Post by Celt on Mar 28, 2014 11:09:39 GMT
Thief (2014) game review system Xbox One
I finished my first normal difficulty playthrough of Thief Tuesday last week. I just finished on Master mode with the extra custom difficulty options nearly maxed last night. There were things I liked about it, there were things I didn't like, there were things I hated.
It's an okay sequel in the Thief series. It was fun doing the sneaking bit like the good old days, along with coshing guards on the head and the occasional arrow through an eye. As a reboot, it is nowhere near as great or exhilarating as Tomb Raider was.
The most discordant thing that I couldn't figure out was that the Garrett in this game didn't really act or feel like the Garrett I was fondly familiar with. It took me some time and a journey to the internet to figure out that this character was not the same character. While the clues were there, most notably in the game years being long after the previous games' setting, there were many characters with the same or similar names as the previous games, most notably Basso the fence. It's been ten years since I visited the world so I didn't catch on to the clues.
In addition, the overall storyline to the game seemed to force drama on me rather than have it generate naturally. Comparing it again to Tomb Raider, that game developed Lara's relations with the other expedition and crew members throughout the game with flashback cut scenes and journal entries from the various characters. In Thief the game starts off with a prologue which introduces you to a fellow thief Erin and informs you that Basso has hired both of them for a job. The two of them seem to have such an antagonistic relationship which made me wonder why having them both work on a job together would seem like a good idea.
The game continues after a dramatic cut scene jumping a year into the future, a year which Garrett has no memory of and never really gets explained. He proceeds to get jobs from Basso which introduces him to the current politics of the city and leads him to pursue whatever happened to Erin. The thing is I never particularly cared in the first place and nothing drew me in. It was only when I went to the internet that I found out that Erin had been Garrett's apprentice as a thief when she first ran away from a forced prostitution. The storyline finally drew to a close with what to me was an overwrought and melodramatic ending. I would say I was unsatisfied with the ending but I wasn't invested in it anyway. Playing was more about the challenge to try to get in, get the goods and get out.
There isn't much innovation in the gameplay over previous games in the series. While there are more trick arrows with a variety of effects, the overall gameplay is pretty much the same. Stealth and patience are your friend, violence is best done at range and with minimum use. You're likely to be more successful taking your time, being aware of your surroundings, marking the guards' patterns, and using arrows as needed to modify the environment for your stealth. One difference is that the moss arrow is gone, it having been replaced by the choke arrow. I preferred the moss arrow from Thief: Deadly Shadows where the choking effect was first introduced as it still had the effect of silencing your footsteps if you spread it over an area.
The major change in this game is the mystical powers of Focus, sourced from your otherworldly eye. When used it highlights interactive elements in the environment. With various level ups it can do other things such as slow time as you fight, pick pockets or open locks; allow you to see sounds; improves stealth, etc. This seems like it would be pretty useful but after playing through the game on Master level without being able to use Focus made it evident that it was an unnecessary feature.
There's also some tedious actions you need to perform in game which seem to be nothing but make-work. Turning a wheel requires rotating the left joystick around and around. A minor annoyance when doing it while skulking about it became truly aggravating when you were required to do it quickly twice in a the penultimate conflict scene and you wanted to escape without killing the opponent. Opening a window or moving a beam to pass through a crack requires repeatedly pounding X. It's tedious enough as you have to do it often to get around, but there are some places where the system bogs down and the animation slows to a crawl while you have to keep on with the action until it completes. Unfortunately once committed to the action you also can't back out of it so you have to press on through.
The advertising for the game says you have a variety of ways to succeed at missions but really there only two or three paths available at any point, simplified by whether you want to kill or knock out anyone who stands in your way. With the wider mobility of the Assassin's Creed series the range of mobility in Thief pales in comparison. Also, the NPC AI is dumb as bricks. The NPCs will certainly react to threats or changes such as an unexpectedly extinguished torches and candles, open doors, or of course unconscious or dead bodies. But eventually they will settle down and go back to their programmed routines, provided they don't get bugged in which case you have to hope they broke facing the other way.
The graphics are great, better even than Thief: Deadly Shadows. Sound likewise is rich and useful so as to be aware of your environment. while the world and other people look great Garrett looks awful in the cut scenes. There are issues where lip movement and subtitles in cut scenes doesn't match the dialogue. Also, as you lurk about the city you will overhear conversations which give hints about where additional loot can be found, as well as providing color to the world. However sometimes you will hear only half of a conversation, and you'll hear the same conversation over and over again as an audio loop seems to be stuck.
Overall it was nice returning to Thief's world but I missed the Hammerites chanting, the calls of 'Taffer!' and Garrett's studied indifference and cynicism even while he was saving the city. I'd recommend to pick up the game when it is on sale, but I think Dishonored is a better spiritual successor to the previous Thief games than this reboot.
