring perks, the game will reward you with customization options for your agent every time you complete certain objectives or beat the boss of the current set of levels. Usually the rewards are cosmetic in nature, allowing you to use an agent different from Hummingbird or even changing your weapons for more goofy alternatives like a set of 2 bananas or the head and leg of a grasshopper. You could also find upgrades to your ESP decoder, which is just a multiplier of the ESP you earn per mission. Naturally collecting these ESP decoder upgrades will sky-rocket the amount of ESP you earn per mission. I never had any shortages of ESP on my playthroughs, but that might be because I never ended a mission prematurely. The decoder does carry-over to new game+, which makes the early game a breeze in future playthroughs.
My favorite and sadly also least favorite part of the game were the bosses. The enemy unit is called the “Executive branch”, and is a parody of the government’s executive branch. Each boss is a parody with villains like Dr. Acula, health secretary, Bobert, secretary of education, and even Vice president Helicopter… an actual helicopter. Each boss has its own way of being defeated, with helicopter making you collect rocket launchers to destroy him, or Senators Schaud and Fraud which are sneaking showdowns where you need to sneak behind them before they kill you. I didn’t enjoy the fights with Dr. Acula and Ambassadors two-four-six though. Nothing wrong with the battles per se, but both will have you trick the AI into following them to certain spots of the map, which is exactly the opposite of what you’ve been doing all game by bringing swift justice to the enemy base. Manipulation is my least favorite part of sneaking, and I’m glad this is the only place I’ve had to deal with it.
As closing words I have to say what I enjoyed this game much more than I thought I would. Seeing the trailer, the music and even the blocky PS1 graphics instantly brought me to nostalgia heaven. I have fond memories of playing MGS with my brothers and everything about this game brought a 20 year nostalgia trip. As much as I love the concept of stealth, I have usually found it to be frustrating and stressful. As a speedrunner I usually like to go fast and stealth requires patience, not to mention that the stealth aspect has been abused in many games for no good reason. NSS however bring the good things about stealth without the boring aspects of it. This game makes you feel as if you were already an expert stealth agent, doing your sneaking thing a if it were something you could even do in your sleep. I don’t think any other stealth game made me feel as empowered as this one (despite me not being good at stealth).
Side note: I wrote this while listening to the James Bond movie theme
Side note 2: I’m 99% sure that at one point in the game I was flashed with an image of Dust
Play-time logged: 25+ hours
