Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a very good game. I’m not just saying that because I’m a New Yorker who, like all New Yorkers, like things set in New York. It’s got a wonderful narrative with the same combat and traversal that made its predecessor one of the best games of 2018. But there’s one gameplay addition in particular that I want to focus on: camouflage. At any point (even in combat), you can press up on the D-pad and Miles will turn invisible to all enemies.
Giving players temporary invisibility is nothing new, nor is a means of escaping combat (like a smoke bomb). But the way that Miles Morales uses these features in addition to its genre that interesting. If you’re playing a stealth game, and get caught, you’re usually incentivized to flee rather than try to fight your way out. Games like Metal Gear and the older Assassin’s Creeds throw so much opposition at you that there’s simply no choice but to hide and wait for the notoriety to go down.
Acton games with stealth mechanics do the opposite. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. There’s a cluster of enemies in some sort of base. They don’t notice you so you have all the prompts to take them out stealthily. Unfortunately, you get caught while violently decapitating a guard with an oversized sword and suddenly every person in the base miraculously knows your location. At that moment, you remember that you’re playing an action game, wonder why you even bothered with stealth in the first place and proceed to rend the flesh of every baddie just as the game designers intended (probably). This means that stealth is typically seen as a prelude to the actual fight; a way to take out a few guys to make the impending confrontation easier. Insomniac’s Spider-Man from 2018 actually has this issue when taking on enemy bases but its successor provides a very simple and elegant solution; to let the player resume stealth if they feel like it. It’s nice for the folks that prefer taking down enemies though traps and construction mishaps rather than straight up combat (which is also fun).
So what’s the takeaway? I think it’s good to remember that if you’re making an action game but want to implement stealth mechanics, remember that a percentage of your players are going to prefer playing that way and will end up viewing some of the fights as a fail state. Make sure that there’s always an option to prioritize stealth gameplay that’s just as easy as punching everyone out.
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