Developer: Eidos – Montreal
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX, Eidos Interactive
Rrp: £19.99
Released: 27th Feburary 2014
Available on Steam, Uplay and the Square Enix Store
I will state this now, I am a fan of the Thief series. And as such I will be looking very critically at this game, that’s not to say I won’t try to be fair, I will. But I want it to be known that my opinion is likely to be at least a little coloured by this.
In this new addition to the Thief family you play as Garrett a master thief and, as is seemingly usual for Garrett, you go on a job and it goes wrong, horribly wrong. From this point on you are trying to figure out just what exactly has happened and how to fix it.
The game has several interesting mechanics such as the ability to search picture frames for hidden levers. You approach the painting, use the interact function, Garret will place his hands on the frame. You control the hands by moving the mouse or direction keys (analog stick for controllers) and when a small dot in the centre of the screen is bright that’s the lever. Lock picking is also done in a similar fashion.
Speaking of the interact function it is perhaps the most overworked function I’ve ever come across, it controls leaning, stealing, interacting with switches, talking, opening doors, opening windows, lifting heavy objects, sliding between crates, lock picking, pick pocketing and safe cracking. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head
There is also a skill called focus that activates a “Eagle Sense” style vision, this depletes your focus meter but grants great benefits. These can be upgraded through expending focus points. These focus points can be found hidden within the levels, a limited number can also be bought and finally they occasionally are granted for completing a mission.
This focus skill allows you to see the location of traps and where to deactivate them from, items that can be interacted with such as buttons and fires and items that an be stolen. If a certain skill is upgraded enough it will also aid in finding unique items and bestow benefits while active. Of course the longer it’s active the more of you focus meter gets depleted, and this can only be refilled by using a poppy.
Jumping has become context sensitive, meaning you can’t just jump if you feel like it. Instead the game gives you a “swoop” ability that allows you to move a short distance quietly. For the most part this works and is very effective but there is a downside. Sometimes you’ll find you end up plunging to your death because you wanted to jump to a rope etc and found that you’ve instead swooped off a ledge.
Sound is extremely important for games based around stealth, allowing the player to tell from what direction someone’s coming from and approximately how far away they are. In this rendition of Thief the sound is… Broken, you can hear people who are standing on a different floor in a different room clear as a bell, but have to strain to hear the conversation the guard next to you is having.
It may seem odd to complain about something that aids the player but the AI seems to ignore the sound of the players footsteps regardless of the surface they’re walking on (with the exception of broken glass).
There are many side missions you can take on, most of them are the type your given a waypoint to but some are from overheard conversations and require you to use your initiative. In the case of the ones which give a waypoint there are three vendors who will interspace them throughout the game.
Credit where it’s due though, the levels are well designed and full of detail, the goes double for the the city hub, which is a large, nicely detailed area with lots of places to explore. I’ve heard people complain about it being confusing, but I get the feeling that’s was the idea. The cities of old were a confusing mess of structures and streets.
There is a world map you can access by opening the journal and mini-map you can activate that makes travel much easier.
For some reason Garrett goes into a third person mode when climbing pipes and boards, something that you do very irregularly. Even stranger than that is that there is a “repel” ability that is less used that the third person climbing. The whole jumping into third person mode really breaks any immersion you may have, which is a shame because they have done so much work to create this detailed and immersive world.
The inclusion of the challenge mode (accessed through the main menu) allows you to compete against your friends in two missions based on time and score. There is a third mission that you can purchase as well, although I don’t have that. I’m quite pleased that Eidos found a way to include a form of multiplayer that plays to the games strengths rather than shoehorning in a basic deathmatch.
This is not a game for the veteran players, if you liked the games of old you will be disappointed. That’s not to say that the game is actually terrible, just flawed. If you are someone who enjoyed the older games, try to ignore the games namesake, you’ll avoid much heartache that way.
