The Marvellous Miss Take (PC) Review
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The Marvellous Miss Take certainly earns it’s name. It’s a great fun game to kill a few minutes, and there’s enough variety and challenge to keep you interested. The guards being unpredictable adds to the sense of danger in the game, leading to quite a few close calls, which is good. If you’re the sort of person who likes to be able to ‘learn’ levels when you fail, then this might be annoying to you. But to everyone else, this is a fun, light hearted stealth game that you’ll get a lot of joy out of.
Stealing from those who steal from you. With style.
November seems to be the month of stealth games, with two Assassin’s Creed games released on the same day. But if you want stealth that’s a little more on the light hearted side that you can play in quick bursts, then ‘The Marvellous Miss Take’ may be the game for you. The game sees you play as Miss Sofia Take, a woman who inherits a collection of expensive art, only to have it taken by a bunch of art collectors, so you have to get it all back, all cat burglar style.
Each level has a set number of artifacts that you have to retreive, all the while trying to avoid being caught by the guards. There’s no combat in the game, so you have to rely on a variety of tactics and gadgets to get you out of harms way. You can make noises to grab a guard’s attention, such as by running, whistling or coughing. You can also throw a tape recorder to make a cat noise, or use a teleporter to get you past a problematic area.
The guards themselves aren’t your only worry either. As progress through the game, you’ll get other obstacles thrown in your way, such as security cameras and sniffer dogs, who will follow your scent and alert a guard if you step into their cone of vision. To add an extra layer of challenge to the game, guards don’t follow a set patrol pattern, so if you have to restart a floor, you’ll have to figure out how to get around all over again. This at least makes things interesting in that no two run throughs will be the same, especially if you go back to complete bonus objectives. Although it can get frustrating in the more difficult levels.
Controls are very simple. Left clicking is used for movement, and holding down the left mouse button causes you to make a distracting noise. Holding the left button down while moving causes you to run. Meanwhile, you use the right mouse button to use whatever object you have to hand. The trouble is, the controls are kind of imprecise and can makes things difficult. There is an option to use the keyboard, and it’s much better and makes it far easier to go exactly where you want.
As you progress through the game, you will find and unlock new characters to use in the story. In order to access new chapters, you’ll have to go back to previous levels with those characters. The levels are set up differently, however, with a different aim. So, for example, one character has the ability to sneak up behind guards and pick their pockets, allowing you to access safes. It adds a little bit of variety to the game play.
With over 20 galleries to play through, there’s enough to keep you going for a while, and the chance to replay levels in a different way adds to the longevity. But this is more a game you’re going to play in short bursts, rather than sit in front of for hours on end. While the graphical style is slick and colourful, it would have been nice to have a bit of variety in the way the galleries look, but that’s a minor quibble, in all honesty. The music really fits the character of Miss Take as well, and the noises the bumbling guards makes are amusing, and the chaos and noise when you’re on the run is fun as well.
In Conclusion
The Marvellous Miss Take certainly earns it’s name. It’s a great fun game to kill a few minutes, and there’s enough variety and challenge to keep you interested. The guards being unpredictable adds to the sense of danger in the game, leading to quite a few close calls, which is good. If you’re the sort of person who likes to be able to ‘learn’ levels when you fail, then this might be annoying to you. But to everyone else, this is a fun, light hearted stealth game that you’ll get a lot of joy out of.