Never Stop Sneakin' Reviews

I played this on the Nintendo Switch for an ungodly amount of time. There was something about it that I just loved. The opening cutscene alone is ridiculous and over the top. It makes Metal Gear Solid look plausible by comparison. Which is why I love it. The developers made a really easy to pick up game that just feels tight and good. Really simple controls, you can play this with literally one hand but not for sexy reasons. I know a lot of people on here have mixed feelings about this game but I absolutely adore it. The writers make some of the best jokes I've seen in a video game. It's funny in a way that I've rarely seen in a game. And it's just f***ing fun to play. You can find far worse things to spend 12 bucks on. This game is one of my favorites and I gladly bought it on here to play through again.

One of those "soft-thumbs-up" situations, though it can be fun if you adjust your expectations going in. The best way for me to describe it is that it's more of a timing and positioning-based action puzzle game that pretends to be a stealth game, with a story that feels like what you'd get if Metal Gear Solid had its budget slashed into tenths and was rewritten by Major Monogram.

Never Stop Sneakin' is a stealth game with an arcade feel that will immediately remind you of Metal Gear Solid 1, what with its PS1-era visuals, music akin to Snake's outing on Shadow Moses Island, and a number of other cheeky references and jokes. It's half tribute and half parody, being unafraid to glorify Metal Gear Solid exactly as much as it tears it down and makes fun of it. This is great, and if you're a fan of Metal Gear at all, you'll probably appreciate this element of the game. Funny enough, this game also riffs on Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V, when it comes to the base-building gameplay that is presented like something you have control over, but is really just a completely linear progression you have to partake in, in order to advance. Just like how Mother Base pretends to give you free will in terms of how you develop Militaires Sans Frontiers or Diamond Dogs, but you're not really free at the end of the day. It's another cheeky element that tends to go unmentioned. The story of Never Stop Sneakin' is simple, and completely ridiculous. You are a secret agent who works for the aptly named Department of Sneakin', and the dastardly enemy, Amadeus Guildenstern, has used a time machine to kidnap every single President that has existed or will ever exist. His demand is simple; instate him as President forever, or lose every other President, forever. The Department of Sneakin' doesn't seem to vibe with this idea, so Major Milestone, a kooky Colonel Campbell parody, voice acted by Arin Hanson of Game Grumps, sends you in to infiltrate Amadeus' bases and installations. Why are we infiltrating these bases? For one overarching purpose; to rescue or kidnap enough capable men from the battlefield, as well as to accumulate enough currency in order to develop a base advanced enough to eventually build our own time machine, and thereby save the world. The plot is silly, hilarious, charming, and is spread far too thin because this game is too long for its own good. The Department of Sneakin' makes use of a Currency called Espionage in order to develop its structures. Espionage isn't just a concept or a method of intelligence-gathering in this world, it is a literal, physical object that exists lying around the enemy bases. It's these pixel-looking particles that you absorb into your Agent with satisfying sounds and animations. Collect enough Espionage in missions and you can buy Upgrades or HP inside of the current base. These Upgrades go away if you're killed or if you Extract from the area of operations from the pause menu. In this regard, the game shares some small DNA with roguelikes, but it isn't one. When you're outside of a mission, you'll be in the Department of Sneakin's base camp, which you are theoretically responsible for building and enhancing, but in a funny moment of self-awareness and further parody, the game doesn't actually give you any choices in what to build or when to build it. What you do get is humorous flavor text which had an irreverent tone that I thoroughly enjoyed all the way through. Espionage can be collected by walking near the little bits of it, but you can collect more massive clusters of Espionage by hacking computers or opening lockers, which requires you to stand still on top of an interact marker as a meter fills up. I'll talk about the game's controls now. When you're building your base or accepting stuff in menus, you can use the Stick, D-Pad or Movement Keys, as well as the standard Accept button on controllers or keyboards, to finalize decisions. However, when it comes to actually playing inside of the stealth environments, there's only one control you need to concern yourself with, and that's Movement. Everything in Never Stop Sneakin' happens contextually and automatically, and is decided or impacted by where you move and how you move there. If you move into an unaware enemy, you'll assassinate them. If you move onto interaction markers, you'll use them. If you move into breakable wooden fences, you'll shatter them. Likewise, if you move into the wrong places, you'll incur some kind of penalty. Throughout the bases, you can find resources like Bullets, EMP Grenades or Smoke Grenades, and these Resources function in both offensive and defensive capacities. If you step into a guard's vision cone and you have Bullets in your clip, you will automatically headshot that guard and take him out. If you don't have Bullets, you'll use a Smoke Grenade instead, which blankets the area and lets you kill stunned guards in the vicinity using your blade. For machines, like Cameras and Turrets, you'll normally drop an EMP Grenade upon detection, which will automatically destroy them, but if you're out of EMP Grenades and have Bullets, you'll quickshot the device with your gun instead. You very quickly get the hang of how this works. When you have no resources, you want to play safely and carefully. When you're overflowing with them, you can charge forth with reckless abandon, because fast kills in succession will build your Combo, and the higher your Combo, the more Espionage everything is worth, including kills, computers and lockers. Never Stop Sneakin' was originally released on the Nintendo Switch and iOS, and it was only ported to PC after the fact. This is a game designed to be a bite-sized, mobile experience, first and foremost. The one-handed controls make it relaxing, the lack of significant difficulty means you can just chill out and casually stroll through much of the game with no issues, and the levels lacking in variety is not a problem if you play it as intended; which is to run two or three missions per subway or bus ride, then play two or three more the next day. I did not play Never Stop Sneakin' like this. I burned through the entirety of this game in, essentially, two days. And I did it by collecting everything in a mission, like a singular locust devouring all available matter in my path, before descending upon the next one. This was my and a major reason for repetition. You're not really supposed to play Never Stop Sneakin' by killing every single guard, collecting every bit of Espionage, finding every computer, every locker, and finding everything available on each floor, and that's because doing so starts to take forever and starts to grate. The basic feel of the game is high-quality, and is satisfying to experience. Killing enemies feels good. Movement feels good. The animations and sounds of everything in the game are well-done and happily so, because you'll be doing all of these actions a lot. This is one area Never Stop Sneakin' absolutely excels at, and I'm glad for it. I recommend this game to Metal Gear fans, as well as to anyone who's way too into Stealth games as a fun, casual version of the experience you're already used to playing. I also recommend it to people who are bad at Stealth games, because while this game is very easy, it also contains some bare fundamentals that people new to the Stealth genre would do well to understand, like patrols, vision cones, movement in spaces controlled by guards and cameras, things of that nature. Playing this game won't make you good at other stealth games, but it will help your mind start to understand some basic patterns behind how every guard in every stealth game ever made, behaves on a very basic level. That, I think, is a good thing. Baby's First Sneak Game. I enjoyed Never Stop Sneakin', and even though I got tired of it near the end, I can tell I'll go back to play more of it sometime, just to see how damn fast I can speedrun an entire playthrough, knowing what I know now. http://youtube.com/LeoKRogue/

