☆ Review: Sneaky Stealthy Mouthy 'Filthy Lucre' ☆ #GameDev

Filthy Lucre (PC)

With a premise involving an ignoble cause and a (rightfully grumpy) wronged man, Filthy Lucre starts out with no myth or facade that you are playing a hero. As a criminal working to re-steal the wealth of an elderly man who has been robbed, you must work your way through nonsequential missions of stealth, murder, and theft.

What’s not to love?

There are plenty of features to appreciate in Fabrik Game’s overhead stealth heist game. The graphics are of the right quality for an overhead game, there are fun little features like activating distractions within each area of a mission, and the narrative of the old curmudgeon (the character’s employer) all work together to make Filthy Lucre a clever deviation from the standard triple-A titles.

Graphically speaking, Filthy Lucre doesn’t aim to impress, and realistically, doesn’t have to do so, because no one is playing this title for an incredible visual experience. The graphics themselves are reminiscent of the previous console generation, which is perfectly adequate given the nature of the game. One playing doesn’t need to see every speck of facial hair on an enemy NPC, just that the NPC exists. It left the stealth aspect of the game to be the main focus, which I appreciated (as it was my first true “stealth” game). Navigating the missions was easier with the clean, simplistic visuals on screen.

One of my favorite features of Filthy Lucre was the various distractions throughout each mission. Some missions offered machines that went off in the warehouse the character was raiding, some had small bombs- it made for a truer gameplay experience. Another aspect of the game I’ve really enjoyed is the lack of necessary sequence of the missions. The elderly employer doesn’t care in what order you retrieve his belongings, just that you do them. All the while, you must kill, bag and tag your victims, making sure the body count doesn’t tip off the other enemies of your presence. Again, this feature of Filthy Lucre at first seemed tedious, but it made the gameplay better for me.It caused me to consider how I pushed into a room, how I made my exit, and how I cleaned up my trail as I went forward on a mission.

My game experience is not without flaw, however. Filthy Lucre had some instructional port concerns. For instance, the tutorial was lacking for someone of my level, who has never before played a stealth game. The key mapping/ control instructions left a bit to be desired as well since they mostly were left in PlayStation4 instructions with little PC guidance. It took a fair amount of trial and error before I figured out what key was mapped to which action, and while that isn’t directly involved in the gameplay itself, it did make my experience with Filthy Lucre slower and a little rocky in the beginning.

Another aspect of Fabrik Game’s stealth heist game that I found frustrating was the sheer amount of time a mission took. It required a lot more effort than I had expected to exert (some missions took over 90 minutes, and I still died!), with a significant amount of patience I don’t naturally have. I’ll admit that my personality is that of a tank player: I go in swinging, taking damage and wrecking enemies in the process. Filthy Lucre is NOT the game for that play style, and that was another learning curve I had to overcome. This mission length and patience required could be argued that, again, it was giving gamers a truer gaming experience, and I will concede to that fact (I’m just bad at crouching/ waiting).

Summary:

Truthfully, though, I found Filthy Lucre to be a very fun title to spend hours playing. Given my penchant for loot and shoot titles or team fighting games, this was a big deviation from my usual selection, and I’m so glad I tried it. 

Fabrik put in a tremendous amount of thought and consideration into Filthy Lucre, and it shows. The different missions have multiple variables to give attention (what kinds of items will you be stealing back for your employer? How much money have you stolen? How many bodies did you bag and return to your escape van?), the varying weapons you can take into a mission can make or break your success, and even the NPCs you fight all show that Fabrik Games created a stealth heist gem in Filthy Lucre. 

If you’re a fan of Snatch or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, I would suggest trying this title out in a heartbeat.

RATING: MELTING

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Just Falls Short Of Greatness)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)

 

Dev Link: Fabrik Games
Game Link: Filthy Lucre

 

Review By Beth