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Styx: Master of Shadows Review

A real Styx-in-the-mud

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As for the levels themselves, they don't quite elicit an exasperated sigh, so that's something. All are linear to a certain extent, some more than others – in the sense that you progress through them from point A to point B in a very definite direction – but most of them are happy to luxuriously sprawl out on the sofa and allow you to venture off the trail a bit. There's the occasional obnoxious bottleneck packed with armed guards – the stealth game equivalent of mountaineering halfway up a cliff face only to find a group of workmen industriously polishing an unforeseen overhang – but by and large the levels do alright. They aren't a patch on the old Thief games, either in terms of size or non-linearity, but if the Thief reboot itself is anything to go by then that technology has long since been lost to the mists of time, so I suppose developers are just hoping we'll pretend that they never existed at all. If anything, the problem is not having places to go, but reasons to be there; Styx struggles desperately for rewards to draw you off the beaten path, and it's not a struggle it comes out on top of. Without any kind of money or loot system, all the game can hope to do is try to tempt you with hidden consumables, occasional side-quests, and collectibles, none of which really justify the punishment you'll receive if you're caught while seeking them out. Sure, I'd love to have an extra life potion or throwing knife handy, but Styx is a frail little monstrosity with matchsticks for arms and an aggressively small inventory, so stockpiling is essentially impossible. The collectibles, as always, are utterly arbitrary and about as rewarding as picking gum off the undersides of park benches. Completing side-quests grants you more skill points at the end of each mission, so they're certainly a valid option, but since they're always loudly advertised by the siren's call of the objective marker it's not so much 'exploration' as it is 'making a beeline for the glowing triangle', which is pretty much exactly what I did.

Styx: Master of Shadows

Or rather, that's exactly what I like to imagine my handsome, skilful, alternate universe self did. What actually happened made Styx look like the unfortunate victim of a massive hangover that saw him slip off ledges, stumble over obstacles and fall right in the middle of guards' illicit poker games, which is a long way of saying that that his movement is clumsier than that of a fat dog on a soft mattress. Master of Shadows, my foot. It feels as if the game really aspires to having a nimble, agile protagonist, but all it has to work with is a bog-standard movement system that periodically dozes off when it thinks nobody's looking. Time and time again I'd die because I jumped just a tiny bit early, grabbed a ledge I didn't mean to, or just angled my leap slightly off-kilter. In a normal humdrum third-person action game it'd be bearable at the very least, but when a single mistake inevitably means being swarmed by grouchy rejected Fable NPCs – and, more often than not, being sent back ten minutes because the autosaves are so unreliably spaced – it just cements this game's growing reputation for pushing you into a ditch and asking why you're all muddy.

And I'm sorry, Styx, but this 'dark fantasy' angle you're pushing really isn't working. It's not for a lack of trying, mind; somebody appears to have gone through the script with a big book of naughty words and pencilled in a nice F-bomb or two wherever they could squeeze one in, for instance, and there's certainly no shortage of brutish guards to slit open from head to toe with your filthy oversized goblin knife, but the game's heart really isn't in it. There's no attempt to tackle a serious central matter or gritty conflict; it's just a regular fantasy where everybody's just kind of a jerk: guards, citizens, even Styx. Especially Styx, actually. It doesn't help his image that the game starts with a bad case of plot-convenient amnesia and a load of really poorly-organised sequences that may or may not be in chronological order, neither of which get resolved until the twist at the midway point. Fair go, Styx: it's a pretty good twist, one that explained a lot and hit me like a lump of pond muck launched from a trebuchet, but you do realise that hinging everything on it meant that I spent half the game wandering around in the – ah-hah – dark, right? You can't just have an unsympathetic crusty goblin like Styx doing things because the mysterious voice in his head tells him to and expect anybody to care about his plight, even if everybody else in the tower appears to be about twenty percent more villainous than he is.

Styx: Master of Shadows

Overall Styx is the kind of game that can do little more than extract a long, drawn-out, tired sigh. When it's at the tip-top of its game, it's an utterly average stealth-em-up with a whiff of plot intrigue on the side. Perhaps, if it held that standard throughout and you were really desperate, that'd be enough all on its own, but it's a short-lived accolade that – between awkward controls, level design whiffs, and generally being about as forgiving as playing 'chicken' with a freight train – never lasts long. Despite my initial apprehensions, Styx didn't sneak under everybody's radar at all: they saw it, noted it, recognised its unmistakeable air of mediocrity, and promptly discarded all memories of it. As soon as I can find a heavy enough mallet, so will I.

Our ratings for Styx: Master of Shadows on PC out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Presentation
53
Looks like something made for the last console generation, and not in a way that would've stretched the hardware either. The character models are ghastly, and the muddy environments chock-full of pop-in aren't much better.
Gameplay
55
Derivative, dry, clunky stealth livened up only by the split second of panic between being detected and being skewered by about twenty outrageously unfair projectile attacks.
Single Player
65
Harbours a genuinely pretty good twist that can't really save the first half of the game from stumbling around in poorly-communicated exposition. Unnecessarily crass, too, and that's coming from me.
Multiplayer
NR
Performance
(Show PC Specs)
CPU: Intel i7-870 @ 2.93 GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
RAM: 8GB DDR3
OS: Windows 7 Premium 64-bit
PC Specs

71
Visual bugs, clipping issues, dialogue bumbles, and a general lack of polish all-over.
Overall
56
At its best, Styx: Master of Shadows is a half-decent stealth game with barely a fresh idea in its head. At its worst, it's a soggy pile of frustration, clumsiness, and save-scumming. Guess which end of the spectrum it tends towards.
Comments
Styx: Master of Shadows
Styx: Master of Shadows box art Platform:
PC
Our Review of Styx: Master of Shadows
56%
Mediocre
The Verdict:
Game Ranking
Styx: Master of Shadows is ranked #1757 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #132 out of 152 games reviewed in 2014.
1757. Styx: Master of Shadows
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Screenshots

Styx: Master of Shadows
10 images added Oct 18, 2014 18:06
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