Sometimes choice between apple and orange has to be made.
Sorry, I don't believe in
racemixing genre mixing, you might as well throw films and books into the pile if you're going to cross streams that hard. What I can do is to give you a 3x3 grid of games I and one other person (that might be reading this) has played that were good. Every day I dread finding out a cancerous youtube personality with millions of followers has started shilling one of these. The attention Fear & Hunger 2 got online was almost enough to turn me off the game, only failing to do so because it is just that good.
Quality post. Well done. Great choices too. Any recommendations from the current Steam Stealth Fest?
Other than the obvious and well-known ones?
Mark of the Ninja got some good buzz when it was released but I don't see people talking about it much anymore. For what it is, being a 2D stealth platformer, it's about as good as that gets.
Filcher is an indie minimalist version of Thief but in a more modern setting, there are some big flaws such as light switches not always being present, something you could handwave away in Thief, a lack of tools for verticality such as rope arrows, and the game won't let you save mid-mission like the first Hitman game. The characters are also 2D sprites which doesn't mesh well with trying to predict where they are about to go or look. If you're tired of playing Thief fan missions it's an alright ride however, since it's one of few games that gives a real shot at trying to copy the best parts of Thief with a focus on light and shadows as well as sound, unpolluted by other genres interfering with the core.
Death to Spies is Hitman's lesser cousin, it's worth playing once, especially since you can't get Hitman maps as you can Thief levels.
Most of the games for sale only feature occasional stealth elements in service of something else than games focused on stealth as gameplay, looking at the list of games being discounted most of them aren't even on the same level as now forgotten stealth games like Stolen from 2005. If you have already gone through the big series in the genre, Splinter Cell, Thief, Hitman, MGS, arguably Dishonored but I'm not sure I would include it, then you're better off getting an emulator than digging through steam sales, something like the Tenchu series or Shinobido if you haven't played those.