This game is great for the first hour or two... but then you realize those two hours are all the game has to offer literraly, just that, the gameplay never changes, barelly gets any harder (if anything it gets easier) and the actual comedic (yet still good) scenes are few; and the entire thing just feels padded all to hell. I can see this game being a lot better and lasting a lot longer on mobile... but it just does not fit a pc release at all. only get it if you REALLY need to play it and dont have a switch, and even then, wait for a big discount. unless you have a switch, then get it to play on mobile here and there.

[h1]"It's like one of my Japanese animes!"[/h1] Never Stop Sneakin' has a nice recipe going for it: boil the MGS gameplay to its bare minimun, and add a pinch of randomized elements to the pot. Unfortunately, it doesn't have enough content in it to justify serving you its 10-hour course meal (I'm hungry at the time of writing this, sorry). With a low-poly, unfiltered-ps1-textures look to it, a catchy theme song, weird story and some forced humor, the bulk of Never Stop Sneakin's gameplay has you running through randomly generated facilites collecting currency, important gizmos and NPCs, all the while evading guards, security cameras and turrets. And once you reach a third level, you also get a boss fight. Upon completion of an objective or all levels, you get back to your base, where you use your currency and your rescued NPC/McGuffin to build more buildings, unlock more in-mission perks, and then the cycle repeats. For the first couple of hours, this is great fun: you sneak around, avoiding enemy vision cones, getting more perks, currency multipliers, and character and weapon skins. So what's wrong with it? You'll see everything the game can throw at you in the first three hours or so. And the game expects you to keep doing this for 10 HOURS. For irrevocable proof, just look at the achievement stats. Most people don't even make it past the mid-way point. That's the problem: Never Stop Sneakin' has a suicidal lack of content, so instead it stretches itself as much as possible. That's when you notice the cracks: the weapon and characters skins have no benefits/detriments whatsoever, a lot of the perks are useless if you play the game efficiently, and the game is numbingly easy. In an effort to make a pick-up-and-play game, everything in NSS is automated. Want to take down an enemy? Just move behind it. Want to loot a container? Just stand still for a couple seconds. An enemy spotted you? We'll just fire a bullet or throw a granade for you if you happen to have some. The game even tells you, in detail, how to defeat the bosses, and the only way it "increases" difficulty is by giving them more health, and making all other regular enemies faster. That's it: three types of enemies, across five variants of the same kind of map, with 5 bosses that never change their tactics. Never Stop Sneakin' has a nice concept and a lot of charm, but nothing else to show for it. I had fun for the first three hours, and then the remaining ten felt like busy work. You think I'm being some sort of hardcore apologist? How about the fact that the game just gives up at a certain point, and gives you two perks that automatically kill enemies if they get even close to your position.

