Knocking enemies down and parkour ruined stealth genre
Knocking enemies down trivializes sneaking because it allows to remove threat way too easily and permanently. It's functionally no different from killing them because it's never an issue to hide body so it's never found. As such you never actually have to sneak between enemies, you just remove all danger in game. It's only acceptable when it works like in Hitman Contracts, in which enemies will wake up after a while on it's own, so it's actually different action from killing and different in purpose. Otherwise it's way overpowered. In case of Hitman it also negatively impacts atmosphere. No longer in order to obtain disguise do you have to use garrotte, one of the most iconic attributes of 47, because you can at any time knock down enemy with your own hands alone and do them no harm too. Garrotte is completely useless in nuhitman because of it. There is no reason and temptation to kill innocents anymore and as such one of the parts that made dark atmosphere of playing as paid sociopathic murderer is gone.
Parkour is even worse. In almost all games that use it, you become functionally invisible by going on roof or even by climbing up a little. I do not mind a bit of verticality in maps (rope in Thief is great) but often it makes game too easy and is simply no entertaining. The worst offenders are naturally Assassin Creed and Dishonored. But while AC doesn't even pretend anymore that it is stealth game for casuals, Dishonored does and is even worse at it. You never actually have to sneak in Dishonored. There are so many high placed points like even fucking lamps or ledges in buildings that you can move indefinitely using them. And this is not stealth, it's fake stealth. There is no way for enemies to see you there. You are moving through large and way too convenient safe zones, simply observing enemies that can't threaten you in any way. Sneaking gives no thrill when there is no danger of being discovered.
Sniper Elite 4's enemy AI detects when someone from the squad goes missing after they check that he's gone from his post. Then they become weary and start searching the area. If there's an officer still alive they will notice it early as well and command his troops to go search which is why it's good to take out the officer first. Sniper Elite 4 actually has some good AI.
Luke Carter
Contracts and 2 SA are my favorite, followed by nu2 with all of nu1's maps since it does the sandbox meme better than BM.
Kayden Peterson
Parkour is fine. You can track stealth games that focus on high mobility and speed as far back as the first Tenchu.
What really hurts stealth games is the idea of the non-lethal run. To get the best score in most stealth games, you need to go around knocking people out and not using any of the lethal tools the game gives you. So,e people criticise Splinter Cell Blacklist, but at least it understood that other play styles are viable apart from just KOing everyone.
Brayden Martinez
>Playing Hitman Absolution with perfect stealth >Get a low rating >Shoot everyone and leave all the bodies on the floor and finish the mission within 2 minutes >The rating is so high that nothing else matter so I get max rating I don't think the game started development as a Hitman game. Also, why is the AI so shit, I've killed the target in chinatown behind a fence in front a crowd of civilians and the game continue like they never saw me.
