Thief 3: Deadly Shadows

Rating:
Summary: Ion Storm successfully continues a beloved franchise
Review: Thief 1 and 2 are some of my favorite PC games. There's just something about the sneaking that seems like a welcome change of pace from other action-based games on the PC. When I first heard that Looking Glass Studios, creators of the first two games, was closing down, the only thing I could think of was "Oh man, I guess that means no more Thief games." Fortunately, Ion Storm has made Deadly Shadows.

I was pleased that for the most part the gameplay stayed the same as the first two. There may even be more emphasis on stealth this time around because in Deadly Shadows you have a dagger instead of a sword, which only does minimal damage. All the arrows are back, from the godly gas arrows to the seldom-used but sometimes useful moss arrows. Thankfully if you are stealthy you can kill people with just one arrow in Deadly Shadows, rather than turning them into a porcupine like in Dark Project or Metal Age. Your have your trusty blackjack again, this time with a neat system that lets you know when you're close enough to successfully use it on someone (Garrett raises the blackjack over his head). Also, you can "back stab" your opponents with your dagger, though it seems useless because it makes noise and is essentially the same as blackjacking your opponents. One quibble I have with the gameplay is that there are no longer any rope/vine arrows, which were replaced with climbing gloves in Deadly Shadows. Unfortunately, you don't really need to use them that often and the animation and control for them seem a bit clumsy. The AI has improved, but the guards are still pretty oblivious to your existence unless you take some sort of action. Also, there isn't too much variety to the guards. It almost seems like they used the same AI for every enemy and just changed the skin. But, enemies do notice when doors are opened, loot is taken, or their buddy isn't patrolling anymore and will come looking for you. The true experience comes when you play Deadly Shadows on hard, as there are more guards and they are MUCH more perceptive of their surroundings.

Another change is that you navigate your way through "The City" from mission to mission. While it's kind of fun at times, it seems that it should be bigger with more areas to explore. (Like "Life of the Party" in Thief 2) It also gets annoying to traverse the city and avoid the city watch when you are a ways away from where you need to get. Then again, I guess it makes it more realistic. You also will have to sell everything you steal to a fence located in each district of the city and buy your equipment from them too. Unlike the previous Thief games, your items and weapons carry over from one mission to another. This is a double-edged sword at times, because while you know that you can pretty much have everything you want for each and every mission, you might find yourself hoarding good items like gas bombs/arrows. Your map has changed slightly in that you no longer know what room you are in when you check it. Personally I like this modification because you find yourself doing more exploring rather than looking at your map to see how to get somewhere the fastest way. After you have explored a sufficient amount of the mission you're in, you can tell where you are on the map and how to get back to places you were with ease.

The graphics for Deadly Shadows are excellent. The character models are much more detailed than they were in Metal Age and the animation is much more fluent. The only real problem I have is that the plants and bushes didn't get much attention, but these are minor things when compared to the overall graphical presentation. Of course, the lighting effects are the most important graphical aspect of the game, and Deadly Shadows delivers brilliantly. Literally everything in the game is affected by light. Some of the enemies carry a torch while patrolling, which is really fun just to watch the way it affects the surroundings.

The Thief series is all about atmosphere, and Deadly Shadows is the best yet in that department. Each level is a little eerie, but the sound amplifies it and makes the experience much more engrossing. I have never played a game where the sound plays such an integral part in the overall experience. I played a few missions with the sound off after I'd played through them normally and it's like playing a completely different game. This game was made to be played in the dark with the sound up and the experience is unbelievable when played like that. "The Shalebridge Cradle" is one of the creepiest and most exhilarating experiences I have ever had in a video game.

Overall Deadly Shadows is a great game that most fans of the series will love. A technical problem with Deadly Shadows is that it's pretty choosy about your hardware. You need 512 RAM to play it smoothly and your graphics card has to be pretty recent as well. But, if you have a gaming PC and are looking for a good game to add to your collection, Thief: Deadly Shadows is definitely one you should consider picking up.

