The 10 best stealth games on PC

Just as with every Hitman game, Blood Money rewards stealth, encouraging you to get in, dress up in 100 disguises, kill your target, and get out. It also has one of the best end-of-level features, where you would read newspaper stories about your hits, describing how much evidence and bloodshed you left in your wake.

Chaos Theory is ripe with innovative stealth game mechanics that still feel good today. You can extract information from enemies by holding knives to their throats (and relishing the startled looks on their faces), pull them over edges, hang upside-down from rafters to break necks, and phht-phht them with a silenced pistol. With his night-vision goggles, Sam Fisher is a master of the games nocturnal, shadowy environments, and it is great fun shooting out lights and tormenting your disoriented enemies like a less ostentatious Batman.

Lighting, sound, and hiding spots are crucial, as you stick to the shadows and leap between vantage points before swooping down on your prey with shurikens, blades, and smoke bombs. It is mechanically simple stuff, allowing you to plan out and focus purely on concise kills and swift 3-4 step combos – jump down, kill, roll through shadows, and kill some more.

None of this would have worked if Hitman did not offer the familiar, cold-hearted stealth games experience we have come to expect from the series, and on that front this is the most polished entry yet. Theres aHitman free trial, too, in case you want to get a feel for the game without spending any money.

Dishonored 2 has a mid-mission option to check if youve been spotted or anyones died

That is because Thief II does not pander to the cheap thrills, slick action, and bloodshed that we modern gamers crave. It is almost stark in its stealthiness, as you wander around the seminal, sprawling levels while staying out of sight at all costs. It remains one of the few games to utilise lighting as a viable stealth mechanic, and your ideal conditions are those in which you can hardly see a thing, because that means your enemies cannot see you either.

Any game that features stealth is eligible for our best stealth games list, but it needs to do it damn well (sorry Skyrim, you had your chance. Sorry Assassins Creed, you had about 20 chances).

It might be regarded as one of thebest horror games, but what do you actually do? You hide in lockers, you hardly ever stop crouching, and you stay out of sight, desperately trying not to attract the attention of an insta-killing xenomorph. Sure, Alien: Isolations atmosphere evokes pure horror, but mechanically it is also one of the best stealth games around.

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A couple more stealth fans might want to check out:

Its also one of the few stealth games to do co-op properly, letting you take on dedicated missions with a buddy – complete with co-op stealth moves like holding a cable while the other player reels down it and hurling each other like cannonballs into enemies.

It may be old, and at points it is as creaky as the Mechanist Sentinels patrolling its later levels, but Thief II is peerless among pure stealth games – others only dare to borrow elements from it, rather than try to replicate it wholesale.

In a way, it makes perfect sense. This reimagining cuts out much of the story nonsense that damaged its predecessors, offering almost endless combinations of assassination challenges across six of the best-designed levels in the series so far. Alongside the standard mission targets, you get the absurd Escalation challenges, which demand that you do things like kill a chef using a pan while wearing a magicians outfit in five minutes without being spotted, in addition to player-created missions and the one-try-only Elusive Targets.

For those moments when you get spotted and your impotent rage boils over, try the PCsgreatest FPS games.

Stealth games occupy a curious niche in PC gaming. Occasionally, the best stealth games are their own thing, a result of a developer channelling all of the mechanics of a game into the suspense and satisfaction of killing, stealing, and infiltrating unnoticed. Most of the time, though, stealth is just one of several means by which you can navigate a game, as you consciously opt for the path of the shadowy rogue or incisive assassin over more forceful approaches.

Invisible Inc. is instantly accessible thanks to its turn-based mechanics. And there is almost endless challenge to be found in its randomised levels and permadeath design. It is a stealth game of sci-fi gadgetry, hacking, and slinking to and fro as you attempt to steal things from tightly-guarded bases, creating untold moments of weighty decision-making. Do you haul your incapacitated buddy to the extraction point, knowing that if you do not you will lose them for the rest of the campaign, or do you use that precious time to try and steal a power-up that could make the rest of the campaign much easier?

Better still, if you have completed the first and second Dishonored and still want more of the best stealth games going then the standaloneDishonored: Death of the Outsider is brilliant.

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Here are the ten best stealth games on PC:

Ludicrous that this article is not mentioning Styx:MOS. A true and pure stealth game and by far and away best of bunch(and Ive played almost all of these in this list above). If you are a stealth fan, make Styx the 1 game on your wishlist, you wont be disappointed.

Shadow Tactics – better version of Commandos 2.

Even though we associate the best stealth games with real-time suspense,Invisible, Inc.still captures that thanks to cleverly implemented time limits. This is a game for the tinkering stealth tactician.

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MGS V is many things: an open-world adventure, an explosive action game, and asandbox gamepacked with fantastic systems that you can toy with to your hearts content. Despite all this, it does not forget its roots and remains a high-water mark for stealth games, provided you can resist the urge to open fire with an MG when skulking through an enemy base.

The best stealth games highlight that neat joy of entering a space and leaving it unchanged except for the briefcase you were told to extract, or that one person who was your target now laying dead without anyone having noticed – the alarms going off at the precise moment you coolly walk away from the scene undetected. Nothing beats the thrill of doing things on the down-low.

