Over the years, Stealth\Action oriented games have become a niche sub-genre, with such notable titles as Metal Gear Solid, Assassin’s Creed, Dishonored, the Thief Games, etc. etc. All of these games are fantastic in their own right, and do stealth in their own unique ways–rewarding patience, tactical thinking, and sometimes, brute force. If you want a break from all of the AAA stealth games with dramatic and serious tones, as well as more casual gameplay (although not completely casual, as we’ll see in a bit), this game may be the one for you.
The cleverly named “Marvellous Miss Take” is a game developed by Wonderstruck and published by Rising Star Games. The game takes place in London, England, and focuses on a young woman named Miss Sophia Take (No, I’m not making that up). The game starts with Sophia in an art museum that has an incredibly overbearing lack of actual art. It turns out that Sophia’s aunt owned a marvellous art collection, and left it for Sophia in her will when she passed away. Unfortunately, a greedy art snob forged Sophia’s aunt’s will so that all of the art was left to him. All of the art has been spread across 25 different museums (I didn’t know one person could own that many museums), and Sophia takes it upon herself to steal back her aunt’s art in the name of JUSTICE!
Gameplay in The Marvellous Miss Take involves you going through various museums, collecting valuable sculptures and paintings, easily picked out by their golden color. Each level usually consists of 2 separate floors, each with a certain number of art pieces you must collect. Collect every piece, and you can move to the exit. Along the way, you’ll need to avoid security guards, blood hounds, and surveillance cameras, each with their own special traits that require different strategies to avoid.
Every level consists of up to 3 different objectives to complete, with the main objective, collecting all of the art, being the only one required to finish a level. These bonus objectives will add extra art to your gallery. They include: finishing a level within a par time, finishing a level without being seen, or collecting special sculptures encased in glass displays, which require a bit more skill to obtain than the regular art.
Eventually, you’ll meet two new characters, Harry Carver, and Daisy Hobbs. Both Harry and Daisy become playable characters that you have to go back to previously completed levels with to steal more art. The levels are always changed slightly, which gives them a fresh feel, so that you don’t get bored seeing the same levels over and over. The missions with Harry and Daisy are quite the step up in difficulty from Sophia’s main missions, with Daisy’s missions being the most difficult in my opinion. Harry’s levels involve him going around the museums at night, which adds a very nice feel to the levels. The challenge to Harry’s levels are that you can’t be seen by guards (unless you don’t care about bonus objectives), which at first doesn’t sound horrible, but then it’s made worse by the fact that Harry has a bum leg, and cannot run. Luckily, the developers decided to show mercy on us, and not give Harry’s levels par times, which I was very relieved to see.
Daisy’s levels involve you picking keys off of guards and using them to open safes, stealing cash and fake deeds to try and oust our villain. These levels are incredibly difficult, because they require a TON of patience, which is made even worse by the fact that these levels do, in fact, have par times. The problem is that when you open a safe, an alarm will sound, which will send any security guards in close proximity running towards the safe. If they’re not far enough away for you to safely hide before they come running, you have to either distract them so they’ll move further away, or wait, both of which waste time if you’re trying to complete the level quickly.
In certain levels, you’ll find different gadgets which you can use to your advantage. Things like teleporters to get you out of danger quickly, smoke bombs to obscure the guard’s line of sight, and tape recorders that play sounds to distract guards. In addition, you also have the ability to whistle at any time, in order to lure guards to your location.
The overall gameplay is very solid and addicting, the levels are nicely designed. The music is also very catchy, although it gets incredibly tiring to hear the same few tracks play on loop from level to level. Where do I even begin with graphics? I love them. The art style is wonderful, the locations and characters really pop, and all look unique, and I never got tired of looking at it. I do wish there were a few more graphical options to play with, other than shadows and resolution, but what can you do.
After about 6 levels, the game becomes incredibly difficult, incredibly fast. Normally, I’m okay with this, but sometimes the game just seemed unnecessarily hard, especially in Daisy and Harry’s levels. The combination of certain par times and the amount of things you needed to collect with the amount of guards you needed to avoid made the levels insanely stressful.
My biggest complaint, however, is the default controls. They’re terrible. The game, by default, is controlled entirely by the mouse, and normally I’m fine with that, but this game requires very precise and careful movement, where one missclick or a click that lasts just a bit too long can lead to everything crashing down on you. The problem mostly stems from the fact that running is toggled by holding the left mouse button down. In order to walk places stealthily, you need to simply click on where you want to go, which gives you a lot less control over where your character is going, due to the fact that in order to actively control the direction of your movement, you need to hold left click down, which makes you run. Running makes noise, so if you’re hiding from a guard, and try to move away quietly, but accidentally click too long, you’ll be seen. This is a HUGE problem that caused me to lose constantly. It wasn’t until later that I discovered there were actually keyboard controls, which I guess is sorta my fault. After some looking, I also discovered that controller support was recently added to the game. So, just do yourself a favor, and use one of those two options, because the mouse controls start working against you pretty fast.
The most minor complaint I have about the game is the characters: They’re boring. Their designs are great, but their actual personalities and dialogue are completely forgettable and cliche. I guess this isn’t a game you’d play for the stories and characters, but there’s quite a bit of dialogue in between levels, so it would’ve been nice to see characters develop in more interesting ways.
Overall, The Marvellous Miss Take is a very good game, one that I enjoyed playing immensely. I would definitely say it’s worth the $20 price point. It’s a fairly lengthy game, too. About 8-10 hours, depending on how good you are. Even though there are technically only 25 levels, you have to visit each level 3 times to complete the game, not including the tutorial level, so in reality, there’s more like 73 levels. It’s a very good pick up and play kind of game, one you can play for 20-30 minutes and make moderate progress. If you’re into stealth games, and need something to play while waiting for Metal Gear Solid V, give this one a shot, it’s Marvellous.
The Marvellous Miss Take
Pros
- Incredibly appealing art style
- Addicting and varied gameplay
- Plenty of missions
Cons
- Mouse controls are awful
- Massive difficulty spike
- Uninteresting characters