Rating:
Summary: I waited four years for this?
Review: Thief: Deadly Shadows is a decent game but pales is vastly inferior to the first two titles. It shows in the poor level design and a storyline that promises so much but in the end offers very little. Warren Spector and the IONstorm team absolutely did not take any risks or chances with this title to make something ambitious. Alas, the once fine institution of PC gaming has gone to the dogs. And I have lost respect for Warren Spector who no longer creates anything groundbreaking. :(

Rating:
Summary: A bit of patience will bring maximum enjoyment
Review: The third installment of the Thief series finds Garret back in the shadows. This is known as a `stealth' game, meaning creep around in the shadows a lot, taking people down like an assassin. Which makes the game play somewhat slower in pace, but allows for a richer story line to be absorbed.

Rather than slap together a few cut scenes with some trite dialog that gives you a thinly veiled reason for going from A to B, Thief has a rich backdrop of a story that pushes the game along as you find answers that uncover new questions. Lots of side missions are melded seamlessly into the overall story so it's all just part of a thief's life. Picking pockets and stealing loot and then having to fence them to gain the cash to buy more supplies adds a small RPG element (the more loot you steal, the better equipped you can enter the missions). A nice selection of weapons are offered: Water Arrows (to put out the torches and make more shadow), Moss Arrows (to cut down the sound of footsteps), Fire Arrows (to do some lethal damage) are among the more unique. Add in some flashbombs, gas bombs, the requisite health viles and some other goodies to fill out your arsenal. The foes get scarier and creepier as the game progresses and almost approaches a horror/survival atmosphere.

Thief 3 makes a good balance of forcing you to take some degree of stealth. You can kill most bad guys, but attract more than one or two and its flee or die. Picking locks takes full advantage of the Xbox rumble pack to `feel' out the sweet spots. Graphics are slick and soundtracks are rich setting tense atmospheres. A bit of patience and willingness to `get into the game' will bring maximum enjoyment.

Rating:
Summary: Thief finally perfected!
Review: I remember reading the reviews for Thief 3 in Computer Games when it was still being developed- I thought it looked awesome but then promptly forgot about it, figuring it would probably never come out in my lifetime, because game companies tend to do stuff like that. You may have noticed it.

Well anyway, the other day I saw a friend of mine playing Splinter Cell and I thought of how cool it would be to have a Thief game with graphics that good- the graphics, physics, and all that were pretty poor in 1 and 2. Then I saw Thief 3 (sanctioned name is "Thief: Deadly Shadows") and I was surprised with how great the graphics looked, so I bought it.

The first thing I noticed, before I got it home, was that it was oddly specific about what kind of system it will run on, even so much as to include a list of supported video cards on the back of the box, but my PC passed (for the most part). It comes in a pretty sweet case, like a double-wide DVD case. It's a 3 disk set so the install takes ten minutes or so. The manual seems to be pretty good, although I haven't really used it for anything yet, just glanced through it.

As I was installing, the game confirmed my suspicions about how restrictive it is with technical specs- the autostart screen includes a little tool to check to see if your video card will work before you even bother installing.

So I got it installed and checked out the video options- they're pretty sparse. They range from (I think) 800*600 up to 1600*1200 but there isn't a lot you can mess around with, just the res, the brightness, the shadow detail, and "bloom".

One thing that really annoyed me, READ THIS IF YOU PLAN ON BUYING THE GAME, is that when I went to change the controls, as soon as I clicked on something to change it, the game crashed to the desktop with no error message. I messed around with this for quite a while- updated my sound drivers, my video drivers, even uninstalled / reinstalled the game. Finally I admitted defeat and went to the Eidos website to try to figure it out- turns out since the game REALLY hates joysticks, gamepads, etc, not only will they not work but having them plugged in will cause the game to crash at that menu. So before you go to change the settings, make sure you unplug your joystick. I think I'll just leave mine unplugged whenever I play.

The game itself rocks. From the third person perspective it really does seem a lot like Splinter Cell. The graphics and physics rock- you can move everything (within reason) and everything casts a shadow, so you could conceivably move a barrel in front of a light and then creep around behind it and not be detected. The models are smooth and round now, and they move like real people. Get this, the models even have REAL HANDS. This is a MONUMENTAL BREAKTHROUGH in the Thief world.

