Plunged deep into a dark, violent gothic world, you fight your way through the streets, sticking to shadows to avoid being seen by any city watch guards. Caught and you’ll be hung that’s if they don’t stab you first. Get through though and the rewards are yours for the taking, and there is an abundance of them. Welcome to The City where disease is rife, corruption is plentiful and the streets are no place for the common man.
As with previous Thief games, Garrett the master thief makes a return for the fourth time, he’s the centre piece of this story, crawling and creeping his way through the mesh of buildings, roofs and pipes. Searching for his lost sister and to clues as to why he has awoken a year later with little recollection of events leading to this moment.
And that’s where the game story begins, the game forces you to understand the events which lead you through the game, obviously. After that you’re free to have a nose around the city and this is where you can either love the game or loath it. Ample opportunities mean that the average player will have to sample everything to see whether or not they will enjoy thiefing in the city, so that’s where we’ll start with the main point of stealing.
As obvious as it is I’m still going to point it out, stealing items in Thief is important. Had to get that off my chest. Garrett will literally take anything that isn’t nailed down; the good thing about thief is that when you do steal something it isn’t placed into a bag that can only carry so much. You can literally steal anything without a limit. Thank goodness because there is a lot of loot to be had. The system Thief uses is one where the items are instantly liquidated into their cash values, thus giving Garrett a simple and easy to follow bank balance which he can use to buy tools like the handy wrench for sewer pipes and accessories such as arrows for his bow. Great from when you need to distract some guards, but that can go wrong…
And when it does, well. Don’t even think about fighting your way out of a situation. One guard is relatively easy to take down, two is a struggle, 3 or more it’s time to just give up. Sadly the mech for attacking with what is your only weapon, a hammer cum claw, does little damage and 4 blows to the opponent will render him unconscious. The real problem is the fight with the awfully clunky and rigid controls; little skill is involved with Garrett able to do simple dodges rather than blocks.
Sadly that is a bit of a let-down but it does force you to stick to the principles of the game, not to be seen or caught. And this is where Thief excels it allows you to use the environment and the items you have at your disposal excellently, giving an immersive experience which leaves it mark on the player. The lack of abilities and power ups gives you a greater sense of achievement when you do complete a chapter, of which there are 8, undetected. Which is a real challenge. Those abilities that you do have include, the ability to swoop forward, backwards or sideways about 2 feet without raising suspicion. This is very handy is a vital part of the game as is the second ability Garrett’s ability to focus and highlight important parts of the environment.
Simply engaging this will allow Garrett to indicate to the player where he or she can interactive with to allow you to utilise your surrounds. This can be opening a door, picking a lock or hiding in a wardrobe which comes in handy when infiltrating a busy area. This doesn’t take away from the game though, which is no mean feat, it allows the player to use the aids given and enhance your playing experience rather than holding your hand through missions.
The story itself is intriguing but has a clear lack of main interesting characters, Garrett himself is not a memorable character, his dark tone matches what he wears (for some reason a black corset?!). The characters you encounter along the story seem to be very similar, the only person with any lovable attitude is Garrett’s sister, who is the main focus of the story but dances in and out of your experience.
It’s not all rosy in the Thief garden though, one glaring problem with Thief is the graphics. It can only be described as a yo-yo, in some areas the graphics are phenomenal and the game is massively improved when playing it, but the frame rate drops in other parts and certain scenes become blurry and it dampens what is an enjoyable playing experience. Some of the cut scenes seem to play dramatic music over the actual speech as well making it unhearable which is such an obviously fixable problem that’s been missed, it frustrates me.
When moving in between chapters or segments of the map you are prompted to load the next part which gives a loading screen of about 5-25 seconds depending on what it is you are accessing. Normally this doesn’t bother me but it really affects the flow of the game, Thief suffers because of it and once again it seems something that they could fix relatively easily as is the map, its not that exciting and the characters in it don’t have anything interesting to say, it’s all a little bland which is a shame.
On the whole Thief is an enjoyable experience, the game like many others similar to it is what you make of it. After much thought and consideration i've gone with a 4 star reveiw which was a hard toss up between 4 and 3 stars, the enjoyment factor is what swayed me overall. A mixture of side missions and exploring the story and setting is the best way to go at it. There are many thrills, frights and rewards within Thief that could be yours if you don’t get caught….
