When it comes to stealth games, the best examples are those that allow the player the freedom to approach their objectives in any way they see fit, and the replayability this inherently brings to the table. Looking back on the greats like the Splinter Cell series or Dishonored, I have probably beaten them in every way possible. Killing everything as quickly and quietly as possible? Yup. Made it from start to finish without alerting anyone? You bet. Running headfirst into the fray like a Viking warlord? Absolutely. This is one of the biggest areas of opportunity for the newest stab at stealth debauchery, which is Winter Ember. 

While it is totally plausible to play your way through this game, the overall design is counterintuitive to play any way other than the one the developer intended. Unfortunately, there isn’t just one facet that ruins the overall experience; it’s literally everything. The decision to go with the isometric viewpoint is a big issue for me, especially when you add in the requirement to use a bow and aim vertically within the game world. Making matters worse, you can only see key items or enemies that Arthur, our douche bag protagonist, could see from his point of view. This caused me to break stealth more than all of the other genre heavyweights combined. This also becomes problematic when it comes to stealth kills, as the sweet spot to trigger the option to either kill or disable the enemies varies greatly. How close or where you need to place Arthur to trigger an attack varies, and at times requires you to be in front of the unaware enemy. I am not an expert or anything, but I feel like this defeats the purpose of stealth.

This translates to an issue in other areas as well, such as my current predicament that has placed a roadblock in me actually finishing the game. As it stands, I am in the third major area of the story and need to pick a lock. I can clearly see this is the only way forward, I have explored every other area I can reach, and I’ve combed every nook and cranny for an alternate path. While I get the prompt to press A to pick the lock, pressing A does nothing at all. I’ve also had a few instances where I went to stealth kill someone (witnesses are something I file under “Not happening” for my first play through in this genre) and got an unexpected result. I opted to knock someone out and was glitched into dragging around their corpse, with no clear way to drop it or leave the animation outside of reloading a checkpoint and losing some progress. Making matters much worse, this issue persists when it comes to taking cover, a much-needed feature when it comes to being sneaky.

The one thing that the game has going for it is its narrative, despite the main character being intolerable. A male Kardashian sets off for a night of fun with two female companions only to have some cult-looking fellows burst in and murder everyone in the mansion. Arthur then spends an unclear amount of time training to take revenge on those who wronged him. This is played out via a rather long cut-scene that is a mishmash of 90’s era Fox-style animation with some Anime flair added. Sadly, I was distracted throughout this scene, as well as the others that followed, thanks to the gnarly 10 to 15-second delay in the audio that left me a bit confused as to who was whom.

The in-game visuals are just as uneven as the cut scenes, largely due to the viewpoint I mentioned earlier. I understand the reason why they opted to limit you to what Arthur could actually see, but it comes across as controlled clipping to me, as that’s what it looks like once you go from just taking cover to actually peeking out. Making matters worse, there is a layer of fog that covers just about every exterior area that just makes everything look muddy and washed out compared to those that are well lit and full of detail beautifully rendered in 4K. I definitely feel like this would have been superior with a less is more attitude, since the end result made me feel as if I had stumbled into a secret Silent Hill level.

I will be the first to admit that I went into this game with a certain expectation; not necessarily of greatness, but Blowfish Studios has consistently published game that are enjoyable, if not something I would say was worth a purchase. Winter Ember feels like a huge step back, not just for the stealth genre, but for the publisher’s catalogue as a whole.

4 out of 10

Pros

• Interesting Revenge Narrative Displayed in 90’s Style Animation
• Great Interior Details

Cons

• Awful Controls
• Weird Sweet Spots
• Overuse of Fog Makes the World Look Muddy and Gross

Winter Ember was developed by Sky Machine Studios and published by Blowfish Studios. The game is available for PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX with a release on NS coming soon. The game was provided to us for review on Xbox and played on Series X. If you’d like to see more of Winter Ember, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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