I don’t play a lot of stealth games. Or at least, I didn’t think I played a lot of stealth games. I’ve only got three under my belt: Mark of the Ninja, Aragami, and Assassin’s Creed, and even then I feel like Assassin’s Creed is like Beyonce being nominated for best Rock Performance at the Grammy’s this year. But just as Don’t Hurt Yourself is actually pretty rockin’, the ability to walk up to a group of guards and spend five minutes performing the latest knife-through-neck dance routine doesn’t disqualify you from being considered a stealth game. Probably because if it did, the library of stealth games would be comprised of a half-eaten cracker and a shoelace.

I just finished Aragami, an indie stealth game about ninjas and darkness. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. The phrase “power fantasy” gets thrown around a lot in video games and usually not in this type of game. But there’s something really good about sneaking up and slipping by a bunch of guards and striking when they least expect it. It makes you feel smart. It makes you feel like a badass. Action games require ten sword swings to defeat your foe, stealth games require wit, quick thinking, and a single knife in the back.

…Or at least, I thought so. But after hearing reviews of Aragami along the lines of, “It’s not like other stealth games, because you have to do the stealth part,” I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been playing stealth games my whole life.

The lack of stealth games that really pride themselves in, well, the stealth, is somewhat surprising to me. The stealth genre seems like the happy lovechild to the action and puzzle genres. Each level requires the careful planning and problem solving of a puzzle game, and the reflexes and quick thinking of an action game. And they can’t be that hard to design and develop. The base puzzle is just placing some guards around an environment and giving them repetitive paths. Unlike action games, they don’t require a lot of differing content (Aragami has two enemy types in the entire game) and most of the combat can be boiled down to if-hit-then-die. And unlike most puzzle games, new levels can be made by simply rearranging the elements around. Obviously this isn’t the recipe for a good stealth game, but it’s enough to get you started.

Maybe I’m just missing something. After all, the extent of my knowledge does only come from three games. But considering the rest of the genre I haven’t played includes two AAA games that lean heavily towards action, and small handful of games that I’m sure were great in the 90’s, apparently no one else knows what they’re doing either.

…Actually I hear the latest Hitman game was pretty good too.