Now I don't want to hate about the game mechanics here, but I see some flaws with it and wanted to ask the community if I am alone with my opinion.

First of all there is a huge gap between normal and hard difficulty which makes the game to play out different on hard. FYI I usually play games on the hardest possible difficulty available so I started Butcher Bay on hard. You find yourself in three combat situations: melee, range and stealth. Melee combat is okay on all difficulties. You block and you punch/stab in the right timing. I get that. OK.

But stealth mechanics kill many parts of the game for me. Just take the first huge stealth parts when you have to insert your DNA into the comp. There is a linear path you follow stealth killing enemies while you avoid being seen. This works ok up to some specific points where you have to meet guards in lit up areas with no chance to destroy the lights. I found various guards to damage me because it wasn't possible to outmanouver them. The game wanted me to fight. And you take a huge ass of damage on hard difficulty. This leads me to another point. Trial And Error in many stealth situations. When you get back to Cell Block A there are guards and the security cameras shooting at you when you step into the light. You don't see the cameras when you shoot out all the lights. When you activate your flashlight the cameras see you and kill you. When you approach further the guards run scripted towards you with activated flashlight. What! This section was pure trial and error for me learning where the cameras are attached to the walls and at which points you trigger a guard to run down the corridor so you can aim for a headshot in advance.

On normal it isn't too bad. You can take hits and still manage to kill everyone, but I felt bad because I got spotted. It felt like I fucked up.

Another part is after the pit when you enter the showers. You can disable all lights and kill the guards. Works perfectly. Then you approach further, a guard hears something and comes looking for you. He activates his flashlight and runs straight through the pitch black room up to the corner where I hid all the bodies. WTF!!!! I had no problem killing him though but it pisses me off that I hide the bodies for nothing.

This is all ok on normal difficulty because you can still win situations when you get caught but on hard getting detected usually means death in stealth sections when you play the section for the first time. I don't know why but I have a huge problem with this. I want to be stealthy, but the game is so cheap on me that it proxy detects me by guards with flashlights, lights that trigger on when you pass a certain spot etc. I found myself to gun everybody down more often than I wanted to.

Please don't tell me I am just to dumb for the stealth mechanics :(

Yeah, I tried the same but found very hard to avoid the grenades damage in hard mode. My other problem in hard the enemies don't need to see you. They have a cone of vision, you are in the range, that is all they need.
Is very obvious when a door opens, before you can shoot to their heads they already are firing to you.

The bullets speed and the enemies cover is other issue too, they will fire and take cover with enough time for avoiding your bullets. The first one I stopped the hard difficult setting very soon, before fleeing the lowest security prison.

In the second, I was playing all the game in the hardest difficult until the point I got the last weapon, that sincerely kill all my pleasure in that game.


The stealth is not so easy. Remain blue when the enemy don't has many chances to see you, but don't mean you are invisible to them. I got killed sometimes when my screen was still blue.