Gaming Thief Review

Can Square Enix' Reboot of Looking Glass' iconic game steal Rick's heart?
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2014/02/25/thief-review/1

 

Looks like I'll be waiting for a sale. I wasn't expecting much to be fair, and it looks worth playing, but not a day one purchase for me.

 

Hear very mixed things about the game, seems to be largely related to how much you played the originals and what you thought of them.

Does look pretty cool, although not high up on my 'to buy' list (don't have one, but if I did...) plenty of other games I already own that I haven't got round to playing yet I need to try first

 

It's already on sale if you look around you can aquire it now for under £15.

 

"sardonic with"

wit?

 

Personally I discount anything with the words "Square Enix" associated with it. They literally have a gift for ruining whatever they get their hands on... Or maybe i'm just still bitter after SupCom 2.

 

Wut?

A score of 70% means Square Enix ruined it?

In all fairness, given how closely it seems to follow Dishonored in style, I was rather hoping for a 90-something percent masterpiece, so I could claim to feel a little deflated by the reviews; but I'll still be picking it up at some point.

 

So no mention of the shocking AI?

 

I'm a few hours in and thoroughly enjoying it. The game is very well designed, glitches aside. I think everyone was expecting it to be the Thief equivalent of Half-Life 3; the gameplay style is nothing like the original 3 games. Is it a good Thief game? Not quite as good as you'd expect for a "Thief 4" game. But is it a good game about being a thief? It's bloody amazing. I just wish they had Stephen Russell on board for this one, and carried on the story from the previous games.

Oh, and the AI is only shocking until you play Master Thief difficulty; it will literally notice you in places that it never noticed you in before, and is far more sensitive to any signs of un-stealthiness. For the ultimate Thief experience, I suggest playing it on hardest difficulty.

 

I found this to be the most helpful and detailed review I've read for this game. Thanks.

 

No mention of the QTEs? :/

 

Thank the maker!

 

I played about 3 hours of Thief last night and beat the prologue and chapter 1 on master without altering anything else in the options menu. Hella good game with only a few minor annoyances. Subtitles don't seem to sync up during a few of the cutscenes after the prologue, steam achievements weren't working or even there yet, maybe that's going to activate once it's released world-wide and one other thing I found rather annoying is sometimes when I vault myself onto a ledge or higher platform my character seems to slide back off the ledge and fall off the wall without touching anything. It's like there's some "oil" covering certain surfaces in funny spots that make your character lose his footing.

Other than that though I found the game to be largely entertaining. There was a bit of music post prologue that didn't sound at all like I was expecting though, I was sneaking through this ally-way and all of a sudden I get this gritty and deep pumping bass music, not that I disliked it, but I just wasn't expecting something so aggressive for a stealth game during a stealth scene.

 

I realize opinions are subjective and all but I find your take on the AI just...wrong.
"Master" difficulty is a joke. The guards from the PS1's Tenchu: Stealth Assassins are FAR more wary, persistent and challenging.
Thi4f actually manages to be a worse game than even Bioshock Infinite.

 

Some people who pre-ordered the game getting a bit upset about not being able to play it because of regional timed releases.

 

Who else tried it?
Does it sound better than most peeps rant about? Worth to buy it and play?

I remember playing old ones and very much liked it, so wanted to see how this one goes...

 

Honestly I can't keep quiet about this review, and though I know that these things are subjective (as said before), but there are a few points to be made. I know this sounds a bit ranty, but I seriously feel like the reviewer got a early beta copy compared to what I just played (Steam version FYI - maybe there's a big difference to what was tested)

I played thief 1 - 3 multiple times, and loved every second on them (barring specific mission sections). Thief 4 lives up to all that and then some. I've just finished the whole game, and the review is really misleading, sometimes even wrong. let me give an example:

1.) Mistake? accident, and not by Garrett (misleading)
2.) Fellow Filter? Technically correct, though 'Sister' would have been better, ie: not someone random(and that's not a spoiler, it's hinted at in the prologue with the subtlety of a hammer).

The rest is spoilers for the game as a whole:

Spoiler

3.) Garrett never sets out to save the city from the gloom, only his sister. Saving one leads to the saving of the other, nothing more. Both being affected/caused by the stone.
4.)Not the whole power of the universe, just enough to power the city.

As a whole I get the very distinct 'sour lemon' feel from this review, and this maybe simply over-hype crushing expectations on the game, I did get the same feeling from the Banished review.

Anyway, as said before: this is my personal feelings of the review, so it's not that I'm saying in black and white "it's wrong", but rather that I am SO glad that I didn't read it before I played the game. It would have destroyed the game for me if I had gone into the game with the same overall negative feeling as this review.

Call me a fanboy, or whatever, but my advise: if you enjoyed the others, buy thief 4. If you are really unsure, wait for a sale. But don't believe the review in that the game has changed. It's still 90% the same as Thief 3.

/ranty 2cents

PS: Yes the AI is not good, and was clearly written to give the player a big upper hand.

 

Review is more or less spot on, although the bugs are mostly gone at release, and have been patched again since. I played the originals the day they were released, and bought them again for the lead up to this via Steam.

I still enjoyed this new reboot, quite a lot. If you can let go of the previous 3 games storyline and accept it for the fresh start it is, then you will enjoy it more.

The issues Rick pointed out are mostly still there - the less freedom of movement, the generally poorer story (but it wasn't terrible, matter of fact it closely resembled the story for Thief 1 in my opinion, just not as well done) the HUB system used (a la Thief 3) is also a bit of a pain until you know the City really well and the various points you need to memorise to access the next section of the map etc, rope arrows only being used in specific places and so on.

However as also pointed out by Rick in the review a lot of things are better as well.

As for the AI, on Master difficulty it is just as good (I'd argue better) than the originals. The amount of options given to you to customise the game difficulty to your liking is also impressive, as are the Challenge maps (which I don't think he mentioned, and are good fun).

I'm glad I pre-ordered it, but also very glad I pre-ordered it from a site that doesn't charge you the earth like Steam does these days. I never pay full price for any digital game anymore, and being able to get this game on Steam for around 50% cheaper from sites such as www.cdkeyhouse.com makes it a no-brainer buy and at that price elevates from about the 75% I would have personally given it at full price to 85% easily.