Cloak & Dagger: Shadow Operations

не делайте ту жу ошибку что и я. не покупайте эту какашку....

Cloak & Dagger is a short stealth game heavily inspired by old Splinter Cell titles. The game features 5 levels (though one of them is a tutorial and only has 2 enemies), with the main challenge being avoiding the guards that cannot be killed or taken out in any way. While developer did add an option to knock guards out from behind, it can be very clunky to use and enemies only stay down for a very limited period of time, so it's best to avoid confrontation entirely if you can help it. Our spy is equipped with 4 weapons to help him deal with the enemies: a EMP gun that can be used to shock enemies or disable lights and cameras, which is completely silent, or you can charge up a powerful shot that will destroy the lights completely (though not the cameras), but that can be heard by enemies who will arrive to investigate the commotion. The other 3 weapons are all different types of grenades: EMP grenade, the most useful of the bunch, can disable every light source in the environment, though in my experience it doesn't always disable cameras, and I'm unsure if it's a bug or not. Next we have a flashbang, which disables enemies for a limited time, and finally a noisemaker. Frankly, in my playthrough I only ever used the EMP grenade. Levels in the game are very short, if one were to look on youtube you can easily find walkthroughs of the full game that can take less than 30 minutes overall. However, they aren't without their charm, the Oil Rig level in particular was a pretty big difficulty spike due to cramped environments and confusing layout. Despite their small size, the levels often provide the player with different ways of approaching their objective, such as breakable windows or vents that can sometimes be used to circumvent a large part of the level. The game can be pretty buggy, particularly during climbing animations, which a few times resulted in me getting completely stuck and unable to move. The final level also had noticeable framerate dips, though overall it was playable and the game never crashed on me. The AI can sometimes bug out and end up stuck on in an alert state, standing in the same spot, which I assume happens because guards are unable to reach the source of the sound and end up stuck in place. Despite its issues, I did enjoy Cloak & Dagger, and my main issue with it isn't even the price, which isn't all that high, but rather the length. Game is very short, and while, to my knowledge, the dev is currently working on a new title, I wish he made an update or DLC for Shadow Operations with a few new levels. Even with how short they are, if the title had at least twice as many levels I could've easily recommended it, but as it stands this is a very cautious recommend that mostly applies to the fans of the genre, or those willing to support indie devs interested in providing us with the style of game that AAA publishers are not invested in these days.

I wanted to like the game, but it's buggy and has not been play tested well. This is what a lot of Indies always get wrong. They don't playtest well to find pain points. For example the tutorial tips in the game in the first tut level only show up when you stand in a particular small area in a lot of places. If you slightly move forward or backwards it disappears and you have to stand in the sweet spot. It seems they set the collider area for triggering the tips is too small in a lot of places.

We need more stealth games, and for a one man operation this is pretty great. If you like Splinter Cell or the classic Metal Gear Solids, give it a try.

Le jeu a été développé par une seule personne. Ca fait toujours un peu mal de descendre un jeu que quelqu'un a probablement fait dans l'espoir de se lancer, mais ça n'empêche pas que le jeu est objectivement mauvais. Le jeu nous permet de jouer avec la lumière et l'obscurité, ainsi que le son, pour se dissimuler et nous donne un taser et 9 grenades par niveau (3 grenades fumigène pour se cacher à la vue des ennemis, 3 grenades sonores pour les attirer ailleurs et 3 grenades IEM). On notera en bon point d'abord la DA, j'apprécie le design des ennemis et du personnage principal et l'environnement rappelle un peu Shadow Moses de MGS 1. C'est à peu près tout ce que j'ai retenu. En mauvais points en revanche... -IA buggée. Parfois les ennemis font du moonwalk alors qu'on est juste derrière eux, on se fait gauler, et on se fait tuer. Les ennemis ne sont pas non plus très futés, ils ne peuvent pas nous avoir quand on est couchés sous un char, une caisse... -Mouvements buggés. Le personnage est censé pouvoir accrocher une rambarde pour se hisser, mais parfois, il va rester coincer DANS la rambarde, et là il faut se coucher en sortir. -Plusieurs autres bugs qui cassent la progression, par exemple l'avant-dernier niveau, 2/4 fois, le garde possédant la clé jaune n'est pas apparu, et s'il n'apparaît pas, impossible de finir le niveau, bien évidemment. -On est supposé pouvoir neutraliser au moins temporairement les gardes en les attaquant au CaC par derrière mais je crois que ça ne fonctionne tout simplement pas. -Ca, c'est plutôt un mauvais point subjectif : impossible d'éliminer définitivement les gardes ou caméras, ce qui fait du jeu plutôt un puzzle game qui ne nous laisse pas le choix de la manière de progresser. Je ne demande pas un immense arsenal non plus, bien sûr, mais un moyen de se frayer un chemin un peu plus simplement, ça ne mange pas de pain non plus. Enfin, le jeu est très court, fini en un peu plus de 2H30 à cause des retry de l'avant-dernier niveau et de certaines fois où l'IA m'a spotté en faisant du moonwalk comme énoncé plus haut, mais je ne sais pas si on peut vraiment dire que c'est un point négatif...

While the game is made by a small development team and is a homage to splinter cell and metal gear. It's buggy, clunky, unoptimized and downright a mess. I'd be interested to see what they produce in the future, but this is not worth it.