Filthy Lucre Review (PS4) - ExtremeGamer's Blog

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Filthy Lucre Review (PS4)

Posted on September 19, 2016 at 07:46 AM.

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"How ya doin' me old china?"

Ever want to be a cockney gangster? Filthy Lucre gives you that opportunity, working for a mobster "Ronnie" who's been robbed by other nefarious type people. He's now enlisted you to work for him, robbing the people who stole from him to get his stuff back and return him to the top of the gangster underworld.

In this top-down stealth game, you slowly make your way through each level stealing back specific items, trying not to be noticed and completing the several objectives that Ronnie has laid out for you. It becomes a method of trial and error, figuring out each guard's path through the various locations you visit. While you can have loud weapons and go in guns blazing, it's not highly recommended. For each noise, death, sighting of you, etc; your heat meter goes up, once it hits a certain level the SWAT team is called in. It's pretty much game over at that point.

As you see in my above play-through, at the every end the SWAT team is called in. I even missed the antique (which isn't shown on the map) during that run. Every level has one antique, which Ronnie doesn't even know the location of from the scouting, so it's up to you to locate it.

The controls take a few moments to get the handle of. The right trigger shoots, the right stick aims, left trigger causes you to stand or stay crouched. Overall, it's very intuitive and works really well. I still had moments where I wanted to shoot at someone right in front of me and was aiming the opposite direction which can be frustrating but it's a minor quip.

One really nice feature is that you can go into each location and slowly steal each item. You don't have to get it all in one go. Jumping in and grabbing one of the objectives and getting out marks it off as complete. It will still be there when you go to play again and of course, getting it all in one go raises your score. Oh yes, we have leaderboards, global and friends only. Right away this adds to the fun, the game is intense enough, but you know if you take any damage or get seen that your score takes a hit and your buddy will be laughing at you as he trounces your score on the leaderboards of the underworld.

Speaking of your buddies, yes this game has full co-op (online and couch) through the entire game. And you have independent cameras so you can split up immediately at the start and tackle two completely different areas of the map. This is truly where the game shines, but it's also more difficult. It's just easier for 2 characters to be seen as opposed to one. But the laughter and strategy talk you encounter through the co-op play-through top anything in the game solo. One cool touch was that if one of you goes down, you will see the AI interrogate your character till they eventually shoot you in the head. This raises the heat level as well. Your partner can come save you or just go on their own way collecting all the loot on their own. It's just too much fun to play the game this way, it feels like the way it was meant to be played.

A good run on one of maps in the game can take 25 minutes to complete, the one I had above had me legit sweating by the end of it. There's a lot of pressure, especially once the bad guys know you're in their building and you're robbing them.

I had some issues with the way the AI reacted but overall, they felt good and did what they did, simply because this is a video game. If every AI character acted how I expected them to act in this situation, well, the game wouldn't be very fun. And Filthy Lucre is a game that even when I fail a mission, I want to do one more. It's really nailed the stealth gameplay with a feeling of "just one more" when you play.

The top down mechanic works great, the graphics look crisp and never encountered any issues or framerate issues. The sound is great, the guards talk about how they would rather be home watching football (soccer to us Americans) or in a cue from Grand Theft Auto, the various radios will have different things playing but sometimes you will hear reports from previous jobs you've completed. All the money in the game is in pounds as it is set in the UK after all.

In your hub world (the hideout) you can upgrade weapons, check the missions you've completed or even look in the vault to see the antiques you've stolen back for Ronnie.

Overall, I've had a blast playing Filthy Lucre solo and co-op. Both have provided hours of enjoyment so far. My only minor negatives are the controls are a tad confusing and I don't know about longevity of the game after you 100% the 5 areas. But overall, easily one of my favorite games of 2016. Now get out there and steal back Ronnie's goods!

Overall score - 8.5/10

Game was provided by the publisher, primary play on the PS4