We’ve been covering Styx: Master of Shadows extensively lately, so time now to take a look at this new infiltration/stealth game that’s developed by Cyanide and published by Focus Home Interactive. As with all games of Cyanide, Styx: Master of Shadows is not a demanding title. While the game scales well on multi-core CPUs, it doesn’t require a high-end one to shine. And in true classic Cyanide-style, it sports average visuals that will not ‘wow’ you.
But that’s to be expected from a small studio. Obviously Cyanide does not have the manpower or the means to create a new Crysis or Battlefield game. So there is no real reason to be harsh on the game’s technical area. Styx: Master of Shadows looks like most old-gen multiplatform games; it packs blurry textures, average-ish characters and a lighting system that feels quite dated for today’s standards. Moreover, we were surprised by the lack of ambient occlusion, which obviously resulted in some really ugly, blurry and flat scenes.
Styx: Master of Shadows is described as an infiltration game with RPG elements. As such, the game’s stealth gameplay mechanics are essential to its success, and we are happy to report that most of the times, Styx: Master of Shadows feels like a great stealth game. That’s mostly to the ‘above-average’ enemy AI, which can be easily tricked in order to provide alternative routes to your objectives.
For example, take a look at the end of our video. Before entering the last room, we left a dead body nearby. While approaching the exit of that room, one of the guards took notice of it, alerting his other comrades, and that gave us the opportunity to sneak by and pass unnoticed.
Styx: Master of Shadows is almost everything stealth fans could expect. Styx can roll, crouch, hide in the shadows, extinguish torches, climb walls in order to gain access to new areas via which they can approach their objective, and more. On paper, everything should work fine in this game. However, there are some things that put us off while playing Cyanide’s title.
Our main issues with Styx: Master of Shadows are the character itself, the level design, and the enemy cone of vision. Styx is not an interesting character – at all – and the game’s storyline seemed uninspiring. In addition, the enemy line of sight felt weird. On a number of occasions, enemies were not able to notice us with their peripheral vision. And since you will be unable to determine whether an enemy can see you or not, you will have to resort – some times – on ‘trial & error’ tactics.
But perhaps the biggest issue with Styx: Master of Shadows is its level design. As we already said, we found Styx a really bland character; a character for which we did not really care. But that could have been saved if the levels were interesting enough to intrigue us. Unfortunately, the game’s levels are not that impressive. Like the main character, they feel bland, soulless, generic, and uninteresting to explore.
All in all, while Styx: Master of Shadows packs the means to be a really good game, it seriously falls behind due to various shortcomings. Styx isn’t a character for which you will really care about, the storyline and voice acting won’t draw you into the world of the game, and the level design is not that inspiring. Stealth fans should obviously give it a go as it’s been a while since we got a ‘pure’ and ‘proper’ stealth/infiltration game, however Styx: Master of Shadows could have been so much more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Confined levels? I can understand the rest of your problems with it, but the game has HUGE vertical levels. Don’t judge it just by the 1st hour.
‘confined’ shouldn’t be there in the first place. Fixed
I’m going to have to pile on here. Critisizing the level design? As BLAND??? Styx has the most unique locales I’ve visited in any game in the last decade or so. It really does sound like you only played the first mission. The levels are huge, made up of different styles of architecture, filled with easy to miss shortcuts and other little quirks, you have tremendous freedom but you also face grave opposition and the constant threat of detection by that opposition.
Styx is imo what all the Batman and AC games only ever pretend to be. Styx finds that sweet spot between power fantasy and challenge, between linear corridors and generic open world locales etc. It finds that middle ground where you will feel free and curious to explore but you also don’t get lost in meaningless details. I won’t deny that the game also has a few flaws but level design is not one of them.
The game looks like crap and the frame-rate shows it, clearly made for last gen consoles.
But then again I would go as far as to say that all games that appear on last-gen consoles are made “for them”. The hardware is simply too different to optimize one engine, and fully functional game on top of that, for both last-gen and current-gen/PC. So Styx being made with last-gen consoles in mind is of course true but isn’t anything surprising, most multi-platform games still come out on last-gen.
And I don’t know if you’ve played but I have and not only the art style but also the tech is very similar to Dishonored. Almost identical, in fact. And Styx has much larger levels. I don’t know what you think of Dishonored but I don’t remember anyone saying it looked outdated or that the poor graphics took away from the “experience”.
While the technology is dated and I’ve NEVER liked Unreal Engine 3 (outside of Mirror’s Edge) this game is beautiful in its own right. Note that jpg compression hurts the colors:
http://i.imgur.com/t4YjidD.jpg
Yeah the art style looks ok but the game looks rather generic to me in terms of a lot of the usual stuff used for stealth games now days like Ubisoft games do. I guess it’s like Risen 3, looks initially poor but the game stands out once you get more into it.
You are wrong my friend . The game was announced as PC exclusive and only this year , it was announced that it is also coming to PS4 and Xbox One . Styx is primarily a PC game .
OK, just an ugly PC game then, can’t complain at the price though, it’s £20.
This game is a joke !!! how developers make similar games in 2014 ?
Goddammed graphics w**res, here’s a game that is all what ‘Thi4f’ should have been, but no, ‘OMG Y GRAPHIX LOOK SO BAD, Y SO LAST GEN’ This site is rapidly turning into a mediocre console gathering of Dorito-eating kids.
this game is getting better and better the more i play it.
I haven’t had this much fun in a stealth game since Dishonored.