Also, Garrett's arsenal is signifigantly improved- you have all the standard arrows (broadhead, fire, noisemaker, gas, water, moss), and the trusty blackjack. The broadhead arrow will now kill guards immediately if you hit them in the chest or the head- mind the trajectory though, as I found out, you can AIM for the chest but if you're too far away it'll result in a leg hit which will then bring about a very lengthy, angry search. His old sword has been traded in for a dagger- this serves as both the last-resort hand-to-hand combat weapon, and can also be used sort of like the blackjack, stealthily killing an opponent unaware of your presence. I've never had to use the dagger for that yet, since it really does pretty much exactly the same thing as the blackjack except for some blood (which you have to clean up with a water arrow) and a cry, which can alert other guards/enemies. One good thing about the sneaking up behind people bit is that you no longer have to aim for the head or the neck- as long as you're behind them and you're close enough, you're guaranteed to hit the guy in the perfect spot and knock him out / kill him.

Garrett still has the explosive mine, flash bomb, gas bomb, health potion, and holy water flask, but he also now has an oil flask. If you throw it, it creates a slick on the ground that causes enemies to fall over. And get this- you can use a fire arrow to light it up if you really feel evil. I can't wait to mess around with these- you can wait for someone to slip and then incinerate them, you can spill it across a doorway and then light it on fire and enemies won't follow you through it- should be fun.

Garrett now also has access to more tools- he now has an implant in his eye that allows you to zoom your vision in and out. There's the lockpicks (I'll talk about those later) and wall climbing gloves, that let you climb stone or brick walls. There's also a "Keeper Door Glyph", which I have yet to encounter but which appparently "reveals doors to hidden Keeper areas".

Lockpicking has been enhanced quite a bit, but the change only makes it harder. You start out with as many as six lock barrels, and you have to find the "sweet spot" of each barrel, wiggle the pick around, and get that barrel open before you can move on to the next.

Thief 3 also lets you make some of your own decisions and enjoy an out-of-mission world. You have an apartment where you can store stuff, and a whole open-ended city where you can sneak around, pick pockets, buy and sell from fences and the black market, and listen in on what's going on. That's what drives your missions later on in the game- like Freelancer, you have reputations with the Hammers and the Pagans, and you get missions from one or the other based on your status. This also determines who is friendly toward you and who will attack you on sight. The treasure you confiscate comes in three types and no fence will buy all three, so you have to play the market.

I've only completed the first mission (training) and the first half of the second mission, but so far it's been awesome. You can finally do all the stuff you wished you could do in the first games- I've yet to see a single thing you could do in the real world that Garrett can't do in Thief 3. The guards seem a lot more perceptive- I'm playing on "easy" and it's still pretty tough, I can't even imagine how brutal it would be on "hard". I can't wait to get to the open-ended part, I can see myself not moving from my room for weeks.

So, the rundown:

PRO

Awesome graphics

Really good models / textures

Superb physics

Great lighting (expected in a Thief game)

Open-ended gameplay!!

Dramatically improved AI

New weapons/tools

Truly an immersive game that you get totally wrapped up in, just like the first two.

CON

Really really specific about what kind of hardware you run it on (see below)

Crashes if you have a joystick plugged in

Lockpicking now takes a while (not really a problem with the game, it does make things more realistic I suppose)

Pretty graphics-intensive (I have to run it at 1024)

Not a lot of graphics settings to mess around with

Rating:
Summary: Explore the City
Review: Each time I movve through the City I find new things. Also, you can move through the levels along different paths each time that you play the game. And, you can change the order in which you play.

Thief 3 has an amazing complexity.

