Heist Master

[i] My Experience [/i] I'm often drawn to stealth games, especially when I'm given clear information on what enemies can perceive. Although it's clearly a budget title, the trailer and screenshots for [b]Heist Master[/b] led me to believe that it could provide this type of information. And honestly, it does - it's clear when you're in an enemy view cone (the cone turns red), how far the sound travels when you step on a metal floor or shatter glass, and when you're hidden by smoke and can remain safe from enemies or automated turrets. Your thief can dispatch enemies quickly with attacks from behind, and can don costumes that allow him to traverse certain areas without detection (for a limited period of time - these costumes seem to disintegrate after a period of time for some reason). I was generally able to complete the levels quickly, especially when the four-digit passcodes and keys are so clearly visible in the game's isometric perspective. Within each set of levels you can purchase upgrades from time to time to enhance your thief or reduce the effectiveness of enemies or cameras in the levels that remain in the set. I would usually purchase some of these (I didn't know what else to do with my money), but I wouldn't call them necessary for success. Although the game was cheap, I still found myself wanting more cohesive and substantial content from it. I played sets of levels in a variety of locations (the casino that you see in the trailer has nine levels), and it felt as though these levels were randomly pulled from a bag. As I played, both locations and levels seemed to be repeated. After a while, I found myself just trying to unlock all of the characters, since the game provided me with no larger-scale goal. The last character I could unlock was Spider-man, but unlocking him required completing randomized sets of challenges. One of these challenges was using a zipline a certain number of times. It was easy to use ziplines, since your thief is essentially required to use them for basic traversal in various levels. However, the game seemed to be randomly pulling together levels that included no ziplines, so I was unable to complete this challenge. This was the final blow for me in terms of spending more time with the game. [b]Heist Master[/b] is generally bug-free and is solid mechanically, but really seems more like a demo than a full game. I'd be interested to see developer SoupInIt Games put together a game using these mechanics that actually has a story or an arc to it.