Dishonored was the first thing that came to mind when I read the title, too. OP, if you haven’t played it, check it out!
As for others…
Skyrim and Fallout aren’t exactly deep stealth games, but stealth is hands down the most popular and arguably most fun way to play. Sneaky archer is a freaking meme.
Far Cry games all favour stealth as well. While you’re totally allowed to go in guns a blazing and it’s frankly more effective sometimes, the game does reward stealth and is clearly designed with it in mind. Silencers are magic, you can distract enemies, can lure wildlife to attack, smoke bombs, knife combos, “death from above”, etc.
The Metro series isn’t entirely stealth, but a lot of human enemy sections are meant to be done with stealth and I recall it being actually very difficult if you’re not stealthy (you die fast). I also recall the stealth feeling more realistic in terms of detection time. Finally, there’s something extra fun about being stealthy in a very dark post apocalyptic subway tunnel. Much better atmosphere for it!
As a final side note, the way OP described assassin’s Creed sounds like the older games. They might like some of the “middle” games like Unity more. The games that came just before Origins (Origins and later are very fun games, but the stealth is no longer the focus).
I don't quite remember how I played Metro 2033, but I do know that I played so much with Metro Last Light to get that stupid 'kill no humans' achievement that whenever I play it now I can practically zoom through most areas with stealth. Same way with Dishonored. Both great games, I love revisiting them from time to time.
With dishonored I wanted to be the ultimate ninja that leave no trace and had a lot of fun doing a clean hands ghost run. So challenging though, since I didn’t know if I had been detected until the end of each stage when they show you your performance.
I disliked Dishonored because the game tells you not to kill too many people or bad things will happen and then proceeds to make most of the items and abilities for killing people. You can kill some people, but it’s not clear exactly how many each level. I wasn’t really interested in spending tens of hours playing a game only to be told that I was a bad person who gets the bad ending. As a result I kept killing to a minimum and missed out on or barely used a huge portion of the items and abilities. Seemed like questionable game design.
Prey was great though. Not sure if I’d call it a stealth game, however.
The game doesn’t really want you to spare enemies. It’s just that there are 3 different ways to play the game and 3 different flavors of the story : low, mid and high chaos. I think you should feel free to massacre everyone, and then maybe start over a new game and try lower chaos !
I can only speak for the first 3 paid dlc, since I still haven’t played the castlevania one. The first 3 essentially add an alternate route to the game, so about 6ish levels and 5 bosses between them. With the exception of the queen and the sea*, the DLC content isn’t that much harder than base game stuff, and it’s all accessible in the games easiest difficulty (generally they’re easier than stuff from the free updates lol). They’re pretty good at adding a bit of extra variety in what routes you can take through the game, and add some extra items. Compared to some other games I play (stellaris), the DLC do feel pretty optional which is nice to see, and to the best of my knowledge they were also partially intended to support the creation of the free content as well.
*the bosses in that dlc are rough ngl. Queen boss fight is really fun though.
I actually only recently picked up some of the dlc’s cause they were on sale for like $2.50 a pop. Though they really are just cosmetics. I’d also put in enough hours into the game, where I felt pretty good about essentially donating to the dev’s.
Battlebit has replaced Mordhau (for now) as my brainless relaxation game. The FPS mechanics are surprisingly solid and it’s just good, chaotic fun. I do think the netcode feels a little last-gen, but you’re not playing this game to be a CS:GO master.
It looks pretty fun! I’ll look more into it but I l’ll probably buy it! My main problem is that I read somewhere that they are planning to use faceit and I use linux and as far as I now faceit doesn’t work on linux.
I should add that it isn’t perfect, it’s early access so expect some weirdness albeit a whole lot less than you’d think.
My favourite, for example: if you’re hiding behind cover make sure it is THICK, else a body part might clip through the model making it able to be shot. Mostly happens when prone making legs and feet stick out.
Instead of BF, I would try out BattleBit. It’s an Indie game that’s very similar to BF and got very popular recently.It’s supposed to be BF but actually good.
Hunt Showdown is on offer at the moment. It’s quite a learning curve but once you get the hang of it it’s fantastic. I’ve clocked 2.4k hours and it’s still got me hooked
They did shake up the economy but it was nothing serious. There were a bunch of cry babies like this on Reddit and discord.
At the end of the day you only need Blood Bonds to buy some legendary weapons/hunter/tool skins which are purely cosmetic and have nothing to do with the main game loop.
Some skins/cosmetics can also be earned in game without using premium currency.
I bought most DLC and blood bond skins because they cool and I want to support a game I love
2400 hours of fun for the €20 I paid for Hunt is damn good value
Hunt is like a more accessible version of Tarkov, without the loot Tetris, gun modding, and crazy detailed ballistics, set in a cool Lovecraftian late 19th century iteration of Louisiana’s swamps. Strongly recommend! (To anyone concerned about monetisation, outside buying the game, everything else is entirely cosmetic.)
Since you mentioned New Vegas, there’s Menace of The New West and Titans of The New West 2.0, they change Super Mutants and Power Armor respectively to resemble the ones in FO1 and FO2, purely aesthetic but adds a lot of flavor especially for Power Armor.
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