Will you love Shadow Gambit as much as I did?
Video transcript:
Have you heard of Shadow Gambit? I love this game. Will you love it as much as I do? It’s not for everyone, so let’s dive in and see if you’ll love it, too.
Mimimi Games has pioneered a genre they call “stealth tactical”, and just putting those two words together triggers all kinds of pleasure centers in my brain. I love thoughtful, strategic gameplay but more than anything, I love stealthy games. And Shadow Gambit has strategy and stealth in spades.
Hiding in the shadows, patiently waiting for your moment, and getting through a mission without anyone even knowing you were there… I live for these games. Basically any game that has “hide the body” as a mechanic and it’s an automatic play from me: Splinter Cell, Hitman, Dishonored, but also an indie gem called Shadow Tactics from 2017 from none other than… Mimimi Games.
It’s a little confusing but after creating such an incredible tactical stealth game with Shadow Tactics set in feudal Japan, they took that gameplay and applied it to the Old West in Desperados 3. Now to complete a trilogy of sorts, Mimimi has taken their toys to sea with cursed pirates and Caribbean tropics in Shadow Gambit.
With each iteration they add new bells and whistles. And Shadow Gambit gives you more ways than ever to solve all kinds of situations, and does a great job of making you feel smart. Now, I’ve been playing these Mimimi games for a few years now, so I was immediately right at home in Shadow Gambit. I already knew the basics, like distracting guards or pausing the action to set up a sequence of attacks I can trigger at the push of a button. But if this is your first go with one of these games, I feel like it might be a little daunting at first.
Side note: if you’ve never played these games but you did pick up Shadow GambitSo let me know in the comments if you were you able to pick it up right away, or if it was a little daunting at first.
Gameplay Loop
The game consists of a series of missions where you’ll go to an island and sneak around to complete some objectives and earn rewards. Between missions you’ll be at sea in your magic ship and you can use those mission rewards to unlock crew members and apply upgrades to each character’s powers.
The meat of the game and the majority of your time will be spent on the missions on solid ground, but there’s a lot to do at sea between missions.
There are training missions and chalet, and little side stories you can only advance between missions. Or you can banter with your crew and learn more about each of the members. The game is full of charm and personality, and most of that happens on the ship between missions.
Character Driven
The character designers and writers have really outdone themselves, creating a roster of characters that are as interesting and likeable as they are fun to play.
Look at these characters, listen to the voice acting (sample), and on top of it all there’s some really good writing in here (sample, fish ninja?). I would gladly pickup a graphic novel about this crew or read a tie-in novel set in this world. ? I think the world building and characters are strong enough to support it if they ever had a chance to go there.
So this time around each crew member has their own special moves that come in extremely handy. Like the headless treasure hunter skeleton that can lure enemies away from their post, or a swamp lady that can create a bush to hide in wherever it’s needed. My favorite is a guy that carries a magical anchor that can send unsuspecting targets down to the dark below, never to be heard from again. Which comes in super handy when there’s no body to hide. But each of these powers come with limitations, like the sniper that can hit targets from long range, but her crossbow only has one bolt so she has to be able to retrieve it.
My only complaint is that it’s pretty important to have at least one character who can draw enemies away from their post, so much so that the game actually gives you a warning if you pick a team without that ability. If the ability is that important, maybe more characters should have that option? I dunno, maybe it was just the order I unlocked characters, but I ran into this warning a lot as I picked my crew before missions.
Different characters work well with different play styles, and even different combinations create all kinds of gameplay scenarios. Like this character can’t climb vines, but this other guy can lift her up. It’s the interaction between these characters the adds a whole other layer of strategy on top of a tried and true formula.
Play It Your Way
There’s been some chatter online lately about the save scumming, as though it’s a form of cheating to save your game before important events and go back if you don’t like the outcome. Let’s just say Mimimi has no problem with save scumming—in fact they actively encourage it. You can quick save at the touch of a button and loading times are super short when you step back to a save. And yeah, I save scummed the hell out of this game. If I was spotted at all, or raised any alarms, I immediately went back to the last save.
But that’s just how I play these games anyway, and there’s room for different play styles. If you like a little chaos or unpredictability in your gaming, you can play through these mistakes and adjust your strategy on the fly. You can even complete missions with crew members incapacitated.
I watched one guy on Twitch attempting one of the harder missions on the highest difficulty setting, and the level would automatically reset if anything went wrong. He banged his head against that wall for three hours, and wasn’t even half way through the level, so yeah this game can be extremely difficult if you want it to be.
Graphics and Sound
This is a AA title, after all, and it’s felt the most during cutscenes that just feature 2D illustrations of the characters. On the bright side, the illustrations look great and the voice acting is good enough to carry the weight, but some animated cutscenes in the game engine would’ve been a bit more immersive.
Graphically, the game is pretty and features some beautifully rendered environments, but some of them are a bit less impressive if you zoom in too far.
Speaking of zooming, another new feature is the real time map you can pop in and out of, and see enemy movement in real time. It doesn’t pause the game and you can go back and forth instantly, so you can really get a lot of information instantly, and I think I want this map in every game now.
Sound wise, it has a good soundtrack when it wants to, but the game generally keeps music and sound effects fairly sparse, so they don’t get in the way of your sneaking around. The songs I did hear were good enough I checked out the album on Spotify, and it didn’t disappoint.
Is It For You?
Did you enjoy completing missions without getting spotted in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag? Did you like marking enemies in Ghost Recon and assigning your teammates to take them out? How about Hitman Go? If you put the ‘ghost’ in Ghost of Tsushima, or enjoyed any of these examples, then this game will probably float your boat.
Personally, I feel like this game was made for me. I know it’s not game of the year material for the general gaming public, but it’s on my personal list as one of my favorites in a year packed with so many great games. I give it a boney, undead thumbs up.
