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Stolen Preview

Writer: Rich Nolan
Posted: 13th Jan, 2005

Publisher: Hip Interactive Every since the first person shooter craze really took off companies have been furiously programming FPS after FPS in the pleasant knowledge that even a third rate FPS will make as much money as a first rate game from other genres. This trend dipped slightly a few years ago as part of the FPS market was lost to a new sub-genre – stealth games. Ever since that point the amount of stealth games being produced has shot up parallel to the success of games like Thief, Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid.

Well, here’s another one on the band wagon called Stolen. It’s pitched as a 3rd person Hollywood-style’ action stealth game. You play Anya, a slick professional female thief with a rough past. Nowadays Anya is the top of her field and working with her only aide and “voice in her ear”, Louie Palmer, she is supplied with high-tech gadgets in order to help her steal ‘ambitious’ priceless targets. Many of Anya’s gadgets require the player to complete a mini-puzzle game in order to successfully achieve things.

Graeme Puttock from Blue 52 states, ‘It was always our intention to bond [action and stealth] closely together, taking inspiration from Hollywood style heist movies and the increasing slew of stealth titles slowly flooding the market.’ When talking of Hollywood-styled elements Blue52 are referring to films like Mission Impossible, Entrapment, The Thomas Crown Affair, etc.

Anya is played in the third-person view; a good choice considering she is very athletic and can perform many acrobatic moves like wall jumps, using zip lines, and creeping hand-over-hand along narrow ledges. You will be able to temporarily switch to a first person view, but this is used only for scanning your surroundings, locating items you can interact with, and finding hidden bonus items you can pilfer.

Anya can sneak up behind enemies to grab and knock them out (or if you want to be really cheeky, pick their pockets). However, since the emphasis is on stealth, you may want to avoid any confrontations with enemy’s altogether.

Fully alerted guards will search outside their pre-programmed patrol patterns, so no hiding place will be safe for long. Running away won’t help either; levels will be littered with cameras, lasers, motion detectors, robotic gun turrets, even flying robotic cameras.

And probably what’s going to be most difficult for fans of the stealth genre, Anya is unable to kill people.

The game takes place across four locations: a museum, a prison, an office tower, and a mountain-top satellite installation. Although there are “only” four levels, they will be quite huge with many different areas and sub-sections, each with its own unique challenges for you to overcome.

Graphically, the game looks incredible, with impressive light and shadow effects, and some very cool weather effects as well. Stolen is single-player only (but will be Xbox Live aware).

Stolen is all about tension, style and atmosphere. Taking a subtly different tack to it's contemporaries, it emphasizes acrobatics, skill and evasion over the (continued next page)