Best stealth games of all time

Metal Gear Solid▲ Rising

Psycho Mantis reading your memory card and dodging your bullets by 'reading your mind' was the moment stealth gaming realized it could be cinema, comedy, and mechanics all at once. Kojima turned a PS1 disc into a puzzle box, from the codec calls to the box-hiding shenanigans, proving sneaking past guards could carry as much drama as any shooter's firefight. It's the Big Bang of modern stealth — nearly every tactical infiltration game since owes it a debt.

Year: 1998Critic score: 9.4/10

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Metal Gear Solid 3▲ Rising

Strip away the Alaska bunkers and put Snake in a Cold War jungle with a camouflage system that actually mattered, and you get the genre's most vivid survival-stealth playground. The Cobra Unit boss fights — especially The End, a sniper duel you could win by simply waiting a week in real time — redefined what patience and creativity in stealth could mean. The Boss's final confrontation remains one of gaming's most devastating emotional gut-punches, cementing this as many fans' pick for the best in the series.

Year: 2004Critic score: 9.3/10

added by IJRin 2 rankings

Ghost of Tsushima▲ Rising

Jin Sakai's choice between honorable combat and the shadowy Ghost techniques gave stealth a moral weight rarely seen, turning smoke bombs and standoff kills into an identity crisis as much as a playstyle. The wind literally guiding you to objectives eliminated UI clutter and let Kurosawa-inspired vistas do the storytelling while you picked off Mongol camps one silent kill at a time. It proved open-world stealth could be gorgeous and painterly without sacrificing the tension of a well-executed grass assassination.

Year: 2020Critic score: 9.2/10

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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice▼ Falling

FromSoftware weaponized stealth as a tool of aggression rather than avoidance, letting a single perfectly-timed shinobi deathblow erase a miniboss before the fight even began. The posture-and-deflect combat system paired with prosthetic-arm gadgetry and vertical grappling-hook traversal made every rooftop approach to Ashina Castle feel like a puzzle of violence waiting to be solved. It's the rare title that reinvented both stealth and combat simultaneously, earning its spot by refusing to be just another Souls game in disguise.

Year: 2019Critic score: 9/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Hitman 3▼ Falling

Agent 47 disguising himself as a flamingo mascot to strangle a target mid-parade is the kind of absurd, meticulously systemic murder-puzzle only this series delivers, and Hitman 3 closed the World of Assassination trilogy with its most polished toolbox yet. Dartmoor's Agatha Christie-style whodunit level and Berlin's disguise-less rave proved IO Interactive could still innovate within a formula built on patience, disguises, and creative kills. As the culmination of a decade-spanning trilogy, it stands as the modern high-water mark for sandbox stealth assassination.

Year: 2021Critic score: 8.7/10

added by IJR