Thief: The Dark Project

The Good
The concept of stealth over firepower works beautifully in this game. If you try to apply your Quake tactics here, you will never have a chance. Thief forces you to think differently, and think up smart approaches to challenging situations. The feeling of robbing the wealthy blind and slipping away without detection is a rush. The environment enhances the gameplay more than you would believe. Thief sports excellent level design, an engaging storyline, sharp voice acting, awesome artwork, and haunting sound effects, which are crucial to playing the game. The detail put into the levels is absolutely dumbfounding, and easily makes up for thier slightly limited number. Dark, gothic artwork enhances the levels, making them truly atmospheric. They also have a lot of variety. You'll be breaking into mansions, gravedigging in mosuleums (littered with the undead, of course), and entering other worlds of evil and mystery. The levels last really long, but there's always something to do, and threats to worry about. And perhaps some of Thief's best elements are it's intimidating threats, including a variety of guards, zombies, monsters, ghosts, and traps. All throughout the game you feel like you're on the bottom of the food chain. This chilling feeling will haunt you until the game's end, and the sounds of you enemies stalking you in the dark gives Thief a real adrenaline-rush factor not commonly found in games. This game will get your blood pumping like no other. You have to play it to believe it.

The Bad
As excellent as it is, Thief has it's share of problems. Most of them are very minor, and don't affect the gameplay, but they are Unfortunately, dispite the great art, the actual graphics engine is slightly below average, with lots of jagged edges. For example, the people and creatures at times look too pointy. They lack the curves that bodies should have. Also there are some textures like dirt and stone that leave a lot to be desired when viewed at lower resolutions. There are some quirky bugs here and there, and the AI, while usually smart, sometimes doesn't put enough effort into finding you. Thief is challenging by today's standards, which is good, but there are times when the game gets painfully difficult, even on the lowest difficulty. This tends to occur on levels that deal with the undead. While they're are a blast to play against, all too often there seems too be too many of them, and not enough ways to defeat them.

The Bottom Line
I can't recommend this game enough. You simply must play it! There has never been such a perfect combination of inspired design, and brilliant execution in a game, on any platform. I have played a TON of games in my life, and this one is undoubtedly the most memorable. It's focus on stealth over strength may not be for everyone, but Thief is easily my favorite game of all time. I can't wait to play the sequel!

The Good
Although a number of stealth games came out around the same time, Metal Gear most notably, this was the one that really focused on Not Being Seen. Yes you could take out your enemies with arrows or your sword but doing so was no guarantee, and a direct violation of the level goals if you were playing on hard mode. The most points, and satisfaction, was had through not even being seen on your way through a mission, which was very, very hard.

The game engine was built from the ground up to make sound propagation and shadows an integral part of the game world and it shows. In no other game do I remember standing in one location for five minutes hidden in shadows, palms sweaty, listening to the local sounds, waiting for my moment to reach out and snatch a key from an oblivious guard as he walked by humming while I prayed he didn't notice me. It's an impressive game that can make standing absolutely still for minutes tense and enjoyable.

The game is honestly scary. Not since System Shock had a game actually installed a sense of fear in me, but this one did, and I don't scare easily. It's ability to create an atmosphere, and back that atmosphere up with game-play, is amazing.

Add to that a unique story well told with good voice acting and strong art direction and you've got a sleeper hit. Many of it's levels were huge, sprawling affairs with multiple (and sometimes changing) goals and hidden areas galore with multiple ways of doing any given thing. It was a game you could get lost in and not mind it. A game you could finish and then play again and have a different experience and then play again because you KNOW you missed something. And because they released an excellent level editor there are fans making some fantastic new levels (and even new story lines) to this day (for Thief II mostly).

It and it's sequels are unique games, like no others before or after them, and it's not very often you can say that these days.

The Bad
Even at the time it was released the graphics were dated. Unreal and Quake were both out by then and the dark blocky graphics, low polygon models and limited special effects found in Thief just didn't measure up.

It had REALLY long load times, which was bad for a game in which you tended to die a lot.

The designers weren't sure of how their new 'sneaker' game-play would go over so they tried to hedge their bets by including a number of fight based levels and monsters which negated much of your sneaking skills. These are often sited as being the worst levels in the game.

It was hard, even at it's easiest level the learning curve for this new stealth game-play was quite steep in Thief and many people gave up playing after dieing numerous times. There is a reason the game came with 'normal', 'hard' and 'harder' difficultly level settings. And dedicating yourself to finishing all levels at the hardest setting while completing each objective and stealing every available piece of loot without ever being SEEN was a life time achievement. It's possible, and some have claimed to have done it, and all I can say is WOW.

The Bottom Line
Its a different game, and not for everyone. It's game-play is tricky and hard, even for Splinter Cell masters, and the story and art direction are unique with it's steam punk atmosphere, rock soundtrack and dark single City at night setting. But if you play it and like it, you'll never forget it.

Splinter Cell is now the crown jewel of stealth games, and justifiably so, but nothing feels like Thief. It's a dark gem, gleaming just outside the light ring of a guttering street lamp.

The Good
1. Complex AI. Guards will chase you, will look for you if you give them the slip, and will get bored of looking if they can't find you. Dead bodies alert them to your presence, so hiding said bodies becomes a priority.

1. Open-ended gameplay. This is no railroad shooter. You must come up with your own way to achieve your objectives. Do you try a frontal assault on the Manor? Quite possible, but not advisable. Sneak in through the sewers? Maybe a rope arrow placed right there? Kill the guard? Knock him out? Distract him? There are a million ways to play the game, including the ever popular "never let them realize you're there."

2. Difficulty levels that are meaningful. Not merely content with giving you less health, higher difficulty levels mean more objectives and limitations on how you can go about it ("You're a thief, not a murderer - don't kill anyone"). You haven't played the ENTIRE game unless you've done it on Expert.

3. A unique inventory. Your bow has several types of arrows, each with a different purpose. Water arrows to douse torches (making you harder to find). Rope arrows for climbing to interesting places. Fire arrows for when something absolutely MUST go boom. Your other tools include flashbombs, lockpicks, mines, and holy water. It's up to you to use them well.

4. An amazing storyline. Set in a rich steampunk setting, you are a thief caught up in a horrible plot to destroy civilization. Which puts you in the last position any self-respecting thief wants to be: the role of hero. The voice-acting is flawless, the world is unique and alive, and the continuity is maintained with extreme precision. The smallest scroll contains a scrap of information that jives with everything else PERFECTLY. Even if the information is useless to the player.

5. The main character. Garrett is a truly unique person. Cynical and jaded, he still possesses a sarcastic streak a mile wide, resulting in some priceless dialogue.
   
   The Bad
   1. Lack of rag-doll physics means that dead bodies get thrown into weird positions, which kinda ruins the verisimilitude (oh, look it up!) . There was nothing to be done about this at the time, but it'd be nice if the source code to the game was released so the fan community could improve on the engine. It worked for Doom!

6. Difficult to work with custom content. To make new missions, one must replace the existing missions. The game simply does not support loading custom content the way other games do (like Doom, for example). This doesn't affect the main game itself, so it's hard to really hold this against it.

7. Uh, I can't come up with anything else to complain about, but these lists always look best with at least three entries.
   
   The Bottom Line
   A steampunk cloak-and-dagger adventure, where a sharp mind is more important than a sharp sword.