Game:

Intravenous (2021)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 11:13

42 views

3

fuck this level. this level is so buggy like guards is just stuck at the door, or the mob boss "heard" me for 1 frame even there's no question mark, no music changes, every fucking thing works as normal. but the game thinks that i being heard because i choke this forced target. i got shit for doing the things that i am suppose to do. this level is impossible to get ghost rank if you're playing with no gear. with guns? you will do just fine. and i will show you, right here:

https://youtu.be/E90YZOn-P6w

there's no guard pathing issue in this video as well. so, if you want to see how this level suppose to work and how its meant to be played, this is the video.

now, it's time for letting out my anger toward this game.
this level feels like it was made with cover mechanic in mind, but it was cut during the development, and this is the remnant of the level that build around its mechanics. and it feels like i was right, because i just saw the dev log that dev made, there was a cover mechanic initially in the game. but he cut it for some reason.

in 4:06 if this is splinter cell, i would turn off the light and just wait at the side of the sofa while i stick on the wall and let the guard walk pass me and go though. but since it's intravenous i can not, why? becuase your hit box will always collide with the guard in this part, regardless of position. because the guard will always walk at the middle of the hallway and there's nothing that i can do to prevent or make my hitbox smaller like stick to wall for example. like this:

https://youtu.be/_YbZJYGUGvU

or if you want thief example, a toilet that is between the locker room and camera room would connect to each other. and the hallway will always big enough for you to move around guards, so i will just simply water arrow it and make use of the reliable shadow system. or make use of the connected rooms design to circle around.

this section in intravenous it just bad, terrible, even. and you could say the same to second hallway of the level. it just a boring waiting game. aside from KO or kills gadgets. no gadgets will help you on this section, none. it sucks. this is the worst level by far. do you see how 1 missing mechanic can hurt the overall experience? here's the attempt with OCP no matter how good i try to hide, it never helps, at all:

https://youtu.be/VPd1loIhOCc

what's the point of having OCP in the game when it has very little to no influence on how you play the game? aside from it is there to annoys me on how wasted potential it was, and getting 417 in restuarant level, i just dont see any point of picking this gadget. i try and try to find a reason to making it useful but it just not impactful enough. look at how it suppose to be in Chaos Theory, it giving a player options to play the game, like this video for example.

https://youtu.be/6tiKbI56c0E

you can choose to wait, or just use OCP and shadow to your advantage to slip by, or you can just KO them one by one. with this simple gadget, it adds another dimension to the gameplay. just treat OCP like a modern water arrow and rope arrow in one. it open new possibility and giving rooms to experiment and having fun with stealth. this is one of the reason why CT is regarded as the "best" game in the series. i still wondering why people telling other people that splinter cell needs a lot of patience to play. when this gadget exist.

when it comes to level design in stealth games, or any genre of games really, you need to give player a wiggle room to play how they want, allowing players to distinguish themselves from others. (you know?, a skill expression thing, that people seems to forget these days?) you need to make the game interesting for repeated playthroughs, not just binary loud or stealth. but stealth in multiple ways or loud in multiple ways. in this game, stealth wise, it just this. one or two at most strategy. no diviation. boring on repeated playthroughs. i dont understand why, to be honest, that, the open levels in this game are fine. for the most part. and then linear levels are just bad.

look, i am okay with this game. this game is fine. but because this game is dub as "a love letter to classic stealth game", so i will judge it like one. and judging this in classic stealth game perspective. it's terrible. the more i play this game, the less i like about it. lack of player agency, useless gadgets, inconsistent AI, 1 frame alert, light switches are useless, inconsistent scoring system, inconsistent light meter. the list goes on. and after i finished this run, i played double agent V.1. it plays better than this game.

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