I finished my first normal difficulty playthrough of Thief Tuesday last week. I just finished on Master mode with the extra custom difficulty options nearly maxed last night. There were things I liked about it, there were things I didn't like, there were things I hated.
It's an okay sequel in the Thief series. It was fun doing the sneaking bit like the good old days, along with coshing guards on the head and the occasional arrow through an eye. As a reboot, it is nowhere near as great or exhilarating as Tomb Raider was.
The most discordant thing that I couldn't figure out was that the Garrett in this game didn't really act or feel like the Garrett I was fondly familiar with. It took me some time and a journey to the internet to figure out that this character was not the same character. While the clues were there, most notably in the game years being long after the previous games' setting, there were many characters with the same or similar names as the previous games, most notably Basso the fence. It's been ten years since I visited the world so I didn't catch on to the clues.
In addition, the overall storyline to the game seemed to force drama on me rather than have it generate naturally. Comparing it again to Tomb Raider, that game developed Lara's relations with the other expedition and crew members throughout the game with flashback cut scenes and journal entries from the various characters. In Thief the game starts off with a prologue which introduces you to a fellow thief Erin and informs you that Basso has hired both of them for a job. The two of them seem to have such an antagonistic relationship which made me wonder why having them both work on a job together would seem like a good idea.
The game continues after a dramatic cut scene jumping a year into the future, a year which Garrett has no memory of and never really gets explained. He proceeds to get jobs from Basso which introduces him to the current politics of the city and leads him to pursue whatever happened to Erin. The thing is I never particularly cared in the first place and nothing drew me in. It was only when I went to the internet that I found out that Erin had been Garrett's apprentice as a thief when she first ran away from a forced prostitution. The storyline finally drew to a close with what to me was an overwrought and melodramatic ending. I would say I was unsatisfied with the ending but I wasn't invested in it anyway. Playing was more about the challenge to try to get in, get the goods and get out.
There isn't much innovation in the gameplay over previous games in the series. While there are more trick arrows with a variety of effects, the overall gameplay is pretty much the same. Stealth and patience are your friend, violence is best done at range and with minimum use. You're likely to be more successful taking your time, being aware of your surroundings, marking the guards' patterns, and using arrows as needed to modify the environment for your stealth. One difference is that the moss arrow is gone, it having been replaced by the choke arrow. I preferred the moss arrow from Thief: Deadly Shadows where the choking effect was first introduced as it still had the effect of silencing your footsteps if you spread it over an area.
The major change in this game is the mystical powers of Focus, sourced from your otherworldly eye. When used it highlights interactive elements in the environment. With various level ups it can do other things such as slow time as you fight, pick pockets or open locks; allow you to see sounds; improves stealth, etc. This seems like it would be pretty useful but after playing through the game on Master level without being able to use Focus made it evident that it was an unnecessary feature.
There's also some tedious actions you need to perform in game which seem to be nothing but make-work. Turning a wheel requires rotating the left joystick around and around. A minor annoyance when doing it while skulking about it became truly aggravating when you were required to do it quickly twice in a the penultimate conflict scene and you wanted to escape without killing the opponent. Opening a window or moving a beam to pass through a crack requires repeatedly pounding X. It's tedious enough as you have to do it often to get around, but there are some places where the system bogs down and the animation slows to a crawl while you have to keep on with the action until it completes. Unfortunately once committed to the action you also can't back out of it so you have to press on through.
The advertising for the game says you have a variety of ways to succeed at missions but really there only two or three paths available at any point, simplified by whether you want to kill or knock out anyone who stands in your way. With the wider mobility of the Assassin's Creed series the range of mobility in Thief pales in comparison. Also, the NPC AI is dumb as bricks. The NPCs will certainly react to threats or changes such as an unexpectedly extinguished torches and candles, open doors, or of course unconscious or dead bodies. But eventually they will settle down and go back to their programmed routines, provided they don't get bugged in which case you have to hope they broke facing the other way.
The graphics are great, better even than Thief: Deadly Shadows. Sound likewise is rich and useful so as to be aware of your environment. while the world and other people look great Garrett looks awful in the cut scenes. There are issues where lip movement and subtitles in cut scenes doesn't match the dialogue. Also, as you lurk about the city you will overhear conversations which give hints about where additional loot can be found, as well as providing color to the world. However sometimes you will hear only half of a conversation, and you'll hear the same conversation over and over again as an audio loop seems to be stuck.
Overall it was nice returning to Thief's world but I missed the Hammerites chanting, the calls of 'Taffer!' and Garrett's studied indifference and cynicism even while he was saving the city. I'd recommend to pick up the game when it is on sale, but I think Dishonored is a better spiritual successor to the previous Thief games than this reboot.