Well, i'm very disappointed that i paid 10 dollars for this game that feels like a proof-of-concept with end-of-project story cutscenes. The pros: -Extremely fun gameplay loop. It's simple but it works really well -Very funny cutscenes and writing, great voice acting. -Aesthetics are on-point. Looks really nice all around and has great music. The cons: -Gameplay changes are drip fed at an absolutely ludicrously slow speed and are definitely not deep enough. -Only 1 gameplay class. Tons of skins but ultimately, the first 10 minutes or gameplay and the last 10 minutes of gameplay are going to be identical. -Base-building that does not unlock any new gameplay mechanics. It feels like the only thing i get out of building new upgrades is seeing the story move forward. Big let-down. -low number of bosses. i counted 5 in 6 hours of play. -Literally no increase in complexity or depth of gameplay. -Runs are simply too easy. It's trivial to succeed in a run and, while it's not always bad to not be incredibly challenging, the challenge level simply isn't up to snuff. Honestly, i'm considering learning C# and making my own spin on this game. That's how disappointed i am.

This game, is made by Dean Dodrill. A.K.A The dev of Dust: An Elysian Tail and the genius behind the best and most adorable side-kick of all time. [spoiler]Ive seen the silloette of dust as an unlockagle agent and ahra as an unlockable weapon. WHERE IS MY SUPER SECRET AGENT FIDGET?![/spoiler] It is about sneakin. You sneak into bases, kill dudes and sneak out all with only directional inputs. No other buttons required as every action is contex sensitive to what is around you at the time. From killin, to hackin it's got you covered. You wana stop sneakin? Get that out of your head agent. You're *never* going to stop. Ok srs time. It's a fantastic little game, to just sit back and relax through, with hilarious and dumb (in the good way) dialog. It looks like a pre-Nintendo 64 game with massive polygons but it is intended and looks great because of it. 9/10 needs more tiny adorable side-kicks.

If you've played a Metal Gear game and enjoyed it. You'll not only get a laugh out of Never Stop Sneakin', but you're also likely to enjoy its core gameplay. Which feels to me like its based around a Metal Gear Solid speedrun, only massively simplified to the point where your focus is entirely on precise, fast movement through the level. If you've never played a Metal Gear game, but enjoy infinite runners, or similar almost mobile-style randomly generated games with a focus on movement. This game can offer that and more, without all the usual microtransaction baggage that comes with mobile games. Failing either of those points, watch the trailer and see what you think. If you're still uncertain, maybe watch some gameplay. The only controls are for movement, so you should get a good idea how it works from watching a video. I love this game already. It's just a ton of fun. If any part of it appeals to you, it'll deliver. Except perhaps, don't expect immediate super-challenging difficulty. I can't say whether it delivers on that front later. But this isn't a game I would pick for a challenge, I would just pick it when I want to replay Metal Gear Solid but can't find my PS1 controller.

Never Stop Sneakin's core gameplay isn't bad. A bit on the simple side, but simple can be incredibly fun, and as it's getting its legs, you think and hope at some point that things are going to get switched up a bit or that the game has a surprise or two in store. The simplified stealth gameplay feels like it'll eventually build to something even the slightest bit more nuanced. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. After around two hours, the gameplay has already shown its entire hand, and then it expects you to keep repeating the same gameplay loop for another thirteen hours with the only things changing about gameplay being unlocked Perks that make you nigh untouchable and enemy movement routes and patterns becoming faster. The game's presentation is likely to be what draws a lot of folks in, and they're sure to not be the least bit disappointed by the PSX-era graphical style and silly time travel story that unfolds similarly to Metal Gear Solid. Hyperduck Audio's work on the soundtrack is also to be commended as would be the talents of the voice actors involved with the project, hamming it up in the best ways possible. What could have been a great little 2-4 hour experience is drawn out into fifteen hours to the point of becoming mind-numbing tedium. As much as I enjoyed the story, premise, presentation, characters, and the possibilities offered by a simple set of pick up and put down controls, I can't recommend this game due to how flagrantly it wears out its welcome.

Well, it's honestly funny. No sarcasm, no way too spot on nerd references... The music is great, from the ever talented Hyperduck Soundworks, with an absolutely on point Bond theme... But the game goes for a roguelike that makes the meta-currency cash grind the literal game. I'm 3 hours in and all I've done is run the same random dungeon a dozen times with no real challenge to it just to unlock a lame perk like "More likely to gain health" or "Grab cash from farther away." This game can't achieve roguelike longevity through mechanics and challenge alone so it is trying to cheat to get that by making you grind the roguelike just to get cash and that cash is your progression. Worse, it's the same dungeon every time. Yes, it's random, but the levels ramp up in the same manner. 2-2 is always the turret intro level, world 3 is when cameras speed up, world 4 is when guards speed up. Even when you have a special mission like "Rescue this dude" or "Blow up Amadeus Guildenstern's Doomsday Weapon" it's the same dungeon just with the objective slotted into a random locked room where perks usually spawn. I don't know what they're going for here. It's practically impossible to die if you play it smart. There's no incentive for speed play because you need to grab every single cash item to buy progression. There are perks to highlight packages and keycards but you're gonna kill every guard and loot every source anyway because it is massive money... It feels like the plot had way more effort put into it than the gameplay... ... oh I guess that's what makes it a good Metal Gear tribute then.