The Marvellous Miss Take is a stylish stealth game which focuses on distraction and dealing with randomly wandering guards as its primary mechanics.
The game stars the Sophia Take, an heiress whose aunt’s fortune (and more importantly, her art) is all stolen (via a forged will) by Ralph, an evil megalomaniac whose focus seems to be hoarding the art for himself rather than sharing itThe Marvellous Miss Take is a stylish stealth game which focuses on distraction and dealing with randomly wandering guards as its primary mechanics.
The game stars the Sophia Take, an heiress whose aunt’s fortune (and more importantly, her art) is all stolen (via a forged will) by Ralph, an evil megalomaniac whose focus seems to be hoarding the art for himself rather than sharing it with THE PEOPLE. Sophia’s goal is to steal all the art back and expose Ralph for what he is.
Joining her on her quest are Harry, an older thief with a bum leg, and Daisy, a young, seemingly orphaned pickpocket who joins the team.
The game’s stealth gameplay is very simple – click to walk to a location, hold down the mouse button to run there, and use the right mouse button to throw a device (which varies by character and level) to distract or get around the guards. Ducking behind obstacles is automatic as long as you aren’t running, and the fields of view of all the guards are displayed via very simple and easy-to-understand visual displays.
The levels are all viewed from a top-down isometric perspective which is pretty heavily constrained around your character, meaning you’re exploring the level as you’re penetrating it. What makes this game unusual for a stealth game is that, contrary to most such games, the guards – both in the form of men and dogs – wander randomly through the level, meaning that you cannot rely on them to turn just the right direction or walk just the right way. This also means that waiting around can get you trapped between randomly wandering guards, so it pays to move quickly and to distract the guards to get them to go where you want them to go, either by showing yourself to them, making some noise, or by throwing a noise-making gadget.
Sophia’s goal in each level is to collect all the golden art pieces, set up on walls and pedestals, and then make it to the elevator or exit. Every level has two independent floors to it, and if you fail on the second floor, you start over at the start of that floor, not at the start of the level. On top of that primary goal, she has two secondary goals – she can break the glass around a special statue which appears once per floor, which attracts the attention of the nearest guard, or she can try and do a speed run through the level, completing it within a certain amount of time. In most of the levels, Sophia finds an item lying on a pedestal near the entrance that helps her clear the level – a noise-maker that can be thrown to distract guards, glue to stick them in place, a smoke bomb to obstruct their view, or a teleporter to skip past them.
If Sophia is spotted by the guards, she has to go hide before they catch her; if they catch her, you must start the floor over. Unfortunately, even if you are not captured, Sophia will drop her (very stylish) hat, which must be retrieved before she can complete the level.
Her two allies have slightly different gameplay. Harry always has the same item – a noise-making ball which bounces off the walls – wherever he goes, but as it is his lucky charm, he must collect it back up before completing a level. His missions take place at night in the same rooms that Miss Take’s missions take place in, but with a different setup of guards, and various barriers put in place to obstruct his route through the level. Unlike Sophia, he can’t run, but on the upside, he only has to collect three paintings per floor. His alternate goal is to make it through levels without being spotted by any guards or cameras.
Daisy has no special items at all to help her, but on the upside, she can walk right up behind guards without alerting them, and is the fastest character in the game. Like Harry, she plays in the same stages Sophia does, but with barriers up (though different ones than Harry, oftentimes), and with different guard setups. Daisy must pickpocket keys off the guards to unlock safes and retrieve deeds. The safes are alarmed, so Daisy must run away quickly after avoiding a safe to avoid getting caught. Her levels tend to be the most frustrating simply because the guards must be approached up close, and the safes always create intense situations. Like Sophia, her goal is to speed-run through every level, which is the hardest goal in the game due to the random movements of the guards, and can sometimes lead to extreme frustration.
Indeed, the game’s greatest flaw is its randomized nature. At times, the enemies will turn around and completely screw up your quickly thrown-together plan, and there are occaisions where you will simply be forced to reset a stage because guards randomly wander in through both ends of a hallway. Such events are sometimes your fault, but at other times, the random nature of the game can be quite annoying – especially when doing speed-runs as Daisy, who is pretty dependent on a good guard setup at times to complete her run in time.
The game’s other flaw is its repetitive nature.… Expand
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