Rating:
Summary: Fans of old will be at home. New players will be pleased.
Review: Everything I liked about the original Thief game is here again for me to love all over. Sneaking and the general feelings of control are just like the original. I could basically sum this game up by saying that it plays and feels like the original, but looks like Deus Ex: Invisible War, but I think Thief: Deadly Shadows deserves a more thorough review.
The graphics, while not he best and very dark, did several things while I played. They set the mood, first of all, and very well. Everything looked dark, and medieval. They had me gawking is awe at some of the areas because I loved the textures a lot. They were VERY important to gameplay because it is up to you to find the dark areas behind pillars or in other shadows to hide from pretty much everyone as you go about your stealthy gaming.
The sound is give and take. I say that because the surround sound is well done and they use sound as a major part in the gameplay. Guards and enemies hear you moving around or knocking into things. The voice acting was, in my opinion, pretty good. They brought some of the favorite actors back to play the guards, Garret, and others. Nice touch. The downside to the general sounds comes when you throw or drop objects. They just don't clank around like they used to and in some cases can sound almost muffled even when you are right on top of an item that you drop on the floor. In the original, I would cringe when I dropped a little pot or vase because of the ceramic "ker-CLATTER" that sounded from the object hitting the floor. This is minor and most everything like ambient sounds or voices sound quite nice and immersive. City streets can be sometimes busy and you can hear people chattering. The effect is subtle, but it draws you in. I have to say that the noisemaker arrows get the job done though!
There isn't really too much music as much as there is just a general ambience about the game. This is a good thing. Think of what Doom3 did with their music. There is none. They just have an ambience that draws you in from the absolute silence to the game without the rock soundtrack. Well done.
The general gameplay is oh-so-sweet. Without question, if you were a fan of the original, there is no possible way you will be disappointed. It just feels the same and that is exactly what I hoped for. Moving around, sneaking, the whole bit is spot on. Nothing feels wrong or "off". It's not just like the original, though. They added plenty to do. You have some nice new tools to use at your thieving disposal. You have most of the old items, plus some very cool ones. Some are mostly useless, but hilarious to use (see flasks of oil). Patrolling guards and other people that you might be wise to hide from will notice things when you open or close doors, put out torches or candles, take items from their general area, make noise, or show yourself. The reactions on these people vary and there is tons of spoken dialog that is all unique for each area so listening to the speech in the game never gets old. They will talk to or even fight each other sometimes. It adds to the fun either way.
If things get hot, the AI will retreat when fighting you and losing, run and get reinforcements, and search for you. Unfortunately (or not) they generally have short attention spans and will give up if they cant find you after a while and just go back to their routine of walking around complaining about their sore feet, or wages, or late dinner. Some enemies can wield magic and will use magic to enhance their allies in different ways or use it to blast you. I have even been healed and hastened by a friendly Hammerite priest when we where fighting some zombies. (I stole his wand later, shhhh)
I really hope they make another sequel as grand.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Stealth Gameplay
Review: Thief: Deadly Shadows follows the presigious Thief storyline, as you portray an amoral thief by the name of Garrett. As for the actual storyline though - it is a cliche of many RPGs. (Don't worry - no spoiler here.) As you're playing the game, you aren't thinking about the story whatsoever. Fortunately - TDS needs no storyline to be a successful game. TDS has the most immersive stealth gameplay I've experienced. The environments are detailed and interactive, and the audio experience is breathtaking. The game has wonderful voice-acting and ambient sound is placed in the correct places. The graphics engine is a modified version of the Deus Ex 2 engine - but there is very little difference. Environments are dark and dreary - but it is appropriate due to TDS' place in time. Character models are also good, and the shadowing/lighting effects are even better than they were in Deus Ex. Although TDS has good gameplay - it can boor you. Combat rarely exceeds a simple knock to the back of the head with a blackjack, and when one does enter hand to hand, balls to the walls combat- a fight cannot be won without losing most of your health. Sometimes, missions seem to be more out of necessity than pleasure. Some missions can be more boring than fun...but I suppose being a Thief is no glory job. TDS is only for die-hard stealth fans. Just because you enjoyed Splinter Cell, doesn't mean you will like TDS. For die-hard Thief fans, this is a must buy. For those who enjoy stealth games with brief spurts of violence though...invest in Pandora Tomorrow.