You may be a bad enough dude to rescue [u]the[/u] president. But are you a sneaky enough dude to rescue [u]every[/u] president we've ever had or ever will have? Even the bad ones?
Made with the most state-of-the-art polygoniest technology, Never Stop Sneakin' is both an homage to and parody of stealth action, secret agent stuff, and the original Metal Gear Solid, just with less giant robots. And, wouldn't you know it, it was made by the people who made Dust AET, which I had also finally just played.
Some of you may remember back in 2015, GameFAQs had its "Best. Game. Ever." voting. Someone made their own version that had all the games in the running presented to you two at a time and you picked which one you liked more, over and over until it had ranked every game for you based on your choices. While it's really hard for me to rank favorites by "#1/#2/etc." spots and the games are certainly subject to moving up or down the rankings, tied for #1 was Metal Gear Solid and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
So yeah, stealth action in general and Metal Gear Solid in particular, I'm a fan. As for the other aspect of what I'm talking about, parody, I'll say I was subscribed to MAD Magazine for over a decade and I still own something like six of their collections. So yeah, a good spoof has long been one of my favorite forms of comedy.
So...when a friend told me a couple of years ago about a new game called Never Stop Sneakin' and linked me to the first 20 minutes of gameplay...yeah. I knew I had a must-buy on my hands, and it wasn't until recently I owned a computer that I was confident could play it.
As before, I'll put the game's best foot forward and start with my favorite thing about it, and this time it's the sense of humor. NSS bills itself as a parody and it fits that bill perfectly. From wordplay to satire to both shrugging at and embracing its own ridiculousness, it got a lot of smiles, chuckles, and outright laughs out of me. This game is funny in ways I could always appreciate.
The graphics make the game's roots obvious, harkening to the days when polygons were the cool new thing. It got that aesthetic down pat without looking like crap, and that's commendable considering how badly most games from this era aged, graphically speaking. The music, which was by Hyperduck Soundworks (like Dust's was), is good and gets me in a sneakin' mood, and the theme song is another homage/parody of a couple specific tunes from the MGS series.
In addition to the obvious stealth action elements, one other thing I like about the gameplay is that the levels are semirandomly generated, which is something I've been a sucker for ever since Diablo I.
The plot is rather nonsensical, as it should be, but I still liked the characters, not to mention it actually got me to go and do a little independent research on a certain urban legend I'd never heard of before. Phrases like "even the bad ones" and "time travel shenanigans" are probably gonna stay in my vocabulary for a while, as will referring to stealthiness or secret agent/ninja-type stuff as "sneakin'."
The controls...well, there kind of aren't any. You could probably play this with an Atari 2600 controller. All you really do is move; everything else is automatic other than pressing buttons on menus or to advance dialogue. Nothing wrong with simplicity if it works, as far as I'm concerned. But what works in its favor is, how often do you play a PC game that you only need one hand to play while the other is free to do other things? Like...you know...eating...and nothing untoward. It's a small thing but I can't remember the last time I played a game that controlled this simply but was still fun, not to mention I usually play whatever video game I'm currently focusing on around the time I like eating dinner on work days, so not having to put off eating or even pause the game to do it was a plus for me.
While the game in general is good, time now for its main drawback. I mentioned that if Dust had one problem, it was that it was too easy. That holds true for NSS, except more so. Enemies are as clueless as your commanding officer. Bosses are more tests of patience than skill, and even then, not that much; the only bosses that I ever found even sort of challenging were Schad and Freud, and only because you fight two of them at once. There are even arrows on the floor pointing out where the exit is and even the most directionally-challenged person would not get lost in this game without them. It's not for nothing the game has the "Casual" tag on the Steam page: Not too far into the game, you'll be getting perks that make sneakin' increasingly simple, and there are a couple of them that pretty literally make sneakin' unnecessary period. You don't know which perk you'll get until you get it, unless you buy it, so if you're playing it for any amount of challenge, you might get something that makes you so overpowered that the only way you'll lose is by intentionally trying to lose.
Again, like Dust, it's easy to adjust your play style to challenge yourself. Try beating a mission without getting any of the more OP perks by only buying perks and restricting yourself to the less good ones. Or for a better challenge, beat a mission without any perks and without buying anything. I tried that towards the end of the game, and even though I only took damage once, that made the game more fun and actually feel like...a stealth game, you know, when you have to manage your resources and get in combat only when it's to your advantage.
It's not very long either, and again, there's nothing wrong with that if you're having fun...and feeling like you got your money's worth. Beating it the first time had about 21 hours logged in the clock, but you could probably shave that down to more like 16 or less as some of that time is me stepped away from paused games and some more could be taken off from doing a couple of missions just for fun or redoing a couple other missions because I forgot to find the mission objectives. The only reason I'm inclined to play it through a second time is as a matter of personal preference: I would rather leave my New Game+ file on a completion rating of either 100% or 0% instead of like 3%, especially when beating it the first time wasn't even that hard.
Kind of maybe spoiler, [spoiler]but the ending is a letdown too. No final stage or final boss despite feeling like the game had a decent amount of setup for both. Forgive me but even in fairly casual games I thought one or both of those things are more or less standard, especially in games that [u]have[/u] levels and bosses.[/spoiler]
Still...
For an overall rating, I guess I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10, maybe an 8 if I'm being a little less objective. It's a good game and it feels like it was made for someone like me, but it loses some points for being so easy, so short, and for the lack of what I would call a proper finale even if the ending still wasn't bad. As far as I'm concerned, the game feels like it did what it set out to do. It didn't reinvent the wheel like its source material did, but it wasn't trying to.
So if you're like me and the Metal Gear Solid series left a permanent impact on your life or you love a good spoof, I recommend it, especially if you identify with both of those points. It's only about $12 on Steam as of this journal and I think, despite its shortcomings, you're still getting a good deal from that. Get psyched, put on your bodysuit, turn down your resolution until everything is a pixely polygon...
And Never Stop Sneakin'.
