That’s your biggest worry with modern gaming?
Fair point, but I suspect even people with disabilities hate the general enshittification of games.
Hold up, “enshitification” is just turning into a buzzword now.
Enshitification has from the beginning described a service or product which is first released one way, and then over time is made worse for the users in ways designed to squeeze more profit out of them.
Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.
This is not enshittification.
Enshittification refers to a process with specific phases that ensure services will degrade at the expense of users, and then business customers, so that shareholders can extract as much profit as possible from both of those groups. It was coined by Cory Doctorow, who explains it here:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
It wasn’t until I had spend a almost a half an hour on that fucking MJ missions on spiderman.
thats literally the second easiest stealth section in the past 2 decades of gaming.
There are some out there that are actually so infuriatingly bad due to shitty programming and npc noticing you is rng and skill isn’t an option.
I take it you’re not good at stealth.
Hot take.
It’s only bad when the game isn’t a stealth game and also has shittastic stealth mechanics.
It’s worse when it’s the opposite, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution where the game is meant to be played in stealth, but then the boss battles are straight up FPS style shootouts when most players probably didn’t put points into combat skills or armor because they’re supposed to be a sneaky spy.
I honestly think the most egregious bullshit that has to do with stealth is Elden Ring and Sekiro. They have decent enough stealth mechanics, but they also have enemies that straight up don’t give a fuck that you’re in stealth so you’re never actually able to sneak around the entire time. It’s not that upsetting in ER, given it’s not the intended method of play, but in Sekiro you’re a literal god damn ninja who relies on being unseen. And iirc, Fromsoft also made Tenchu; one of the best stealth games of all time.
Unfortunately, FromSoft wasn’t on Tenchu until later in the series when it…wasn’t so great. Still, that Sekiro started as a Tenchu concept is why I picked up the game in the first place. And like Tenchu, effective stealth is there, it’s just especially challenging.
Now, Zelda: Skyward Sword is one I can’t defend (and one of the reasons I’m surprised OP is getting crushed for this post).
I’d say the opposite:
Any stealth game with a forced overt section should have a warning.
Examples:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Optional stealth game, but the boss battles just drop you in a room with the boss fully aware of you and that’s the fight.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey - Optional stealth, except for the battles for power where you can flip control of an area. No stealth allowed.
