There seems to be a current trend at the moment with Playstation 4 PSN titles coming out that are just refreshed versions of titles that have been out on either the Playstation 3 or Vita, which is not necessary a bad idea as long as the titles are good. We have seen Awesomenauts, Fez and Flower among others, and now hot on their heels is Stealth Inc: Ultimate Edition, an updated version of the Curve Studios game released in 2013. The premise of the game is still the same as the previous editions, so if you already know this then you can jump down 3 paragraphs to see the new features.
In Stealth Inc the goal of the game is to stealthily (surprisingly) move your character, a drone with bright green eyes, from the start of the level to the end of the level and on the way avoiding being exploded by lasers by remaining in shadows. Most of these shadows the user needs to create using moveable blocks that shield the drone from the security cameras that guard either the exit or trigger buttons that must be pressed for you to continue through the level. Sounds obvious and easy doesn’t it?
In reality the first couple of levels are training levels getting you up to speed with the controls and the principle ideas, however each level gets increasingly more difficult with added security cameras and/or security robot drones in your path. Should one of these identify your drone then you are going to come to a sticky end, and when I say sticky the laser will disintegrate your drone leaving blood splatters over the screen. Fortunately lives are not limited so you do have the chance for trial and error, the latter being part of the game that most people will be used to.
Completing the levels gives you a sense of achievement that not many other games can provide, not since Portal has this reviewer celebrated passing a level that they have been stuck on for ages. I think the developers realised that people will feel this way so at the end of the level you are given a ranking to show your success, however don’t always expect to receive a glowing rank all the time. I completed a level that I thought was in an impressive feat only to be giving a C ranking and being told that my completion time was over 3 minutes behind the best time. I then retried the level again and improved to a B ranking but still was 2 minutes behind the time, so my achievement was flatten slightly.
In the Ultimate Edition version comes the same 80 levels that you found on the previous game, as well as 2 DLC packs (The Teleporter Chambers and The Lost Clones) pushing the total levels up to 120. All the levels are good to play and have their challenges, however once you have finished these you can create your levels using the inbuilt level maker. This is works pretty well except there is a slight issue that these cannot be upload to anywhere for others to play and rate, as you could with other games such as LittleBigPlanet, and this waters down its inclusion.
The game is a rather good game that people should play but should you have this on the Playstation 3 or Vita I am not sure you will have any reason to buy this. Yes the additional DLC is a nice addition, but they can be purchased on the PSN store at around 50% of the PS4 game purchase price, and thus I cannot say it is an essential purchase. However if you have never owned this game before or do not have access to your old console then I would urge you to pick up the Ultimate edition, I am sure you will enjoy it.
Reviewed on PS4
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