Monaco - 2/20 hours

I've said before that I don't like stealth, and so far in this blog, it's always been in the nature of a curmudgeonly skepticism - I'd see that a game had it as a feature and I'd fret and I'd worry, but ultimately it has always been something I could cope with. That's mostly down to selection pressure. I've tried to avoid games with excessive stealth, and with the exception of Velvet Assassin, I've succeeded. Until now.

Playing Monaco . . . it's like someone distilled my nightmares and then made them into a game. That's barely a hyperbole. I've had that nightmare, where I am alone and being stalked by enemies, and one wrong move means they'll spot me and I then have to run away, using every trick at my disposal, but it isn't enough.

Monaco has captured that feeling very well. Each level is like my own personal ten-minute Tartarus. Getting to know the individual character quirks of your team and then watching them get slaughtered one by one by security because I went around a corner at the wrong time? Wow, it just hits every one of my buttons. I can play it for about 20 minutes at a stretch. Much longer than that and I start to get overwhelmed with resentment. Which wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that when I'm away from the game and think about playing it, I feel incredibly stressed out. I don't want to send my cute little pixel robbers to their deaths in a terrifying death-maze. I want them to live and collect coins and banter nonsensically in cutscenes. I mean, those little skeletons they leave behind when they die . . .  horrifying.

I guess I should say, begrudgingly, that Monaco is kind of a great game. It is often visually striking, and there is a lot of complex strategy in navigating around the levels' obstacles using the wide variety of character abilities. I can definitely see how it would shine as a co-op game. And I imagine that, even for me, there's a level of skill where you can go through the levels intentionally, solving them like puzzles, and exploring the lavish world of high-class burglary.

But man, do I dread doing what I have to do to get to that point. Oh well, the only way out is forward, and if I have to relive this sensation of harried helplessness and ever-tightening confinement a hundred times before I'm done, well I guess that's just what I'll have to do.