Stealth Inc 2 Review : A Game Of Clones

Stealth games. A genre bewitchingly bereft of quality these days. Garret’s Thief reboot was rotten to the core, and Metal Gear Solid comes around barely once every five years. Splinter Cell’s still doing its own, rather stylish, thing, but we know it’s only a matter of time until Sam Fisher’s clambering up towers to unlock a bunch of icons and objectives on his open-world map.

And so we turn to the renegade indie developers, those willing to take bigger risks or attempt smaller, more imaginative titles. The original Stealth Inc, née Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole, stole my Splinter Cell-loving heart with its 2D aesthetics simultaneously aping the best bits of Solid Snake and Super Meat Boy in a deliciously difficult level-based romp.

By the end I’d torn my hair down to wispy strands, as mind-bending teleporting puzzles blended with hard-as-nails stealth and lightning quick reactions. I was mentally and physically exhausted; I’d loved my time but I never wanted to see the green-eyed bastard again.

It was with some trepidation then that I approached Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones, just a year or so after its predecessor. More of the same and I don’t think I could resist pounding his cute cloned head in, but the goggle-eyed wonder surprised me again. Curve Studios has taken the formula from the first game and given it just enough of a jiggle to make Stealth Inc 2 fresh, no mean feat in a vast ocean of 2D platformers.

The most dramatic change is the shift to a Castlevania-esque giant hub world. While much of your progress through this is gated by abilities and the whims of the devs, it’s nice to have a genuine area to explore on your travels, compete with hidden secrets and nooks and crannies. Certainly the environments won’t appeal to everyone; they’re dark, dank, but deliciously evil. There’s a Vault Boy-esque vibe to your environs, with almost cheery exteriors often whipped away to reveal hideous machinations and complex traps behind the scenes. The stage is set with a varied and atmospheric soundtrack, with all sorts of industrial beats, electronic bleeps, and dubstep trouncing during the more frenetic moments.

Overseeing your every move is a nefarious overseer, a spiteful test lab scientist looking to become employee of the month. The titular Stealth Bastard is the spanner in his otherwise well-oiled work, with your every move tracked by his efforts to kill you. Narrative takes place through sadistic and darkly comical writings he leaves on the wall, urging you ever onwards to your death. There's a definite Oddworld vibe to proceedings.

On your travels there are a total of sixty doors, each containing the Test Chambers familiar from the series’ debut. The basic task is to work your way to the exit door, which is usually locked by a number of hackable terminals. You work through these in a mostly linear fashion, with each getting progressively harder and layering in more levels of difficulty.

As soon as you’ve mastered the basics Curve Studios is quick to throw something new at you, in the first instance an Inflate-a-Mate, a box which can be thrown and expanded or deflated as necessary. Its uses are many, from the obtuse to the obvious, but it already gets you to think within its first half an hour in a different manner than the original did. The Inflate-a-Mate’s obvious use is as an expanding platform to reach higher areas, but it’s not long until you’re chucking it down vents to hit switches, using it as a movable shield, crushing enemies and inflating it in may air for tricky shots.

From there it’s just a procession of great ideas and twists on a theme. Each area you uncover will grant you with a new gadget, a sort of greatest hits of puzzle game mechanics. Whether that’s the aforementioned box, a Swapper-like cloning device, hacking robots, teleporting. Every gadget is introduced and then layered up in progressive levels, each time a cog in your brain will tick into place as your repertoire and your knowledge grows. Once you’ve got that gadget you’re then free to use it back in the main facility of course, unlocking new areas and uncovering some of the treasure trove of secrets. This includes unlockable cosmetics such as hats for the first time, which is a neat addition.

Throughout Stealth Inc 2’s 10-hour or so length these gadgets begin to inevitably layer up, with each area getting sequentially more complex and challenge you to use them in various combinations. The learning curve is exquisite, thankfully, because there are an exhaustive number of options at your stubby little fingertips by the finale.

Thankfully Stealth Inc 2 is a game which never outstays its welcome, providing a frenetic puzzle platformer which entertains from beginning to end. If you’re a high-score junkie you’ll like get even more mileage out of this, each of the game’s 60 Test Chambers provide you with extensive rankings breakdowns and fastest times, something which requires a little too much patience for these now-weary hands.

Verdict

Cons

• Too brief for some          

Pros

• Clever puzzling
• Never unfair