Review Thief Video Game Coming In 2014

21/04/14

Review Thief Video Game Coming In 2014

Diposting oleh Unknown di 21.47

About this game

Thief' is a reboot of the classic stealth-action video game trilogy which first appeared back in 1998, and instantly won a die-hard fanbase for its difficult, no-compromises gameplay and focus on hiding in the shadows rather than over-the-top violence.

Set in a sort of dark, rainy, Victorian-medieval steampunk fantasy world, though one populated entirely by American voice actors, you're cast as Garrett - master thief, denizen of clock-towers and general goth-about-town. Your task? Sneak about in the first-person, steal coins and jewellery from people's homes, and stop some kind of alterna-world disease apocalypse from having ever occurred while avenging the life of your former apprentice/romantic interest, also a thief, who disappears into a weird magical cloud at the start of the game.

Where the game succeeds, and it does, mostly - is in its core gameplay. Everything which is crucial to the game - stealth, problem solving and escaping over rooftops - is fun and well executed.

Most of the levels involve infiltrating a building - through any means you can think of - stealing something important and getting out. The tools you're given to do this are broad, and range from different types of arrows and weapons to the environment itself, and you do have freedom to build your own 'style' of gameplay. You can turn off everything from waypoints to mission prompts, and no one should be afraid that they'll be forced to play in a certain way.

Review Thief

If you loved Thief 1 and 2, and if you liked the third game, Deadly Shadows, then you’ll have to steel yourself. While it’s still a first-person stealth-action game – with just a modicum of shooting – the Thief reboot is a slight departure. The original games prided themselves on giving the player a range of different routes and approaches, both in terms of the physical way you explored the environment, and in terms of the way you dealt with the obstacles in your path.

Thief 2014 still does well on the latter front, handing you a grab-bag of arrows and familiar gadgets with which to douse torches, knock-out guards, open grates, pick locks and sneak around, not to mention a selection of tools with which to sow chaos and sow distraction. Yet while it’s a game that rewards exploration – you’ve never seen so many documents to read or loot to pinch – it’s not a game that gives you much scope in which to do it. Bar the city sections that link the game’s different missions, the new Thief is surprisingly linear.

On the second count, Thief looks great for an Xbox 360 or PS3 game, but play it on the PS4 and it’s clear that you’re playing a last-generation game with a few high-resolution textures and the resolution upped to 1080p. This isn’t a major issue. Thief is beautifully designed, atmospheric and highly immersive, and the quality improves as the game goes on; later sections can be eerily beautiful. All the same, if you’re looking for a game to rival Ryse, Killzone: ShadowFall or even Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition in the visual department, this isn’t it.

Close ups of characters can look primitive even by the standards of some PS3 games like Beyond: Two Souls or The Last of Us, and nobody wants to see textures popping in or screen tearing on a next-gen title. The same goes for a hero who gets stuck in the scenery, which still happens from time to time. It’s also clear that this is a game built around the memory constraints of the outgoing consoles, with areas chopped into artificial chunks, though some of the joins are carefully hidden in pick your way through the debris interludes or elevator journeys.

For a start, throw away Thief, Thief 2 and Dishonored as your reference points and it’s a lot closer to Bioshock or Bioshock Infinite; a thinking-man’s action game, albeit one that’s heavily focused on stealth. It’s not that the new Garrett – now a fantasy film-noir antihero – is bereft of offensive powers, but it’s impossible to play the new Thief with a confrontation style. The guards are too tough and too numerous, and other enemies you’ll meet later on are also too powerful.

Ithis pushes you to focus more on stealth, and on escaping when you are discovered. To help you have a very effective visibility indicator and – more importantly – a much more agile hero, with an auto-jump and clamber system with echoes of Mirror’s Edge and Assassin’s Creed. This makes getting around Thief’s game-world a joy, even at speed, and gives you a chance to get away when all seems lost.

Thief’s priority is its story, and if it takes a little orchestration and direction to pull you through it, then it’s not going to apologise. At first, Thief’s tale seems incidental, clichéd and unengaging, which might leave old-timers longing for the good old days of the struggle between the Keepers, Pagans and Hammerites. A few hours in, however, and it really gets going as a noir-tinged mystery, transforming Garrett from thief to detective to unlikely instrument of justice. And as this happens, the levels get more interesting too, changing pace nicely between stealthy investigations, almost Tomb Raider-like explorations, frantic escapes and creepy survival horror stealth. By four of five hours in, we were totally gripped.

Not all of it works. There are shop and upgrade systems in place in the city, but these never seem that essential to the action. Sure, you can donate cash to buy upgraded abilities or pop to the black marketer and load up on water arrows, but on most occasions we actually forgot to. Meanwhile, you’re advised to up the difficulty level if you want the guards to be anything more than dumb, short-sighted morons. If you want the tension of the original games, we’d recommend ramping things up.

Verdict

This isn’t the Thief update that fans of Thief and The Metal Age demanded, but it is a superior action adventure with some brilliant missions and what turns into a gripping plot. Next-gen console owners don’t get much more than a resolution boost, but whatever platform you’re playing on, Thief is a lot smarter and more thrilling than you might suspect.

Despite that, it's also quite interesting and deep in its best moments, and fans of stealth games will find a lot to love. It's not as innovative as Dishonored, but it's more focused, and it will probably last longer in the minds of those who forgive its flaws.

21/04/14