By expanding on the fundamentals introduced in Asylum with a grander scale and more polish, City allows you to approach being The Bat however you like. There’s something undeniably satisfying about the game’s combat, but equally so is stringing up bad guys from lampposts. As a sarcastic little goblin, your abilities are obviously limited — there’s no flitting over buildings in this game.

It doesn’t feel like the stealth genre is on the way out, rather that it’s difficult to find a “straight” stealth title that isn’t interspersed with other conventions, like an open world or open-ended approach that gives the player plenty of choice on how to approach obstacles. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — adaptation and evolution is part of why Mario is still as beloved as ever.Assassin’s Creed may continue to grow and expand with each new entry and become less and less about assassinating itself, but its second game represents the series at its purest. Playing as Jin Sakai, one of the last remaining samurai in his native land, you must repel Mongol invaders through whatever means necessary. Whether you want to fight with honor or not is up to you, but there’s something to be said for clearing out a camp full of foes without raising the alarm, your katana glinting as you dash from invader to invader.

For all his gadgets and bone-breaking, Batman is at his most effective when he’s stalking his foes from the shadows. Goldenglow Estate's external area, which is full of guards - providing you don't kill them during the Thieves Guild quest - is a great area to sneak around amidst multiple holstile enemies. Forts occupied by bandits or the Thalmor are another option. Buying and selling items levels Speech according to the item's value, and will only every grant you experience for one item per transaction - meaning you should always sell items one at a time if you want to raise your Speech level. While Manhunt was ahead of its time in many regards, time hasn’t caught up to it too harshly and is still a bloody joy to play. It may even still make you feel a bit queasy, despite its triangular nature. Praise, however, that is deserved. You play as Naked Snake, who is deep behind enemy lines during the Cold War in a tale of love, loss, and bullets. To survive, he must sneak around the dense jungles with a wide variety of camouflages and nibble on his fair share of crocodile.The immediate comparison that springs to mind when you load up Mike Bithell’s Volume is — if you had a good childhood — Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions. It has an aesthetic not a million miles away from Kojima’s weird side-content, though Volume has its fair share of original ideas to make it worthwhile. It’s really about time Konami bundled all of these stealth landmarks as one complete collection. We’re as tired as Snake at the end of 4 about that not happening yet. Failure in most stealth games simply means trying again (or losing your mind and massacring everything in sight), but not with Invisible, Inc: death is as debilitating and fearmongering as it is in something like XCOM. The stakes are high no matter the mission, so playing strategically is key — you’ll be afraid to fail, but you should be prepared for the inevitability of it. Definitely the smallest game on this list, Intravenous comes from an indie studio that wanted to deliver a hardcore stealth game with some immersive sim elements that really gets your creative murder cogs whirring.

It also has the staple Kojima attention to detail with the boss battle with The End totally avoidable if you just change your PS2’s date settings to make him die of old age. Speech is levelled by buying and selling items, and successfully using the Persuade, Indimidate, and Bribe dialogue options. Bearing that in mind, the most efficient items to steal are gems and jewelry, as they're high in value but low in weight - which means a higher chance to steal, as weight determines difficulty. Ghost of Tsushima is, despite some minor blemishes, an impressively sharp swansong for the PlayStation 4.”

Sign up to our Newsletter here!

You want it, I want it, everyone wants it. The only problem with a new Splinter Cell game is that we’d have to buy it and, judging from the franchise’s most recent entries in terms of sales, it might be a risk that Ubisoft are averse to taking. If they were to make a new Splinter Cell game and have it be a success, all they need to do is look at Chaos Theory: the third entry in the series. Despite being marketed as being designed for Xbox, the Stealth Gen 2 Max actually works on any console as with the simple switch, its USB dongle can change from the standard 2.4GHz wireless signal to Microsoft's own proprietary Xbox Wireless signal. It also supports Blue tooth and you can even have both sources coming through at the same time. While not necessarily an outright stealth game (hence why it’s so low despite being a phenomenal game), Sekiro’s handling of stealth means that unless you embrace it, you might be in for a bad time. In a game that throws tonnes of enemies at you at once and a giant monkey who refuses to die, you have to take any help you can damn well get. The arrival of Turtle Beach's new flagship Stealth Pro wireless gaming headset this year has meant that the company's first true multiplatform gaming headset, the Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max is much more affordable, and a real bargain as it means if you own multiple consoles and devices, you only need the one headset. Dishonored 2 is also one of those games that rewards experimentation and perfection, so take your time with it and you will take a lot away from it in turn.

While there’s nothing revolutionary here in terms of stealth, there’s something to be said for making blood spurt out of someone’s windpipe like a fountain. From one Klei stealth game to another, Mark of the Ninja represents the absolute best in 2D side-scrolling stealth games. I have 100 in sneak, all the sneak related perks, light armor, level 22 (although I have other characters that are max level and they have the same issue), no pip boy light or radio on and I get detected outside, inside doesn't matter.It’s a shame that its sequel, Mankind Divided, underperformed in so many areas, however, so much so that we may not see a new Deus Ex for quite some time. A remaster was released for consoles in 2018, though with it being available for a relative pittance on Steam, you shouldn’t wait around. Meanwhile, I watch some videos of people just running circles around NPCs while the [hidden] indicator remains unchanged. How is this possible? If I have 100 in sneak and I equip armor that gives a bonus to sneak, does that add up past the 100 limit? Because that's about the thing that might make a difference. It doesn’t hurt that it offers the best gameplay in the series, either. Hitman had always been somewhat clunky by nature, seemingly to dissuade mass murder sprees. 2016’s Hitman, however, introduces the smoothest action seen yet with competent AI and reactive scenarios to still bring the challenge, as well as a much appreciated level of detail with so many different events triggering at once.