Loading ...New thief game? Thief 4….
The thief series was excellent. It game birth to the FPS, the First Person Sneaker?
The first game was excellent and can still hold its own against today’s dynamically lit, high dynamic range master pieces……with as much story as you could fit on a grain of salt!!! Thief created a world you enjoyed exploring, unlike the dark corridors of Doom 3 (flashlight, gun, flashlight, gun and so on….). You got a real feel for who Garrett was…and revelled in his cut throat antics.
The second serving was equally excellent. The graphics got a few bells and whistles added….but more importantly the plot developed in classic Thief style! So with the third instalment I looked forward to more o the same high class.
Was I disappointed…..yes. The first warning signs were the title “Thief: Deadly Shadows”. That title reads like this to me: “Thief: Console friendly”. And alas it was a horrible perversion of what was excellence. The 3rd person aspect of the game did not lend anything at all to the gameplay. In fact I believe it did the opposite. In 3rd person mode I could see around corners by panning the camera…..obviously a huge advantage for the would-be thief!!!!! So basically the Thief series was “dumbed down” for the drooling console masses……and I did not like it!!!! However it must be said…..from all the games in the series “the cradle” level is still the best/scariest I have ever come across. Of course playing it in 3rd person detracts from the fear of peering around dark corners…..but it was still a masterstroke of level design.
So where is Thief gone now (Thief 4?)……Ion Storm are long gone now….so is that the end of this epic? Its kind of sad that the game that created a genre has not had many rivals in the field…and that that game is also dying out!
