"Thief" Review

Not Such A Sly Thief After All

Back in 1998 a game named Thief: The Dark Project came to PC’s all across the world. This game was widely loved and managed to produce two more sequels. But the attempt to reboot the series comes as a failure as it leaves fans with disappointment as it strays away from the formula that made the original series great.

Thief is set in a victorian fantasy world inspired by steampunk aesthetics. It follows Garrett, a master thief, who returns to his hometown ‘The City’ to find that it’s controlled by an oppressive ruler named ‘The Baron’. A plague has swept across ‘The City’ and the rich live with much fortune while the poor struggle daily for survival. Garrett follows the Robin Hood way of life and helps the poor by stealing from the rich.

For starters, this game isn’t bad. Something that Thief does well is make you use your head. This game requires you to think before you steal, whether you should use this shadowy path or if you should go head on and use brute force against the guards. These types of scenarios made the game worth finishing while the uneven story and excruciating dull characters provided nothing to the game.

Something else that made this game enjoyable was your ability to control the difficulty. You can play through the game as a true thief with levels being near impossible, to playing the game where all of your enemies seem oblivious to everything. Playing through a master-level with auto-save, crosshairs and focus turned off makes this game incredibly difficult, and long, giving you the bragging rights you deserve.

Story was always an important factor for the Thief series, but in the reboot there’s nothing there. It’s all the same; go steal this, go steal that, it eventually becomes a mundane process that leaves you asking why? What’s the motive behind all of this? Along with the disappearance of a story there is also the lack of interesting characters, even Garrett himself doesn’t seem like a the proper thief that he’s supposed to be.

The level design in Thief is at times good, but when it’s not good it’s really not good. The level design in Thief is very linear and simple forces any thought of creativity to fly out the window. Thief is a hard game to begin with and with there only being one way to complete most levels it becomes incredibly difficult. You’ll find yourself saving and reloading the game constantly as you have to keep forcing yourself to push head first through the level.

I’ll be honest, Thief isn’t worth it’s $60 price tag, if you still really want it wait for the price to drop down. Inconsistent is the word to describe this game and everything, for the most part, it stands for. When Thief is good it’s really fun but this feeling of enjoyment is quickly washed away with the boring level design, choppy story and awkwardly lame characters.

5/10
-weak characters
-weak story
-weak level design
+good difficulty settings