Unfortunately stealthing in Dishonored was rather boring compared to something like Deus Ex franchise.

The Last of Us (perhaps not a stealth game by itself, but pretty enjoyable to play in a stealthy approach, which you can do for the majority of the game)

And some more that might be worth looking into:

Encouraging the silent approach is the new Reflex Mode, which grants you a couple of slow-mo seconds after you have been spotted to take out your enemy and continue your mission undetected. After all these years, Snakes repertoire of moves keeps him among our most beloved stealth games protagonists.

What makes it special is that, unlike many of its peers, your enemy is volatile and unpredictable, and there is no way to anticipate its patterns other than by tracking that foreboding blip on your radar. Noise is both your best friend and your worst enemy. An ill-judged sprint can result in an alien tail through the stomach, but a noisemaker chucked into an enemy patrol can lead to their swift deaths and your equally swift getaway.

Sadly,Alien: Isolation 2is not in the works.

Any of the Metal Gear main franchise

There is a twisted comedy to taking out a target by shooting out the glass bottom of his outdoor hot tub during a Christmas party. Or dressing up as the shiftiest clown since John Wayne Gacy to garotte a Mafioso snitch in his comfortable suburban home – making assassin games fun is no mean feat.

Few people have ever been any good at Commandos but everyone respects is as one of the best stealth games going. The grizzledWW2 gameputs you in control of a squad of elite soldiers, each with their own skills, and chucks you into gruelling puzzle-like levels to sneak and sabotage your way through.

Beyond that, Arkanes games are a ghosters dream, with mission stats screens that track not only how many civvies you have killed, but also whether you have been detected, raised any alarms, or left bodies in plain sight. Perhaps most enticing of all for stealth game purists is the opportunity to refuse the magical powers offered to you at the beginning of Dishonored 2 and approach the game as a contemporary Thief sequel. Only, er, a good one

The Splinter Cell series has always been inspired by Thiefs extreme focus on light and sound in levels. And with Chaos Theory the series mastered it, even taking into account details like your noise relative to the environment.

Its open levels are brilliantly designed, set around grand mansions and cathedrals that you do not feel the least bit guilty about robbing blind. But you will not be exploring them using radars, x-ray vision, or fancy abilities la modern stealth games like Splinter Cell and MGS; it is just you, your senses, and your blackjack if you really need it.

Snakes movement flows smoothly between crouching, diving, and crawling, as you infiltrate outposts from any angle using knives, heavily customisable firearms, and the classic cardboard box that MGS enemies still have not grown suspicious of after all these years. It is a joy to sneak up on an enemy and interrogate him for valuable information, before dispatching him into the cosmos with the devilishly fun Fulton Balloon.

With its pre-rendered backgrounds and isometric perspective, Commandos 2 is one of those stealth games where you can grumble that they dont make em like they used to, and ponder wistfully about what a faithful modern rendition of it would look like.

Dishonored shows that developers should still be building levels and not just worlds

Hitman 2016is incredible in its own right, and we will get to that. But the bald barcoded one known as Agent 47 has had a consistently solid career in stealth games – taking us on globetrotting, sprawling missions of slick, clinical killings since 2000. He really hit his stride with Blood Money, with fantastic level design that was believable while offering some of the most entertaining, diverse ways to carry out hits.

The 2D plane makes the stealth gameplay feel wonderfully focused, letting you fully assess all available means of dealing with obstacles, and in the quietest possible way. Mark of the Ninja transcends stealth games and 2D platforming, managing to be a unique masterclass of both.

Remember that thing about some of the best stealth games taking well-established game mechanics and dedicating them all to creating the quintessential sneaking experience? Well, this is precisely that.

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Those versatile folks at Klei Entertainment make their second appearance in this list – clearly, they have got more than one hidden blade in their sheath. While Invisible Inc. focuses on tactics and big decisions, Mark of the Ninja ingeniously squeezes mechanics from stealth games into the form of a 2D platformer.

Each mission takes a long time, and taking things as they come is the worst strategy you could possibly adopt. You always have to plan several steps ahead, monitoring enemies lines of sight, patrol patterns, and notable hiding spots. One wrong move, and you wont be able to click your mouse fast enough to get out of it. Fail to control the situation and its a swift execution.

When Square Enix announced the next Hitman game would be episodic, there were few believers. But six wonderfully crafted levels, an endless stream of special Elusive Targets, and plenty of quirky challenges later, Hitman became one of thebest games of 2016, not to mention one of the best assassin games of all time.

Some of the best stealth games can feel turn-based – even those that are not Invisible, Inc. They are the ones that have you marking targets, mapping patrol routes, and mentally solving problems – all before uncloaking and triggering the action when you are ready. The Dishonored series is the epitome of that style of stealth game, and as an added bonus, is just as good for combo-slinging predatory combat when you are spotted. It is nice to have the freedom to embark on aviolent Dishonored playthrough.

And a final really pushy one (considering its fairly hard not to turn it into run-and-gun in many sections, and many parts where you cant get away with stealth at all), but a good game with interesting story and atmosphere and some stealth mechanics (knife, throwing knife, silenced pistol):